Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.

Welcome everyone to Royal Caribbean Group's Business Update and Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. I would now like to introduce Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Jason Liberty. Mr. Liberty, the floor is yours.

Good morning. everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our business update and third quarter earnings call. Joining me here in Miami are Richard Fain, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Michael Bailey, President and CEO of Royal Caribbean International, and Michael McCarthy, 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'd 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 SEC filings 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. Richard will begin the call by providing a strategic overview and update on the business. I will follow up with a recap of our third quarter results. I will then provide an update on our latest actions and on the current booking environment. We will then open up the call for your questions. Richard.

Thank you, Jason, and good morning, everyone. As always, it's a pleasure to give an update on what's happening within the Royal Caribbean Group. It's certainly been a horrible year and a half. Looking at our financial statements and seeing that sea of red ink is painful, but we are pleased to be looking at such a positive forward path. The reason we've gotten through this awful period of COVID as well as we have is because we've had our eye firmly on where we needed to go rather than on where we were at any given moment. The same approach is serving us well as we look to the coming months. Before I comment on our position going forward, I have to express my admiration for and appreciation of the men and women of the Royal Caribbean group who have worked so hard, so diligently throughout this difficult time. The pandemic has cost us all dearly, but our people stepped up to the plate and worked so hard to get us through this period. They invented amazing protocols to protect our crew members and our guests. They put in place financing arrangements with the deft hand, and they have taken care of themselves their co-workers, and their families under some of the most trying circumstances any of us have ever experienced. To them, I say thank you. You are all true heroes. Now, the pandemic is not yet fully behind us. It's still very present, but scientists have given us a good answer to this nightmare with effective vaccines and remarkable treatments. The Delta variant caused a temporary slowdown in our bookings, especially close in, but our trajectory for recovery remains very much intact. In this call, I intend to focus on where we're going rather than where we've been. We are all tired of talking about COVID-19. Every conversation doesn't need to start with a description of the trauma we've experienced. Every discussion doesn't need to dwell on how awful it's been. Fortunately, the path forward appears clear and very positive for our company and for our industry. For some time now, we have said that we hope to take advantage of the special features of cruising and make cruising one of the safest places on Earth to spend your vacation. The numbers are now coming in, and our objective appears to be validated. Our strategy has been to get the flywheel spinning. For over 18 months, our guests have had to deal with cancellations, interruptions, confusing rules, and changing protocols. These constant changes have added uncertainty. Thankfully, today, we're operating almost normally. Our published itineraries are being delivered on a consistent basis, two-thirds of our ships are already operating, and virtually everything will be back to normal in our core markets before the end of this year. Our goal is to start the new year with smooth, steady, consistent operations that will give our guests comfort and give travel advisors the confidence to book future cruises. Like the pilot of a plane during takeoff prioritizing speed over altitude, we have prioritized spreading the wealth. We have prioritized starting up more ships, even with lower loads per vessel, rather than trying for higher load factors on fewer ships. We have been executing this in a financially and medically prudent manner. January is the start of wave period, and our goal is to have our core markets operating normally as quickly as possible. That will put us in an excellent position to have a good wave period. Our bookings are already showing that the public has a great deal of pent-up demand and is eager to travel again. We have a long period of poor bookings to make up for, but current booking trends give us a high level of confidence for 2022, especially from the summer on. We're not back to normal. However, predictions of a dramatic different new normal are do not appear to be bearing out. Once aboard a ship, cruises today are remarkably similar to cruises before the pandemic. There are some changes, but most of these are not visible to the public, and the remaining ones are likely to be temporary. Satisfaction level amongst those who are cruising today is the highest in our company's history, and their onboard spending is also unparalleled. The recent announcement by the CDC that they intend to eliminate the prescriptive conditional sale order in January is very welcome. Our own requirements and protocols are stricter than the CSO anyhow, so the confidence, though, that they are demonstrating by the CDC's actions will help give confidence to the market. Now, while we are very encouraged about the strong bookings that we've been seeing, we do appreciate that we are still not in a normal travel environment. We are emerging from a period of lower-than-usual bookings, and our international sourcing, which has historically been a strength of the group, has been confusing due to the constantly changing travel restrictions and is just now starting to build back. The image of the cruise industry from the early days of the pandemic is also weighing on the minds of consumers, albeit much, much less than previously. There's also a special story about what's happening in Asia and how that affects the Royal Caribbean Group. China was one of the fastest growing markets, and we believe will continue to be an important part of our strategy going forward. However, as you know, China is essentially closed to international travel today, and that includes cruise travel. We do not expect China to reopen until at least the Olympics in Beijing are over. Another important market for us is Australia. Australia's approach to containing the pandemic has been based on isolation. They are now rapidly switching to the vaccines as a way of controlling the disease. We do not expect Australia to open to cruise travel until the spring. But since this summer season doesn't start until our next winter anyhow, we're not counting on much from Australia until the end of next year. Against this background, our ability to predict a profitable 2022 is strong evidence that of how quickly our future can get better. We are encouraged to see the return to profitability and strong cash flows as a rapid turnaround rather than a slow, steady progression. It is unusual, actually, for us to provide any indication of next year's results this early. But we understand the need to have a frame of reference going forward, and we wanted to be constructive in that regard. Obviously, there are a large number of factors that could shift us off this trajectory, including worsening spread of the disease, a new variant, inflation, etc. But on the current trajectory that we are seeing, we believe we can prudently predict at least this level of profitability and cash flow. I'd also like to touch on two other subjects that are of interest to any company, human capital and supply chain issues. Our people have been the strongest driver of our performance throughout our history, so we watch this area very carefully, and we are concerned by reports of labor shortages, especially in the hospitality arena. Fortunately, our shipboard jobs are seen as very attractive by crew members around the world, so that has not been a serious problem as we restart, and we do not expect that it will become one. Similarly on shore, We have long been seen as a desirable place to work and while the current situation is something every business person should watch closely, we do not expect it to interfere with our ability to operate successfully. Supply chain issues are impacting everyone and we're no exception. Fortunately, we have traditionally hedged our bets by buying key supplies forward and this is cushioning us from the current volatility. Looking forward, We expect these contracts, plus our purchasing power, plus our ingenuity to give us protection. Now, while the pandemic has been all-consuming, we have not been idle on other fronts either. The need to be a good corporate citizen, to behave in a way that we can all be proud of, has remained an important part of our thought process even during this timeframe. Over the last few months, we've announced a significant number of highly significant steps forward on the environmental side of our ESG aspirations. A few weeks ago, we announced that the new Silver Sea ship, called Project Evolution, will contain some of the most advanced environmental features of any cruise ship on the water or in the construction docks. It will be a multi-fuel vessel capable of burning initially lower carbon-producing LNG, and later, as they develop the non-carbon-based fuels, work off of those. In addition, it will have fuel cell technology, not as a demonstration project, but as a significant part of the energy capability of the vessel. As a result, it will be able to operate 100% of its hotel load purely on these emission-free fuel cells. That means not only won't the ship need to use its engines in port, but it can do so without even having to plug into shore power. This requires an amazing concentrated effort to develop the technology in conjunction with Meyer Werft and others. In addition, it will use waste-to-energy technology to convert rubbish to energy and use advanced supply chain techniques to reduce the carbon generated during the construction process. An even bigger announcement this week was our disclosure of our new project called Destination Net Zero. This is an ambitious project to eliminate our carbon footprint by 2050. By signing up for the science-based target initiative, we are not only setting a goal for the distant future, but also establishing the interim milestones that will allow us to get there with confidence. It's also interesting to look at the last 19 months and take note that during this period, we've taken delivery of five spectacular new vessels. And during the next nine months, we will accept delivery of three more, In fact, over the next fortnight, we will be naming two of these ships here in South Florida. We have not remained idle. Before I turn it back to Jason, I'd like to reiterate my appreciation for and admiration of the people of the Royal Caribbean Group who have gone above and beyond, not only to get us through the pandemic in far better shape than anyone would have expected, but have also prepared us to look forward to the future with confidence and, yes, even excitement. With that, I turn it back to Jason. Jason?

Thank you, Richard. Before I begin my remarks, I also want to echo Richard's comments regarding our incredible teams. The people of the Royal Caribbean Group are our strongest competitive advantage, powering our resurgence, and delivering, again, the world's best vacations. I want to thank every member of the Royal Caribbean family for their ongoing and exceptional efforts in the incredible service and memorable experiences you provide to our guests every single day. I will now turn to discuss our performance for the third quarter. This morning we reported an adjusted net loss of 1.2 billion or a loss of $4.91 per share for the third quarter of 2021. It's important to note that while these results may be below some of the street estimates, our third quarter results and related cash burn were better than our internal expectations, driven by better costs and better onboard revenue performance. Onboard revenue strength contributed to a 12% increase in total revenue per passenger cruise day compared to the third quarter of 2019. In line with our expectations, our occupancy for the quarter was 36%, with sequential improvements from one month to the next. From the very beginning of our restart, we talked about several tenants that would be the basis of our ramp-up. The first was ensuring the health and safety of our guests and crew, The second was that we wanted to ensure that the vacation experience matched or exceeded our guest expectations. And the third was bringing the fleet up in a financially prudent way. So far, we have delivered on all three of these tenants. We've carried over 500,000 guests since the restart and have only had 150 COVID-positive cases amongst these 500,000 people. In addition to providing safe vacations, we are also clearly exceeding our guest expectations with net promoter scores well above all-time highs. And once beyond the initial startup period, load factors on our core itineraries averaged 44%, and all of those shifts were cash flow accretive. The last point I would like to make is that while we now have more than 65% of our capacity up and running, leading the industry by far on a relative basis, we are continuing to manage our load factors to ensure that we stay true to our healthy return-to-service tenants as well as retaining price integrity. Now I'd like to discuss capacity and load factor expectations over the upcoming period. For the fourth quarter, a little over two-thirds of our capacity will be sailing core itineraries beyond the initial start-up period. As such, our overall load factors will continue to trend of increasing from one month to the next and are expected to be in the range of 60 and 65 percent in the fourth quarter. In addition, we do expect our fleet on our core itineraries to generate direct profit. Given our healthy return to service tenants and our focus on price integrity, we expect our load factors in 2022 to continue to steadily increase month by month and return to historic levels in the summer. From a capacity standpoint, we expect that 50 of our 61 ships will have returned to service by the end of this year. By the end of Q1 2022, we expect about 85% of our capacity to be operating, with 100% back in service in the spring, in time for the lucrative summer season. While we are offering cruises in the vast majority of our key destinations, we continue to closely monitor both China and Australia and anticipate those markets will start opening in the spring. This timing could influence the return dates of a few of our ships. As to our balance sheet, we ended the third quarter of 2021 with $4 billion in liquidity. During the third quarter, we continued our efforts to manage and improve our balance sheet. To that end, we successfully issued $1 billion in senior unsecured notes at 5.5% due in 2026. These proceeds were used to replenish capital as a result of the redemption of 40% of 11.5% senior secured notes that were due in 2025. This redemption will result in a full year interest savings of $51 million. As we discussed on other calls during the pandemic, we have taken and continue to take numerous actions to reshape our cost structure with a focus on further improving our leading pre-COVID margins. These actions include getting rid of older tonnage and adding more leading high yielding and cost efficient hardware to our fleet. While these actions will improve our cost structure and margin profile, we do anticipate that recent inflationary pressures and some transitory costs related to healthy return to service will weigh on next year's earnings. Now I'll give you an update on our 2022 sailings. At a macro level, we've seen a sequential improvement in new bookings from one quarter to the next. Bookings during Q2 were higher than Q1, and bookings during Q3 were higher than Q2. This Q3 improvement took place despite the loan demand in August that corresponded with the rise in the Delta variant. September was a great booking month overall, with new bookings for 2022 more than 60% higher than Q2 average. The momentum has continued for all three of our brands, and bookings so far in October have been significantly better than September. Bookings from our two biggest markets, the US and the UK, have been improving from one week to the next and are now exceeding 2019 levels. We have now restarted our brand's marketing programs, which are generating strong results and preparing us nicely for 2022 and 2023. From a cumulative standpoint, our book load factors remain within historical ranges, driven by strong booking levels for the second quarter of 2022 forward. Load factors in the first quarter are lower than historical levels, but are aligned with our anticipated load factor ramp-up. Our booked APDs are up significantly, both including and excluding the negative impact of FCCs for the full year and for each quarter of 2022. As always, trends do differ a little by itinerary, with our core summer products in a stronger volume position than other itineraries. Our customer deposit balance is now $2.8 billion, an improvement of about $400 million over the past quarter, despite the significant quarter-over-quarter increase in revenue recognition which reduces the customer deposit balance. Our customer deposit balance is less than 15% lower than it was at the end of September in 2019 for the three brands, with almost the entire difference driven by Q4 2021 sailings. Our customer deposit balance related to bookings and Q2 forward sailings for all three brands is higher than at the same time in 2019. Approximately 35% of our customer deposit balance is related to FCCs. Of the FCCs, approximately 45% of them have been redeemed thus far. Now, considering everything I just said about the booking environment and cost, I would like to discuss our very early view of 2022. The Royal Caribbean Group possesses the best brands in their segments, the most innovative fleet in the industry, wholly owned destination experiences like Perfect Day at Coco Cay that are second to none, a nimble and effective global sourcing footprint, and most of all, the very best team both at sea and on land. This incredible and unique set of assets have helped us effectively manage through the pandemic and is now helping us accelerate out of it. As such, while it's still too early to provide guidance for next year, we currently anticipate the group generating positive EBITDA starting in the spring of 2022 and positive earnings for the full year of 2022. With that, I will ask our operator to open up the call for a question and answer session.

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. We do ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question is from Steve Wazinski of Stifel.

Yeah, hey guys, good morning. So I want to dig into your commentary about getting back to historical load factors by the third quarter of next year. And I guess what I'm wondering is how you're thinking about making that bridge from where you are today versus getting back to those levels. And I guess really the question is, would you have been able to make that assumption if the CSO order was extended versus you guys being able to operate more independently? And I guess even asked another way is, how much higher load factors does the removal of the CSO contribute? And how are you guys now thinking about vaccine mandates across, you know, different age demographics in the next year?

Hey Steve, how you doing? So I'll just start off and talk a little bit about our load factor bill for next year. So, so one, we didn't point specifically to the third quarter. I think we pointed specifically to the summer. So we are kind of preparing our business to be, you know, to kind of maximize our revenues and profitability and, in this very lucrative peak summer season. Our load factor ramp up is somewhere about five to seven load factor points per month. Again, we're doing this in a measured way. I'll have Michael in a second here talk about the CSO, but that's not governing our load factor build. I think it's more of us just thoughtfully ramping up our business based off of those three tenets of health and safety, guest experience, in doing things in a financially prudent way. But with that, I'll pass it over to Michael to talk a little bit about things on the CSO side.

Thanks, Jason. Hello, Steve. Yeah, I think with the CSO, you know, we've been through quite a journey with the collaboration and the work with the CDC. And I think if you think what we've been through in terms of determining the protocols and then executing them, I think it's fair to say that the industry and the CDC and the intergovernmental agency representatives who have been part of this return to service team feel like we've been very successful in implementing these protocols. And they're proving, as we commented earlier, to be very successful. While the CSO comes to kind of a technical end, on January the 15th, we will continue our ongoing collaboration with the CDC in terms of the protocols that will voluntarily operate after the CSO expires. And I think what's happened over this past several months is that we've really got a focused collaborative effort. And we found the relationship with the CDC has been very constructive. they certainly and we want to make sure that we're operating safely. And they're also well aware that some of the protocols that we have in place will naturally fall away as the pandemic moves further and further in the rearview mirror. So I think as we move into 22, hopefully what we'll see is the protocols become easier and less cumbersome for our customers. Having said that, and again, kind of jumping on Jason's comments about load factor. While we've been extremely prudent and thoughtful about bringing back our fleet and managing the load factors, it's worth pointing out that, and I'll use Royal Caribbean International as a proxy for the company, we've brought back significantly more capacity ships, beds, and berths than any of our competitors by a significant amount. And what that means is that operationally and logistically, we've already climbed over that mountain and we've now got a large number of our assets available for booking. And more importantly, we've now gone through and absorbed all of those expenses. We've vaccinated all of our crew. We've managed to get all of our crew to these ships and we're operating them. One of the things that we were very cognizant of is the need to be very consistent with the distribution and the customer. because as Richard pointed out, we'd had so many cancellations of ships over the past year and a half, and now we have this stability. So as we look into 22, we feel pretty optimistic about what we've achieved with the CDC and the CSO, and I think we're feeling very optimistic about the fact that we've got so many of our ships already up and operating. And while we've talked about the load factors, it's worth pointing out that It's a story that, for the purposes of this conversation, is averaged out. Last weekend, Freedom of the Seas sailed from Miami with an occupancy of 85%. And that's one of the products that's particularly attractive to new to cruise. And it's one of the products that we've been very focused on in making sure that we're learning and understanding exactly how our protocols can adapt to more capacity. So we feel pretty good about what's happening. Thank you, Steve.

Thank you. That's a terrific color. And then the second question would be maybe if you could help us, Jason, maybe help us think about some of the assumptions that you guys are embedding for next year to get you to that positive earnings level. And I understand you're not ready to give guidance at this point, but maybe some high-level thoughts around how you're thinking about pricing from here or change in onboard metrics or how you're thinking about fuel for next year? I mean, anything that you would call out to help us think about that would be extremely helpful.

Well, sure, Steve. And of course, you know, we're still very much going through our planning process, you know, for next year. I mean, I think our commentary around pricing and how we're seeing the business build back up are certainly, you know, are what's supporting us our current expectations around profitability for 2022, as well as the timing of cash flow. We have done a lot. And of course, in that consideration is we do expect there to be some additional costs that relate to inflation. We've hedged, I think, 53% of our fuel for next year. And I think one of the things that we'll toggle here is, as Michael was referring to, our healthy return-to-service protocols. There will be a series of transitory costs. A lot of those transitory costs we've absorbed this year, as Michael talked about, in the ramping up of our fleet. But there will still be more ramp-up that happens next year, and depending on how some of these protocols, which are very much kind of self-induced here around testing, as that based off of that could impact our cost profile. But even kind of considering all that, that's why I think we feel at this point comfortable talking about pointing the business towards profitability in 2022. As our plans start to kind of firm up, and I think as we get into next year, we'll consider giving some more thought in terms of how 2022 is going to look through the course of the year.

Okay, great. Thanks, guys. Really appreciate it. Yeah, you guys too.

Your next question is from James Hardiman of Wedbush Securities.

Hey, good morning. So I'm getting a couple questions on fuel. Obviously, there's been a lot of inflation there. I guess first housekeeping question, can you give us the consumption and the cost per metric ton in the third quarter? But then I guess more broadly, your fleet is going to be younger as we exit the pandemic into 2022 and 2023. Any way to think about sort of consumption per birth as we look to those years?

Well, first I'll just answer your tactical question, James. In the third quarter, we had about 237 – well, exactly 237.6 thousand – metric tons that we burned, the average price there was $497. To your point, we have, well, as Richard mentioned in his remarks, we have taken on new capacity. We will be taking on additional new capacity into next year. We have gotten rid of older tonnage. And so we do expect that our fleet will become more and more fuel efficient. Also, as we focus on our our path here to net neutrality on the carbon side, that will continue to help us focus on burning less fuel also here in the future. But in saying all of that, the mix of that is that our fuel consumption on a per-birth basis should get lighter and lighter as time passes here, and that's what we would expect. At this point, it's too soon to guide on what our fuel consumption will be as our deployment for next year is still not fully out.

Got it. And then everything that you've given us with respect to 2022 is, I think, really encouraging. Obviously, it's way too early to talk about the beyond, but it seems like implicit with everything that you're saying. I guess, is there any reason to think that 2023 wouldn't be a pretty normal year in terms of occupancy and pricing and the fleet and everything else?

Yeah. Well, certainly, it's very, very early days to be talking about 2023. But in terms of what we have really experienced, especially over the past, call it 45 days, and the acceleration we're seeing in the demand environment and people's willingness to pay ahead of 2019 levels is really encouraging. And we're very excited about it. And our marketing efforts are really – just further bolstering that demand profile. What I would say about 2023, which again, it's very early, is that we're seeing very similar strong trends for 2023. And we're booked in a place that's better than where we would typically be booked this far out of a period for 2023. So if you were standing in 2019, same time last year, and you were looking at 2021, we're in a better position than we were back then.

You know, I would just add, one of the things that was interesting to me is that as the Delta variant came on, it really hit our bookings for 21 and 22, but it didn't seem to have any impact on our bookings in 23. So I think what people have been doing is saying, I have this pent-up demand, I want to get out there, but I don't want to do it soon. I want to make sure where things have stabilized. And so I really do think it's quite dramatic that we saw essentially no impact from the Delta variant on 23 bookings, whereas it impacted 22 and 21 quite heavily.

I have to jump in, James. Jamie, I have to jump in. I know Jason and Richard have probably fed up with me saying these things, but we launched the World Cruise of World Cruises with Royal Caribbean International literally about 10 days ago, and we only made it available to our 16 million loyalty members. And within seven days, we were 70% booked. And the average price of a balcony room is $75,000 for the balcony. The Royal Suite sold within a week at $760,000. And all of these suites have booked with non-refundable deposits. So even we were taken aback by the unbelievable response of our loyalty customers. The fact that within a week we were 70% booked on a ship that carries around 2,100 guests and is on a nine-month world cruise was just remarkable. And I think that's indicative of what we're seeing.

I never get tired of hearing that, Michael. In fact, maybe you could tell us just how booked are we on that cruise so far? 70% of anything I know of. I think you forgot to mention that.

I knew it wasn't going to be an if. It was just a when.

That's great color. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Jim.

Your next question is from Jamie Katz of Morning Star.

Hi, good morning. Can you give us some insight into what your prognosis is or what underlying thoughts you have surrounding the economic environment next year or over the near term that you're incorporating into your outlook? And then in order to give Michael another turn at the wheel, I'd be curious to hear Any updates on the private destination projects that you guys have maybe had on the back burner? Thanks.

You should just know, Jamie, he might bring up this thing called the World Cruise as part of that commentary. Or Perfect Day might fit into the conversation.

Possibly, yeah.

So, you know, Jamie... In terms of, and this is how we've always kind of thought about things as we look further out, is we obviously have very good data in terms of how the guests are booking today and how they have booked and what the book of business looks like. We don't speculate a lot on how the economic environment is going to change. Of course, we have seen secular trends that very much support experience and vacations and a lot of pent-up demand that It makes us very much believe, and we've seen this in the bookings and the acceleration of bookings, that that will continue to go on. So that's kind of how – I don't have a forecast. There's probably people in different companies that have – or I would say banks and consulting houses that have economic outlooks. But for us, what we try to do is really kind of firm up what we're seeing in the day-to-day booking activity.

And Jamie, on the private destinations, I mean, one of the things that we're already seeing is Perfect Day is leading the charge in terms of demand and premium for the ships that are operating out of South Florida already, and in fact, out of New York. We did press pause during the pandemic on these projects, but we've started to re-engage. And quite literally last week, there was a conference down in Panama with many of the Caribbean countries. And it was quite interesting to see the level of activity that we experienced in terms of re-engaging and talking about destination developments throughout the Caribbean South Central region. So we did obviously have a plan in place pre-pandemic. We pressed pause. We're now re-engaging on all of those plans. In the immediate future, we have an expansion taking place in Perfect Day with the addition of Hideaway Beach, which is a new experience that will open in late 22 for Perfect Day. The beauty of Hideaway Beach is that it is an adult-only area as part of Perfect Day. It will allow us to increase our capacity by approximately 3,000 people a day in late 22, which is obviously going to help improve our overall profitability and drive more more revenue, both ticket and on board. So that's coming. And then we're close to finalizing the design and construction plans and the approvals for our beach club in Nassau, which we're hoping to start work on that very soon. And we have other projects that we've now started to re-engage with. So I think, you know, our aspirations never really moved away. We just had to press pause for a while. Also, of course, we've got our Galveston terminal that's opening next in 22, and that will accommodate our OASIS-class ships and then future ICON. And, of course, that gives us remarkable access into the Texas, Oklahoma, and that whole region as a market for drive-in to. So we're continuing our journey, but certainly Perfect Day is leading the charge on current bookings.

Thanks, Jamie.

Your next question is from Steven Grambling of Goldman Sachs.

Hi, thanks. I kind of want to go back to something recognizing you don't want to provide too much input on 2022, but I'd love if you could just provide some additional thoughts on, you know, what's driving some of the strength in revenues per passenger day and any details on where spend perhaps is more robust and where it could still be dampened by some of the limitations or social distancing that's being imposed.

Yeah, sure. I'll start off here and just talk a little bit about drivers here on the demand environment for 2022. I think the first is one of my comments that I had made in my opening remarks was just really – I mean, if you just look over the past two or three weeks, we're seeing bookings occur that are higher than what we did on a daily basis, higher than what we were seeing in 2019 – I think that's a combination of us coming out of Delta and that pent-up demand. I also think it's a combination of our marketing efforts that have come into play here that are accelerating and getting into the minds of the consumer, especially our new-to-cruise consumer, that we've seen that acceleration. I'd also comment that we're seeing now very similar trends for all of our brands. So if you remember in the early part of this year, we talked about strong trends, especially in the ultra-luxury side as we were coming out of this. We're now seeing strong trends across all of our brands, which helps us provide further confidence there. And we've also seen booking, especially over the past 30 to 40 days, really pick up for Q1 as well as Q4 of next year. There's always very strong demand for Q2 and Q3 with the summer. But seeing those shoulder seasons begin to rise I think has also been very encouraging. And again, that's consistent with all of our brands.

Super helpful. Stephen, just to add to Jason's comments, the other thing that we've seen, which we commented on, was the onboard revenue environment, which is truly impressive. A couple of things are happening there. I mean, we know that there's just more consumer spend occurring, and it seems to be really happening on our ships. We've also really increased the volume of special groups such as gaming groups that are coming on our ships, and that's proving to be very profitable. And the other thing is that we continued the investment in Hybris, which is new software which really allows us to have far more capability in our pre-cruise revenue marketing. And that is really beginning to shine through for us. So as we look into 2022, for example, just in Q1 2022, our pre-cruise revenue bookings are already way ahead of 2019, even though there's less volume on gas. So there's a lot of positive things that are coming through to help us.

Great. Thanks so much. I'll jump back to the queue. Thanks, Jim.

Your next question is from Robin Farley of UBS.

Great, thanks. I wanted to ask about something that a lot of investors try to get a handle on. When you talk about load factor in Q1 being kind of below historic range or lower than average, how much of that, you know, you talked about expecting occupancy levels to end up around 85% for Q1. Can you quantify, you know, are you actually sort of not selling? Is, you know, 15% of your capacity not available for sale in Q1, you know, on the ships that would be in service? So just to kind of help quantify, you know, how much of the lower load factor in Q1 is actually what's not available for sale. And then also probably the other big factor is the fact that, you know, you've had to rejigger a bunch of ships itineraries in the last few months. And so what percent, I don't know if you would know this ballpark, of your Q1 itineraries are things that were kind of rejiggered in the last year, as opposed to, you know, you normally have 12 months to sell an itinerary. Now some of these itineraries, you know, you'd be selling in less than six months. So I don't know if you can quantify that, you know, as opposed to, right, investors sort of trying to get a handle on how much is that versus, like a load is below in Q1 because people don't want to travel yet, you know, versus these other two factors that I think are probably part of it. So thanks.

Yeah, so I think there's a few things in play. One, I think we need to remember that about 80% of our capacity is expected to be up and sailing by the end of the year. So as we move into Q1, which is where the majority of the rest of that 20% comes into play, similar to what we have been doing here from June on, is we slowly bring in these ships to make sure that the crew and everyone is very used to the protocols that need to be executed on, making sure the guest experience is exceptional. And so we are certainly moderating load factor and ramping that up. And so that's going to weigh in on Q1 load factors and even a little bit of early Q2 load factors as there's a few more ships that come into play. That's probably the biggest driver of why in Q1 our load factor would be lower than what you would see Q2 going forward. Certainly, my guess is there's probably 15% to 20% of our capacity in which there's, you know, I would say more than moderate itinerary changes. And that, you know, because, I mean, most of our itineraries, there might be a port here or a port there that has changed out of this. But that's not really the... driver of it. Maintaining price integrity, slowly ramping up our fleet or ramping up our fleet or the ships that come on in an imaginable way is really what's driving the difference here on the load factor in Q1.

Great. That's helpful. Thank you. And then just my follow-up is You talked about in Q3 how revenue per passenger day is up 12%, and a lot of that driven by higher onboard spend per person. Can you give a little bit of a comment just on ticket price? And I'm really asking on the comparable cruises, right? Obviously, a ship that would have been in Europe in 2019 wouldn't compare to that ship in the Caribbean. But if you have like a seven-day Caribbean versus seven-day Caribbean in 2019, kind of how ticket price compared in Q3? Thanks.

Yeah, so it's a good question, Robin. Obviously, we've seen significant rise here on the onboard side. And I think first I want to make a point that Michael made. A lot of this is pre-cruise driven. And that has really been something that has amplified our onboard spend. But our ticket rates are better than what they would be seeing in a 2019 period. It's just that we called out here specifically around the onboard side. So similar commentary to what we've been saying about the booking environment on a rate and load factor basis is very much applies to what we saw here in the third quarter.

Robin, I think I might just add a little more color to your question on which ships are sort of different and which were on, where people didn't have time to to their advanced bookings, etc. There's obviously an effect by vessel, if you will. But I think there's an overall effect of the uncertainty that all three of us have talked about. There's just been cancellations, there are itineraries that are changed, etc. And I think people want to look forward to a period of stability. And so that's really been our focus. And it's a little hard to measure that on an itinerary by itinerary or vessel by vessel, but I think overall it's a factor. And that's why we've been so anxious to get everything up and running and without changes.

Okay, great. Thanks very much.

Thanks, Robin.

Your next question is from Brant Montour of J.P. Morgan.

Hey, good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. So, Jason, my first question is when you think about expenses next year, and I know you gave some color around fuel, but excluding fuel and excluding sort of one-time restart costs, do you expect inflation to have a material impact on net operating unit costs? And is there, I don't know, residual savings that you guys had last year that might be an offset for that?

Sure. What I would say, Brent, is that we certainly expect and in our consideration, at least in terms of what we know today, that inflation will have an impact on our business. And that is in our consideration. And of course, we will have, as you said, these transitory costs. On the other side of it, and we've talked about this in the past, we have taken significant action on reshaping our costs here over the past several years. And so we do think a lot of this inflation is temporary. We certainly think the transitory costs around healthy return to service and getting our ships up is temporary. And as those things evaporate, we believe a lot of our efforts, which are absorbing a lot of these costs, additions into 2022, we'll kind of free and show here in our margins as our business returns to historical load factors.

Okay, that's helpful. I appreciate that. And then on 2022's itinerary slate, and in the spirit of maximizing profitability for the peak summer season, is there any, I guess the easy way to ask, are you expecting any dilutive impact to pricing from regional mix shifts, you know, given that some Americans are still, you know, wanting to travel domestically? Do you expect that? Have you paid mind toward that in your planning for 2022's itinerary mix?

Yeah, actually, that is a very important point. There's simply no question that the restrictions on international travel, both the absolute restrictions and the psychological restrictions, have made people be much more regional than normal. And for us, with our global brand strategy, that's not what we were hoping to see. But it is a fact of life and and I think we expect it to be an impact. Remember, part of our strategy was we could take Americans on a European cruise and Europeans on an American cruise, and both the formal restrictions, the government restrictions, but also people's uneasiness in longer distance travel, we think is a factor, and we've been We've incorporated what we think that will in our forward projections. But that is, there's no question, that's an important point that we tried to touch on in our comments.

Yeah, and I think just to stress, you know, obviously we, for the most part, know what our deployment is going to be here in 2022. You know, we're seeing live every minute of every day, the booking activity that is coming in and the sourcing, et cetera. And so, you know, in our... consideration and modeling here for the 2022 period of time, that sourcing mix that is very much married to the deployment is being very thoughtful in how we think about next year.

Okay, that's helpful. Thanks a lot, guys, and congrats on the progress so far. Thanks, Brent.

Your next question is from Fred Whiteman of Wolf Research.

Hey, guys, maybe just to follow up on that last point, Richard, I think you called the international sourcing mix or sourcing environment confusing. Can you maybe just put some specific numbers as far as where you see those cross-border bookings for 22 and how that compares to sort of pre-COVID levels?

Yeah, I mean, it's tough to kind of put it out in a specific way at this point in time. But, you know, when we think about next year, you know, our A lot of our deployment is married here to the Caribbean and Alaska and other parts of North America, and so we will be weighted more towards the U.S. and Canada than we did in a pre-COVID period of time. On the same side, a lot of our deployment that's going to be in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe and so forth will just be sourced more out of Europe in terms of our expectations and also in terms of what we're seeing in our bookings. versus North Americans flying over to Europe. Now, in saying all of that, there's still plenty of people from Europe coming to the Caribbean and people from the U.S. going to Europe next year. But we are somewhat just kind of moderating those expectations in our forecasting.

And Fred, just to add to Jason and Rich's comments, I think it's also reasonable to say that day by day, week by week, the news that we see and receive from that deals with all of these different issues continues to get brighter and better. You know, when you think back through the pandemic, there was a period that every single email or conversation or piece of news from a government was negative. Now everything is turning very positive. So, for example, the presidential proclamation a few days ago, which basically opened up the travel between the United States and European countries and what have you, We continue to see across all of the different itineraries and destinations a kind of a leveling out of protocols and reasonableness, and you can feel that now coming through in the bookings. So considering we're just entering into November, I think that this news will continue over the next month or two, which is going to be critical as we get into WAVE.

Great. And Jason, could you just maybe comment on your current understanding or current readings of some of the tax proposals in the U.S. and what, if any, impact you think that could have for you guys?

Sure. Obviously, it's evolving. At this point in time, we don't anticipate there being any significant impact to our business.

Great. Thank you.

Your next question is from Vince Seifel of Cleveland Research.

Great, thanks for taking my question. I was curious, when you look at your bookings as well as what you're sailing right now, do you see anything interesting in demand mix between interior versus balcony and what that might mean for onboard and pricing comparability of what you're sailing now versus 2019? And then as you think about ramping to full load into the second half of next year, is that reliant on selling out all the interiors like you did pre-COVID?

Well, certainly, if you were to look at our book business, and I don't think this would be a surprise, and this, by the way, is how we are typically booked this far out is we're weighted more towards our suites and our balconies. People, when they tend to plan their vacations further out and you look at the booking window, it's typically weighted more that way. And so between now and time of sailing is when you begin to see your inside cabins and so forth start to move in. But when we look at the pricing of it, it's, again, relative to $19,000. it's coming in as we would expect it to and at rates that are very similar to those records of 2019. But certainly it's weighted heavier at this point towards those balconies as well as those suites. Now in saying all of that, our inventory of our ships is getting richer and richer. And so we have more and more of that inventory coming into play which, again, just further supports or bolsters our yield profile and growth here in the future.

Great. And then unrelated follow-up on CapEx, not sure if you had mentioned this yet, but how you're thinking about next year. Normally there's coming out of cash, a maintenance piece, as well as some new ship payments. Then I also think you have Wonder and Beyond, which is usually covered by committed financing. But how are you thinking about CapEx going into next year?

Yeah, well, that's exactly right. It relates to the new builds. I mean, we have committed financing on all ships that we have under construction. We're still going through our planning process, but obviously we're very mindful of our capital structure and our efforts here to get back to pre-COVID levels and a pre-COVID balance sheet. And so, you know, as the business here ramps up and firms up for 2022, that will begin to form our expectations here on capital we plan to invest and also focusing on how do we get the balance sheet back to pre-COVID levels. Thank you. You got it. We have time for one more question.

Your final question is from Ben Chaykin of Credit Suisse.

Hey, how's it going? Jason, I think you mentioned strength and new to cruise. Should we think about this as a return of that customer that didn't exist understandably over COVID and, you know, as we exit? Or is this an accelerate? Was that a new to cruise comment accelerating versus 19?

Well, if you looked at, you know, just propensity to cruise from the early days of the pandemic to today, obviously in the early days, new to cruise had basically kind of turned itself off for the most part. And today, what we see is that they have certainly returned. I think our marketing efforts have really helped that in just reminding those customers about the incredible experiences you can have on our leading fleet, as well as amazing places like Perfect Day at Coco Cay. So I think those things in kind of combination have, and of course, you're just kind of thawing out here over the pandemic, has led to that new to cruise customer coming back and certainly accelerating. So we're really happy to see that now taking place. And again, all the surveying that we're doing really shows that they're quite open to coming back, and that's being supported by their booking activity.

Gotcha. So it's a return of the nudicruise. And then I guess just to clarify one more, I think you said 85% of capacity by the end of 1Q22. I believe that was from a fleet perspective. Can you just help us bridge to ALBDs, or is it similar?

Yeah, I think on a capacity basis, by the end of the first quarter, we're close to 90%.

And then, right, but just start trying to connect between fleet and ALBDs. Is it a similar number, or is there a lag there?

It's about five percentage points higher than on a capacity standpoint versus number of ships. Okay. Thanks. You got it. Okay. Thank you for your assistance today, Shelby, with the call. We thank all of you for your participation and continued interest in the company. Michael will be available all day for any follow-ups you might have. And that's Michael McCarthy, by the way.

Thank you for clarifying that. But I'm available for any sales of world cruises for Royal Caribbean.

Okay, are you giving out your cell phone number? Okay. I wish you all a great day, and everybody be safe. Take care.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.