In preparation for RCL's F2Q 2013 earnings release tomorrow, we’ve put together the recent pertinent forward looking company commentary.
YOUTUBE FROM Q1 CONFERENCE CALL
- "The higher ticket yields were driven by Caribbean, Brazil and Asia itineraries."
- "We saw improvement in all categories for onboard revenue. Ships that have been recently revitalized and vessels sailing on new itineraries did particularly well."
- "We believe marketing spend is key to driving higher revenues and expect to invest these savings throughout the balance of the year."
- "Over the last few weeks though, we have seen an improvement in booking activity and we are still forecasting record yields for the Caribbean."
- "Our average lead pricing is currently about 3% higher than the same time last year for sailings departing within the next 12 months."
- "On average, our guests are booking their cruise about two weeks earlier this year than they were in 2011 and 2012. In fact, the booking curve has looked strikingly similar to 2008 for the last several months."
- "We will have more Americans cruising with us on itineraries away from North America in 2013 than we had expected. Conversely, we will have more guests from outside North America cruising with us in the Caribbean in 2013 than we had expected."
- "We considered our European summer revenue projections to have more risks attached to them in comparison to other spheres of deployment. Although there is still somewhat limited visibility for all of our summer deployment, at this juncture, in Europe, we are sufficiently ahead of 2012 on both rate and occupancy, to be comfortable that our European deployment is of comparable risk to our other programs."
- "Turning to China, the region that represents 5% of our capacity in 2013. The hostility between Japan and China surrounding the disputed islands in the East China Sea continues to affect our itineraries and our demand generation. We have now removed the Japanese ports of call from nearly all of 2013's North Asia program. As a result, most itineraries from our China homeport of Shanghai and Tianjin are calling only on ports of call on South Korea."
- "You're going to continue to see promotions by us. You're going to see them by our competitors."
- [Negative publicity] "For now, it will probably have more of an effect on potential first-timers. The problem is that people don't call us on the phone to tell us that they're not booking with us."
- [Q3 Europe] "We had said back in early February that we were a little less than 50% booked for Europe. And today, we're around 70% booked, to give you some sense of where we are. We're still counting on more business. But the fact that we have maintained our full year guidance, despite the fact that we had a good first quarter, certainly implies that we've taken a little bit of a haircut in Q2 through Q4."
- "The markets that I would say we're seeing the most softness in would be, of course, Spain. And then probably secondarily the UK would be a little bit weaker than maybe we would have expected. Germany has actually held up quite well for us with – particularly with our TUI Cruises brand, we're very pleased with its performance. And then the other markets, in general, seem to be doing well."
- [Australia] "In the near-term is flat to slightly lower yield outlook for us for this year. we would expect that Australia, as a southern summer market, would continue to grow and be a mainstay of the cruise industry going forward."
- "Pullmantur's performance is inevitably affected by that [Spain] very strongly and that's been a big disappointment and I don't see any quick turn away from massive improvement given the economic situation."
- "The French, the CDF, Croisières de France, situation is actually doing quite well for us. And we would expect to continue to expand that to take advantage of a good market position."
