In preparation for Royal Caribbean’s Q3 earnings release tomorrow, we’ve put together the pertinent forward looking commentary from RCL’s Q2 earnings call. 

YOUTUBE FROM Q2 RELEASE

  • “Simply put, the year is progressing better than we expected it to and generally, our business is as good or better than projected both in this country and abroad.” 
  • “The best way to describe demand for our cruises today is stable and remarkably consistent. With the exception of currency fluctuation, our revenue projections today are virtually identical to the ones we did 3 months ago.”
  • “Bookings since our last call has been up about 11% over the same time last year and our booked load factors and average per diems are both running ahead for the second half of the year. Despite a high degree of uncertainty about the economy and the volatility we see in the stock market, our domestic bookings have been very consistent over the last several months.”
  • “Since the beginning of the year, we have seen a steady expansion in the booking window and we’re now quite close to pre-recession levels.”
  • “Just under half of our revenue will come from guests outside of the United States. While the majority of these guests pay for their cruise in local currencies, virtually all of our onboard revenue is in U.S. dollars.”
  • “For 2010, we estimate that approximately 30% of our revenues and 20% of our non-fuel Net Cruise Costs will be denominated in currencies other than U.S. dollars. Our revenues are most influenced by changes in the euro, British pound, and Canadian dollar. Our expenses are most influenced by the euro and to a lesser extent, the British pound.”
  • “Our capacity is forecasted to be up approximately 7.1% and we expect to continue to benefit from the exceptional response to our newest vessels.”
  • “As you saw on the booking window chart, the window is expanding so we do have higher load factors in the second half. Pricing is up a bit.”
  • “From a strict statistical point of view, by our analysis, Epic has about a 3% impact on Caribbean capacity for the full year and about a 6% impact on Caribbean capacity for the back half of the year which is not that significant and so our sense is that her arrival, although it has generated a lot of publicity for the industry which is always a good thing, is not having a significant impact on our Caribbean performance.”
  • [Pricing in the 4Q] "It’s proceeding as expected."
  • “As we look at the third quarter, we’re seeing this year an increase in the number of guests that we’re getting out of Europe and a big increase in the number of guests that we’re getting out of the UK because we put Eclipse in the UK market. So we’ve seen our sourcing mix at Celebrity change quite a bit this year. As we get into the fourth quarter and the ships are doing a more traditional Caribbean business for us, we’ll see a shift away from where we were in the third quarter to more of our guests coming out of the North American markets.