In preparation for NCLH's F1Q 2013 earnings release tomorrow, we’ve put together the recent pertinent forward looking company commentary.
YOUTUBE FROM 4Q CONFERENCE CALL
- “Looking just at fuel expense, we have a hedging strategy in place using both swaps and collars to help mitigate volatility in the market. We also continually research ways to decrease fuel consumption with the share loan posting a 1.4% decrease in fuel consumption per capacity day.”
- “Capacity for the first quarter will be lower versus prior year as Pride of America enters dry dock from March 24 to April 7. Capacity for the remaining quarters will increase over prior year with the introduction of Norwegian Breakaway and partially offset by dry docks in Q2 and Q4.”
- “Deployment for the year [2013] is 41% in the Caribbean's. Europe, which is made up of Mediterranean voyages, which represent 18% and Baltic and Canary Islands voyages which make up 7%. Alaska, Bermuda and Hawaii which represent between 7% and 9% each and the balance in other itineraries.”
- “It's booking better than at the same point for the Norwegian Epic which was our best booked ship before for launch and pricing continues to be very strong. So on both counts we're comfortable with the direction and we're filling a lot of momentum.... with the booking patterns over the last four or five weeks as we're in wave season. As far as the future cruise costs, just give us another quarter as we grow into our shoes a little bit. We've got a lot of moving parts with the Breakaway coming in and all of the rest of it.”
- “Since we got into the full wave season we've been booking... consistent with what you heard on the Royal Caribbean call last week in the 20% zone. We went down and we kind of took a razor focus at the booking patterns for the European itineraries and the good news is that to-date they are booking around the same tone as the overall number. There is nothing standing out .... out because it is not booking kind of consistent with the other itineraries.”
- [Europe] “It is a little early, but we're pretty comfortable right now that we've gotten through this early season here in the first quarter with our ships that are in Europe, and we have started to be able to move a little bit into those final itineraries in the spring, and we are feeling pretty decent about the summer.
- “Our booking period has extended a little bit from what it was in 2012, so that's a good sign.”
- [Dry-dock] “I think as long as you're figuring three per year going forward you're in the right zone.”
- [Onboard spend on Getaway/Breakaway] “I think what we found is that the Epic... is probably a double-digit improvement upon the other ships just because of the flow of the ship and the way everything is kind of laid out it encourages and we're seeing people are staying out a lot later in the evening and having fun and enjoying themselves and or by the way, maybe having another drink or dropping something in the casino. We're using that as our base case and we do have an expectation that maybe we'll get a little lucky on that because we do feel like the design of these new ships are a little bit even better than the Epic.”
- “At this point we're cautiously optimistic that the season in Alaska will be a solid one for us.”
- “We're putting a scrubber on the Pride of America in the dry-dock that we're about to go through. It's a significant cost for us, but it has a very quick payback because it enables us to continue to use the other fuel, and as you can imagine Pride of America is 100% in the eco zone. We'll do that as we move forward with these future dry-docks and as well on the Breakaway Plus class of ships we're putting scrubbers in as well.”
- “We will continue to drive down consumption just with layering on the more fuel efficient Breakaway which would be about 2% on an annual basis or prorated in 2013 for another 1.5%. We are constantly looking at additional ways. We have at least 10 initiatives going on right now to continue to chip away at our fuel consumptions.”
