Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.

Good morning. My name is Sia, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Royal Caribbean's Group Business Update and First Quarter 2020 Earnings Call. If you would like to ask a question, you may press star 1. To withdraw your question, press the pound key. I would now like to introduce Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Jason Liberty. Mr. Liberty, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our business update and first quarter earnings call. Joining me virtually from their home offices are Richard Fain, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Michael Bayley, President and CEO of World Credit International, and Carola Mingolini, our Vice President of Investor Relations. During this call, we will be referring to a few slides which have been posted on our investor website, www.rcinvestor.com. Before we get started, I would like to refer you to our notice about forward-looking statements, which is on our first slide. During this call, we will be making comments that are forward-looking. These statements do not guarantee future performance and do involve risks and uncertainties. Examples are described in our FCC filing and other disclosures. Please note that we do not undertake to update the information in our filings as circumstances change. Also, we will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures, which are adjusted as defined and a reconciliation of all non-GAAP historical items can be found on our website. Unless we say otherwise, all metrics are on a constant currency adjusted basis. Richard will begin the call by providing a strategic overview of the business. I will then follow with an update of our liquidity actions we have taken to date. I will then provide an update on the booking environment and then I will provide a recap of our first quarter results. We will then open up the call for your questions. Richard.

Thanks Jason and good morning everyone. I hope that everybody on this call is safe and healthy. These are troubled times and we all need to take care of ourselves as well as remembering the first responders and others who are working so hard to protect our communities. Obviously our industry and our company are undergoing unprecedented challenges. and we are having to quickly adapt to this new and evolving environment. But our priorities are clear. We will work to protect the safety of our guests and crew. We will proactively enhance our liquidity. We will protect the company's brands and our travel partners. And we will define and prepare for a new normal. In the two months since we suspended operations, we've been working tirelessly to safely repatriate our guests and crew members to their homes. Our crew come from more than 100 countries around the world with widely different safety protocols and travel restrictions. This has turned what should be a simple task into a monumental one. It's really hard to convey the complexity of the process to somebody who's used to making simple travel arrangements. But our teams are working around the clock with a multitude of governing bodies to repeat their crews Thank you for joining us. to provide guests with some flexibility and peace of mind as they look forward to resuming their travel. To this end, we have implemented the cruise with confidence program where guests have the flexibility to cancel their cruises up to 48 hours prior to sailing and receive a full credit on the cruise fare for a future cruise. We have recently enhanced this program with our lift and shift program. or Lift and Shift Option, which gives our guests even more comfort for the time ahead. We're delighted to say that these programs have been very well received as they benefit both our guests and our liquidity profile. In a few moments, Jason will provide more details regarding our results during the first quarter and the proactive steps that we've been taking to address the current environment with a focus on cost reductions and on liquidity. First, though, I'd like to talk about the future and the steps that we're taking to address that future. It's useful to reflect on how quickly our world has changed and how quickly our understanding of this awful disease has evolved. It's amazing to think it's only been two months since we suspended operations. When I think back to how little we understood then about this disease, it's remarkable. Over the period, the pace of new information and understanding has been astounding. Things that we were told were right one week became unthinkable nearly a week later. The flow of information has been so fast, it's been hard to assimilate. Fortunately, our level of understanding and that of governments around the world is beginning to stabilize, or at least seems to be. We're all beginning to understand the do's and don'ts and the tight strictures are beginning to loosen. It's still very early days, but these are auspicious signs. Obviously, the most immediate question that you would all like to know is when cruising will start. And we'd like to know it too. The world is clearly embarking on a program of gradually opening up. That process is just beginning and it varies widely between geographical areas. It's also highly dependent on many different factors, including the availability of testing, Contact tracing, therapeutics, and ultimately, vaccines. While it's very difficult to have any certainty around the timing or shape of recovery, we do intend to make sure that we are prepared for it and for the changes it will entail. To this end, we are focused on all aspects of our safe return to service strategy, with special emphasis on safety, security, and health. We know that the public expects that we will elevate our health and safety protocols to a new level, and we are prepared to make sure that we meet and exceed those expectations. We're trying to use this time wisely. We have been and are working on ways to up our game in this field to ensure that we use our ingenuity, our passion, and our innovation to raise the bar to new heights. We are calling our aspirational program The Healthy Return to Service Program. The program will have four main focuses. Upgraded screening prior to boarding, enhanced processes and procedures on board, special focus on addressing the destinations we visit, and procedures for dealing with any reports of exceptions. We recognize that this is an extremely complex area, and we have assembled a blue ribbon team of experts to advise us on the right approach. Our goal is to raise our standards to entirely new levels, and we believe that the Healthy Return to Service program will help us get there. We have the time, we have the determination, and we have the expertise. It is tempting to start talking now about all the individual components of how things will change. However, we're still defining all those enhancements, and we're still taking guidance from our expert advisors. and this process will continue in keeping with our mantra of continuous improvement. We are better prepared today than we were yesterday and we will be better yet prepared tomorrow. But the one thing that won't change is our determination that we will not start operations until we are fully ready to do so with all the hygiene and other health protocols solidly in place. Besides addressing the scientific aspects of all things We also need to restore the confidence of many by being transparent in our actions and communicating extensively. We will not rush this work, but it is not an exaggeration to say that we're working on it around the clock. The other area I'd like to briefly discuss is our longer term strategy. The reputation of our brands, the strong relationships with our travel agent partners, Our great customer base and our innovative and agile culture should all serve as an advantage when this crisis is over. Just a few weeks ago, we were set to enjoy the best year in our company's history, fueled by a huge demand for our products. That has not suddenly vanished. We know that the basic human desire to explore and to travel will persist with a continued focus on seeking out experiences as opposed to things. Our responsibility is to be in the best position possible when travel resumes. I'd really like to draw an analogy to 9-11, which I think is quite apropos. I recall that in the aftermath of that horrible event, lots of people said that travel and tourism were history. People would never travel again, especially on airplanes. On the other hand, Soon after, I heard people refer to the exact same situation and say that ultimately 9-11 had no impact on travel. These people argued that people were traveling more and they were traveling as though 9-11 never happened. My view is that both comments are simply wrong. It is demonstrably untrue that people stopped traveling as a result of 9-11. In fact, After a period of adjustment, travel took off. Sorry for the pun. On the other hand, it equally isn't true that after the period of adjustment, travel reverted to the status quo ante. In fact, travel became very different from pre-911. What happened was that we adjusted, and all travel that took place in a post-911 world was really quite different from travel previously. It's hard to remember that Travel didn't simply revert to what it had been. Rather, travel adjusted to the new normal, and it grew on that basis. I believe, personally, that the same thing is going to happen in a post-COVID-19 world. Travel and tourism will grow, but not by reverting to what it was, but by adjusting to a world where all activities, everything we do in the world, Our industry is resilient, and we will come back strong, but we'll do so not by mimicking what we used to do, but by innovating our product to meeting the exciting demands of the world as it is. We've been proactive in taking the steps to reduce our costs, to manage cash flow, and to secure liquidity to weather the storm, and Jason's going to talk about that in a minute. We're also actively focused on positioning our brands to emerge in a strong position as guests resume their travel over the coming months and beyond. With that, I'll turn the microphone back to Jason. Jason?