Carnival Corporation Ltd. Common Shares

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Business Update conference call. I'm Arnold Donald, President and CEO of Carnival Corporation and PLC. Today, I'm joined telephonically by our Chairman, Nikki Arison, as well as David Bernstein, our Chief Financial Officer, and Beth Roberts, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Thank you all for joining us this morning. Now, before I begin, please note that some of our remarks on this call will be forward-looking. Therefore, I must refer you to the cautionary statement in today's press release. We are absolutely thrilled to be back doing what we do best, delivering amazing, memorable vacation experiences to our guests. Our team members are overjoyed to be back on board in his shows. Our guests are having a phenomenal time. Our onboard revenues per guest are off the charts, and our net promoter scores have been exceptionally strong. I've had the pleasure of visiting a number of ships in recent weeks, both here in the U.S. and abroad, and I can tell you the ships look spectacular and the crew has an amazing energy. There is such an incredible spirit on board. Our protocols have been working well, beginning with a seamless embarkation experience, and have enabled us to build occupancy levels at a significant pace as we return more ships to service. Our brands executed extremely well in this initial phase of our return to service, particularly given significant restrictions on international travel, hampering our ability to offer our normal content-rich deployment options, as well as the operating requirements in certain jurisdictions that limit our normally high occupancy levels. Our itinerary planners came up with creative deployment alternatives, a marketing department, made them accessible with little investment. Our yield managers priced them appropriately to achieve occupancy targets very close in and coupled them with bundled packages to drive exceptionally strong revenue on board. And despite all the additional protocols, our crew delivered an amazing guest experience, the combination of which enabled us to deliver cruise vacations at scale while producing significant cash from these restricted voyages. Now, while we normally don't disclose this level of information, we tried to find a way to give you a sense of why we're viewing the restart as hugely successful, beyond the enthusiasm of our guests and crew and the unprecedented net promoter scores. It became complicated because most of our voyages, while cash flow positive, are programs that could not be compared to 2019's. and in most cases would normally be priced lower than the 2019 alternatives. So, for example, in the U.K., we're only able to offer scenic cruises without any ports of call, and that's our version of staycation, which were not comparable in ticket prices to peak season Mediterranean or Baltic sailings offered in the summer of 2019. That said, even with occupancy limitations, these cruises generated cash for our stakeholders, They supported a return for our workforce, and they successfully served guests, resulting in high satisfaction levels. Now, at Carnival Cruise Line, where we were able to offer more comparable our generation to 2019, our revenue per diems were up 20% compared to 2019, and that's inclusive of the impact of incentives from previous cancellations, and that's despite the close-in nature of the booking. In fact, Carnival Cruise Lines restarted more ships out of the United States than any other cruise brand and still achieved occupancy above 70%, all of which combined to generate an even greater cash contribution. Clearly, Carnival Cruise Line is a brand that continues to outperform. While the Delta variant and its corresponding effect on consumer confidence has certainly created a myriad of operating challenges for us to navigate the near term, and has lasted some booking volatility in August. To date, it has not had a significant impact on our ultimate plan to return our full fleet to guest operations in the spring of 2022. On our last quarterly business update, we said that we expected the environment to remain dynamic, and it certainly has. Of course, agility has been a key strength of ours over the last 18 months. and we continue to aggressively manage to optimize given this ever-changing landscape. In fact, while by design we're not yet at 100% occupancy, we have individual sailings with over 4,000 guests. To date, we have carried over half a million guests this year already. And on any given day, we are now successfully carrying around 50,000 guests and expect that number to continue to rise as we introduce more capacity and and as we increase occupancy over the coming months. The Delta variant has clearly impacted our protocols, which will continue to evolve based on the local environment. In markets like the U.S., where case counts are higher, we've taken swift actions to reinforce our ready, strong protocols, such as additional testing requirements and indoor mask requirements, with all U.S. sailings operating under the CDC's vaccination requirements. Our protocols go above and beyond the terms of the conditional sale order and are much more rigorous than comparable land-based alternatives. Again, our highest responsibility, and therefore our top priority, is always compliance, environmental protection, and the health, safety, and well-being of everyone, our guests, the people in the communities we touch and serve, and, of course, our carnival families. our team members' shipboard, and shoreside. The Delta variant has also created some disruption in our supply chain, impacted the timing of opening for some destinations, and created a heightened level of uncertainty that has been reflected in the broader travel sector and in our own booking trends. We quickly adjusted our deployment to push out the start date on a few select voyages. For some of our more exotic winter deployments, like our popular world cruises, we've rebooked guests to our 2023 departures. Effectively, we've managed our near-term capacity to optimize the current environment, just as we indicated we would. The modifications we've made to the pace of the role of our fleet will optimize our cash position in the near term. Looking forward, we continue to work towards resuming full operations in the spring, in time for our important summer season where we make the lion's share of our operating costs. Of course, we have ample liquidity to see us through to full operation, and we continue with a prudent focus on cash management to ensure we have flexibility under a multitude of scenarios. The current environment, while choppy, has improved dramatically since last summer, and it should improve even further by next summer if the current trend of vaccine rollout and advancement in therapies continues. For instance, in markets like the U.K., where vaccination rates are already higher, consumer confidence remains strong, and we are seeing strong momentum. So far, we've announced the resumption of guest cruise operations for 71 ships through next spring, and that's across eight of our nine brands. We're evaluating the remaining ships through next spring with a continued focus on maximizing future cash flow while delivering a great guest experience in a way that serves the best interests of public health. Importantly, even at this very early stage of our rollout, our shifts are generating positive cash flow. Based on our current rollout, we expect cash from operations for the whole company to turn positive at some point early next year. Looking forward, we believe we have the potential to generate higher EBITDA in 2023 compared to 2019, given despite our modest growth rate, additional capacity, and our improved cost structure. As further insight into booking trends, we are well-positioned to build on a solid book position and intentionally constrained capacity for the remainder of 2021 and into the first half of 2022. With the existing demand and limited capacity, we are focused on maintaining price. Even recently, with heightened uncertainty from the Delta variant, affecting travel decisions broadly, we continue to maintain price. We have also opened bookings earlier for cruises in 2023, and we're achieving those early bookings with strong demand and good prices. And based on that success, we've begun to launch 2024 sailings even earlier. In fact, these efforts contributed to the $630 million increase in guest deposits. Our long-term guest deposits, and that's deposits on bookings beyond 12 months, are three times historical levels, driven in part by our proactive efforts to open more inventory for sale in outer years. Now, we expect guest deposits to continue to grow through the restart as we return more shifts of service and as we build occupancy levels. Again, these favorable trends continue despite dramatically reduced advertising expense. We continue to focus our efforts on lower-cost channels like direct marketing to our sizable past guest database of over 40 million guests and earn media as we build on our multiple new ship launches and restart news flow. Of course, and most importantly, we are delivering on our guest experience. Word of mouth remains the number one reason people take their first cruise. And as I mentioned, our net promoter scores are well above historical levels across our shifts that have returned to service so far. During the quarter, we furthered our strong track record of responsibly managing the balance sheet. We completed two refinancing transactions, among other efforts, resulting in a meaningful reduction in annual interest expense. We have many more opportunities for refinancing ahead and are working through them at an aggressive pace. Also importantly, we have continued to make advancements in our sustainability efforts. Last week, we published our 11th Annual Sustainability Report, Sustainable from Ship to Shore, which can be found on our sustainability website, www.carnivalsustainability.com. In the report, we build on the achievement of our 2020 goals by sharing more details on our 2030 goals and our 2050 aspirations. The report sheds additional light on the six focus areas that will guide our long-term sustainability vision, including climate action, circular economy, that's waste reduction, sustainable tourism, health and well-being, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and biodiversity and conservation. Now, these areas align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Climate action is a top sustainability focus area. We are committed to decarbonization, and we aspire to be carbon neutral by 2050. As we have previously shared, despite 25% capacity growth since that time, our absolute carbon emissions peaked in 2011 and will remain below those levels. We are working toward transitioning our energy needs to alternative fuels and investing in new low-carbon technologies. Now, because of the pause and, yes, cruise operations, the 2020 sustainability performance measures are not comparable to prior year data. That said, there is a lot of valuable information on the progress we've made in our sustainability journey, despite what was an incredibly challenging year. We were clearly among the most impacted companies by COVID-19, and I'm very proud of all we've accomplished collectively to sustain our organization through these challenging times. including all we did for our loyal guests, all we did for our other many stakeholders, and all we did for each other within our Carnival family. In many regards, I believe our collective response to the pandemic is strong testimony to the sustainability of our company. For that, I again express my deepest appreciation to our Carnival team members, both shipboard and shoreside, who consistently went above and beyond, I am very humbled by the dedication I've seen these past 18 months. Of course, we couldn't have done it without the overwhelming support from all of you who are listening on this call, all of our stakeholders. So once again, thank you to our valued guests. Thank you to our travel agent partners. Thank you to all the many communities and governments that facilitated getting our crews vaccinated. Thank you to our suppliers and our other many stakeholders. And of course, thank you to our investors for your continued confidence in us and for your ongoing support. We continue to move forward in a very positive way. Throughout the pause, we've been proactively managing to resume operations as an even stronger operating company. Our strategic decision to accelerate the exit of 19 ships left us with a more efficient and effective fleet, and it's lowered our capacity growth to roughly 2.5%, compounded annually from 2019 through 2025, and that's down from 4.5% pre-COVID. We've opportunistically rebalanced our portfolio through the ship exit, as well as a future ship transfer and a modification to our new bill schedule to optimize our asset allocation, maximize cash generation, and improve our return on invested capital. While capacity growth is constrained, we will benefit from an exciting roster of new ships spread across our brands, enabling us to capitalize on the pent-up demand and drive even more enthusiasm and excitement around our restart plan. And we will achieve a structural benefit to unit costs in 2023 as we introduce these new larger and more efficient shifts, coupled with the 19 shifts leaving the fleet, which were among our least efficient, with the aggressive actions we've already taken. Optimizing our portfolio and reducing capacity, we are well positioned to capitalize on pent-up demand and to emerge a leaner, more efficient company, reinforcing our global industry-leading position. We have secured sufficient liquidity to see us through to full operation. Once we return to full operation, our cash flow will be the primary driver to return to investment-grade credit over time. creating greater shareholder value. Again, thank you for your support, and we can't wait to welcome everyone back on board. With that, I'll turn the call over to David.

Thank you, Arnold. I'll start today with a review of our guest cruise operations along with our third quarter monthly average cash burn rate. Then I'll provide an update on booking trends and finish up with some insights into our refinancing activity. Turning to guest cruise operations, it feels so great to be talking about operations again. We started the quarter with just five ships in service. During the third quarter, we successfully restarted ships across eight of our brands. We ended the quarter with 35% of our fleet capacity in service. our plans call for another 27 ships to restart guest cruise operations during the fourth quarter and the month of December. So on New Year's Day, we anticipate celebrating with 55 ships or nearly 65% of our fleet capacity back in service. For the third quarter, occupancy was 54% across the ships in service. our brands executed extremely well. Occupancy did improve month to month through the quarter, and in the month of August, occupancy reached 59% from 39% in June and 51% in July. Occupancy for our North American brands reflects our approach of vaccinated cruises, which for the time being does limit the number of families with children under 12 that can sail with us. Occupancy for our European brands reflects capacity restrictions, such as social distancing requirements for our continental European brands, and the 1,000-person cap per sailing for some of the quarter in the U.K. For the full third quarter, our North American brands' occupancy was 68%, while for our European brands, occupancy was 47%. Revenue per passenger cruise date the third quarter 2021 increased compared to a strong 2019, despite the current constraints on itinerary offerings, which did not include many of the higher-yielding destination-rich itineraries offered in 2019. As Arnold indicated, our guests are having a phenomenal time, and our net promoter scores have been incredibly strong. As always, happy guests, seemed to translate into improved onboard revenue. Our onboard and other revenue per diems were up significantly in the third quarter 2021 versus the third quarter 2019, in part due to the bundled packages as well as onboard credits utilized by guests from cruises canceled during the pause. We had great growth in onboard and other per diems on both sides of the Atlantic. Increases in bar, casino, shops, spa, and internet led the way onboard. Over the past two years, we have offered, and our guests have chosen, more and more bundled package options. In the end, we will see the benefit of these bundled packages in onboard and other revenue as we did during the third quarter 2021. As a result of these bundled packages, the line between passenger ticket revenue and onboard revenue seems to be blurring. For accounting purposes, we allocate the total price paid by the guests between the two categories. Therefore, the best way to judge our performance is by reference to our total cruise revenue metrics. As we previously guided, the ships in service during the third quarter were in fact cash flow positive. They generated nearly $90 million of ship-level cash contribution. This was achieved with only a two-month U.S.-based restart during the third quarter as our North American brands began guest cruise operations in early July. We expect the ship-level cash contribution to grow over time as more ships return to service and as we build on our occupancy percentages. For those of you who are modeling our future results, I did want to point out that due to the cost of a portion of our fleet being in pause status during the first half of 2022, restart related expenses, and the cost of maintaining enhanced health and safety protocols, we are projecting ship operating expenses in 2022 for available lower birth dates or per ALBD, as it is more commonly called, to be higher than 2019, despite the benefit we get from the 19 smaller less efficient ships leaving the fleet. Remember that because a portion of the fleet will be in pause status during the first half, we are spreading costs over less ALBDs. We do anticipate that most of these costs and expenses will end with 2022 and will not reoccur in fiscal 2023. Now let's look at our monthly average cash burn rate. For the third quarter 2021, our cash burn rate was $510 million per month, which was better than our previous guidance and was in line with the $500 million per month for the first half of 2021. The improvement versus our guidance was due to the timing of capital expenditures which are now likely to occur in the fourth quarter, and some other small working capital changes. With the timing of certain capital expenditures now shifting to the fourth quarter, the company expects its monthly average cash burn rate for the fourth quarter to be higher than the monthly average rate for the first nine months of the year. Other good news positive factors impacting the fourth quarter are restart expenditures. to support not only the 22 ships that will restart during the fourth quarter, but also the additional ships that will restart in the first quarter of 2022, along with a significant increase in dry dock days during the fourth quarter, driven by the restart schedule. All these expenditures have been anticipated, and given the announced restarts, many of them are now occurring in the fourth quarter. Also, during the fourth quarter, we are forecasting positive cash flow from the 50 ships that will have guest cruise operations during the quarter. And ALBDs for the fourth quarter are expected to be 10.3 million, which is approximately 47% of our total fleet capacity. Now turning to booking trips. Our booking volumes for all future cruises during the third quarter 2021 were higher than booking volumes during the first quarter. That trend continued over the first couple of months of the third quarter, such that we expected the third quarter would end at higher booking levels than the second quarter. But we didn't manage to achieve that because of lower booking volumes in the month of August when the Delta variant impacted travel and leisure bookings generally. The impact on bookings in August was mostly seen on near-term salings. However, the impact quickly stabilized in the month of August, and in recent weeks, we have started to see a welcome uptick in booking volumes. Our cumulative advanced book position for the second half of 2022 is ahead of a very strong 2019 and is at a new historical high. Pricing on our second half 2022 book position is higher than pricing on bookings at the same time for 2019 sailings, driven in part by the bundled pricing strategy for a number of our brands, but excluding the dilutive impact of future cruise credits, or more commonly known as FCCs. If we were to include the dilutive impact of future cruise credits, pricing on our second half 2022 book position is now in line with pricing at the same time for 2019 sailings. This improved position is a result of positive pricing trends we have seen during the third quarter. This is a great achievement, given pricing on bookings for 2019 sailings is a tough comparison, as that was the high watermark for historical yields. Finally, I will finish up with some insights into our refinancing activity. we are focused on pursuing refinancing opportunities to extend maturities and reduce interest expense. To date, through our debt management efforts, we have reduced our future annual interest expense by over $250 million per year. And we have completed cumulative debt principal payment extensions of approximately $4 billion, improving our future liquidity positions. The $4 billion extension results from three things. First, the July refinancing of 50% of our first lien notes worth $2 billion. Second, the completion of the European Debt Holiday Amendments, which deferred $1.7 billion of principal payments. The deferred principal payments will instead be made over a five-year period beginning in April 2022. And third, the extension of a $300 million bilateral loan with one of our banking partners. As we look forward, given how supportive the debt capital market investors and commercial banks have been, we will be pursuing additional refinancing opportunities to meaningfully reduce our interest expense and extend our maturities over time. And now I'll turn the call back over to Arnold.

Thanks, David. Operator, please open the call for questions.