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Text: Joining me are Richard Fain, our chairman and executive officer; Michael Bayley, president and CEO of Royal Caribbean International; and Michael McCarthy, our vice president of investor relations.
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 with a recap of our second-quarter results, and I will provide an update on our latest actions and on the current booking environment.
You all know it's been almost a year and a half since the onset of the pandemic, and it's certainly been a difficult time.
We've been in a virtual standstill in this long period.
And there's no business school that has a course in how to succeed in business with zero revenue.
Fortunately, our people are responding well to these unprecedented challenges, and I'm very proud of the progress that they have produced.
Today, we are reporting another painful set of financial results, but we're also reporting on the dramatic progress on the restarting of our operations and the continued strength in the demand environment for our leading brands.
Most importantly, we have already restarted almost half of our capacity, and we're bringing more online as we speak.
Our protocols appear to be working very well, which gives us and our guests comfort about their safety on board.
Lastly, bookings are remarkably strong, especially for 2022.
I would like to address these three issues in order.
First, I want to talk about the process of restarting; second, our operational protocols and their impact; and then lastly, come back to our booking outlook.
Now starting with the process of resuming operations.
It seems like only yesterday that people were asking me if I thought cruising would restart by December.
Suddenly, we have half of our ship sailing on revenue cruises.
We know that it's going to take us a while to return to full normalcy.
But while people are emerging from isolation, it's clearly going to take them a while to feel totally comfortable.
We believe that the best way to get them comfortable is to demonstrate just how well the process works.
We call that the flywheel effect.
Once we get the vast majority of our fleet back online and thousands of people sailing safely, it will make even more people feel comfortable doing the same thing.
Once the flywheel starts spinning, it keeps spinning and the machinery keeps getting more powerful.
Now some of you have asked why we were the first to restart in the States and how we've gotten our ships operating so quickly.
The answer is simply that we started earlier, and we have the very best people in the business who have been very aggressive in implementing the new protocols.
We started preparing before we had official word that we would be allowed to sail but at the point where we thought the approval was inevitable.
And our people have worked hard and diligently to make sure that our ships could be back in the water quickly.
In this accelerated return to service, the health and safety of our passengers and crew remain a top priority.
For every ship that we restart, we have committed to three pillars: first, ensuring our ship experiences are as safe or safer than their shoreside equivalents; second, meeting and exceeding our exacting pre-pandemic expectations, especially in regard to guest experience; and three, doing so in a financially prudent manner.
Now turning to the second item on my list.
I think it's important to talk about the safety protocols related to COVID.
As you all know, our goal from the beginning of the pandemic has been to make cruising not just as safe as comparable to land vacations but safer.
We believe that the unique attributes of a cruise ship could allow us to control the environment to an unusual extent.
We can ensure a level of vaccinations and testing that would be impossible for most other places to even contemplate.
Specifically, we require 100% of the crew to be fully vaccinated.
And we require the bulk of our guests to be fully vaccinated as well.
The only exceptions are children under 12 and, in Florida, a minor number of people who choose not to get vaccinated.
Excluding Singapore, which is a special case, an average of 92% of the people onboard our ships in July were fully vaccinated.
And this number is likely to rise going forward.
The idea is to limit the spread of COVID-19 aboard our ships.
We all know it's impossible to eliminate cases on board a ship totally, just as it's impossible to eliminate cases on land.
But the steps that we are taking are designed to prevent the isolated cases from becoming an outbreak and it seems to be working.
We have had people test positive.
But because almost everyone around them is vaccinated, they've remained isolated cases.
That's the goal, rare individual cases, and no significant spread.
Repeat this with a few hundred thousand or million cruisers, and that creates the trust that will drive our resurgence.
Now the Delta variant is problematic for everyone, but even this looks manageable by our extensive protocols.
It's too early to draw definitive conclusions, but the vaccines are the ultimate weapon, and they work.
Our experience shows that while there are breakthrough cases aboard, the vaccines help keep them contained.
In fact, and I thought this was quite unusual, in most of our positive cases, even the cabin mate of the infected individual has tested negative.
But in light of the Delta variant and other variants, we have recently strengthened our protocols further, even more testing and even more people required to be vaccinated than we had in June and July.
We have gone from cruises being a source of concern to cruises being an exemplar for how to deal with COVID-19.
I'm thrilled that we're making this dream a reality.
And that brings us to how our customers are responding.
And fortunately, that outlook is good.
Our guests are eager to cruise again.
We had hoped that there would be pent-up demand for cruises, but even we were surprised by the level that we're seeing.
We are also encouraged by the improvements we're seeing more broadly across the travel industry.
Cruise consideration remains high among active cruisers and is steadily increasing among noncruisers.
It is clear people are eager to travel to take a vacation, and we are ready to make their vacation dreams come true.
Jason is going to speak more about our booking trends in a moment.
Now we all know it's going to take some time for the situation to settle.
There's still a lot of confusion in the marketplace, and that definitely hurts the next few months or so.
In addition, people usually book their cruise vacations well in advance.
It will take some time for us to catch up with the bookings that we didn't arrange or we didn't get up until now.
But if we only obsess about the present, we will fail to prepare for the future.
We must keep our eye firmly on that future that we can see is coming.
We need to prepare ourselves for it, so we are focusing our thoughts, our efforts, and our plans on that future.
While the third and fourth quarter of this year will continue to be painful, it's booking generally in line with our return to service and occupancy ramp-up expectations.
Due mainly to the timing of the ramp-up in service and the abnormal booking window, we don't expect 2022 to be a normal year.
However, we are seeing rapid and steady progress toward normalcy starting in the spring and summer of next year.
One important additional point is that we are not only in the business of delivering the best vacations possible but also doing it sustainably.
The company's commitment to corporate stewardship remains a priority even during our return to service.
Despite pandemic headwinds, the company has made tremendous progress across environmental, social, and governmental governance focus areas.
Some of the key achievements include a 35% reduction in our greenhouse gas emissions from our 2005 baseline.
We removed 60% of single-use plastics from our supply chain.
60% of our ships are equipped with emissions purification systems that remove 98% of sulfur oxides.
And our newer ships are equipped with Selective Catalytic Reduction, which reduces NOx emissions.
We've reduced waste to landfill by 85% from our 2007 baseline.
And we've also completed the introduction of over 2,000 certified tours in three assessments by the Global Sustainability Tourism Council.
One interesting point is that our wind farm that spans 20,000 acres in Northern Kansas has 62 turbines with a total power generation capability of 200 megawatts.
It's now been operational for more than a year.
It will annually generate 760,000 megawatt-hours of carbon-free energy.
That's saving some 500,000 tons in carbon.
And to put it in perspective, it's the equivalent to the energy use of about 60,000 homes.
These are just a few of the many initiatives underway at the company, and I've only focused here on the area of the environment.
The last 16 months have caused much pain and much suffering, but the tide is clearly turning.
Their dedication to seeing us see through this black swan event in the best way possible is nothing short of extraordinary.
So I look forward to sunnier days ahead.
This has been accomplished through impressive interdepartmental collaboration and many, many sleepless nights.
And for that, we are really forever grateful.
I will now turn to discuss our performance for the second quarter.
While these losses are incredibly painful, the second quarter was a turning point for the company on multiple fronts.
Second, we took financing actions to reduce our negative carry and began our journey back to an unencumbered and pre-COVID balance sheet.
And third, we saw a significant increase in booking activities that resulted in a large increase in our customer deposits.
And as of today, our customer deposit balance is $2.5 billion.
At this point, a little over 35% of our customer deposit balance is associated with FCCs, compared to about 45% at the time of our last call, signaling continued strong demand.
On the liquidity front, we closed the second quarter with $5 billion in liquidity.
As you all know, we pride ourselves on having industry-leading brands with a world-class and highly innovative fleet and a history of strong financial discipline and performance.
These assets and attributes have been instrumental in helping us raise more than $13 billion of new capital since March of last year.
During the second quarter, we continued our efforts to manage and improve our balance sheet.
And to that end, we successfully issued $650 million of senior unsecured notes at 4.25% and used those proceeds to redeem 7.25% senior secured notes in full.
This will generate approximately $17 million of cash savings annually beginning in 2022.
We are delighted with the current momentum and the restart of our operations in the United States and around the globe.
The environment remains fluid, and for this reason, we are not providing a cash burn estimate or the related offsets generated by revenue and new customer deposits.
I will highlight that the burn rate for the ships that are kept at layoff is expected to be consistent with our previous expectations.
Now as it pertains to our debt maturities, our scheduled debt maturities for the remainder of this year and 2022 are $21 million and $2.2 billion.
I will now update you on capacity and the booking environment.
After more than a full year of painful financial losses, a never-ending roller coaster of ups and downs regarding the timing of our return to service, multiple liquidity actions, and very little cruise capacity, we are now finally bringing our fleet back into service and are already welcoming thousands of guests back on board each week.
The pace with which our teams have been able to bring ships out of layup and ready them for guests is nothing short of incredible.
It is amazing to think that at the end of April, we only had four ships delivering incredible vacations across our five brands.
But as we sit today, there are guests sailing on 29 of our 60 ships in the Caribbean, Europe, Asia, Alaska, Iceland, and the Galapagos.
We are also in the process of ramping up seven more ships to be welcoming guests this month.
As a result, we anticipate having about 65% of our fleet in service at the end of the third quarter and approximately 80% of the fleet back in operation by the end of the year.
When considering our plans to ramp up capacity, the one area we continue to watch is the Asia Pacific region.
And for purposes of our return-to-service planning, we have been cautious.
Now I'll give you an update on bookings.
Bookings are still below 2019 levels due in part to our reduced capacity for 2021 and the fact that many sailings were announced very close in with little time to build business.
However, the gap narrowed further during the second quarter.
And we received about 50% more bookings in Q2 than during the previous three months, with trends improving one month to the next.
By June, we were receiving about 90% more bookings each week when compared to Q1, with bookings for 2022 practically back to 2019 levels.
As it relates to Delta variant, we have mainly seen small variations with closer-in bookings in markets with high case counts.
However, July was our second highest booking month of the year, and bookings for 2022 are strong.
We are particularly encouraged by the continued strong demand for the important spring and summer months.
The health and safety of our guests and crew is our No.
And as such, our start-up strategy incorporates low initial occupancies to give the crew the opportunity to seamlessly implement the new protocols and facilitate amazing vacations in this new and constantly changing environment.
After each ship gets a few voyages under their belt, our plan is for our load factors to steadily increase from one month to the next.
This is evident in our fleet where several of our ships are now sailing with more than 50% load factors.
Overall, the booking activity for 2021 sailings is consistent with our expected capacity and occupancy ramp-up at prices that are higher than 2019.
We are also seeing record Net Promoter Scores, as well as record onboard revenue for the ships that have resumed service.
This is very encouraging as we are not only seeing pent-up demand for cruises, but we are also seeing pent-up demand for our onboard revenue experiences.
Guests are really enjoying our shore excursions, casinos, spas, and restaurants after spending a year in isolation.
We are also seeing an increased demand for our WiFi services as more and more consumers have flexibility to take vacations and work remotely.
Looking further forward, we continue to be impressed by the demand and pricing we are seeing for 2022 sales.
It is still a bit early in the booking window to provide too much color for next year, but I will share that our booked load factors continue to be well within historical ranges at prices that are up nicely versus 2019, including the dilutive impact of FCCs.
While we were still in the early stages of the planning cycle for 2022, we do expect lower-than-average load factors for the first quarter as several ships will still be in ramp-up mode after having recently returned to service.
That being said, the first quarter is booked within historical ranges.
In addition, load factors are at the higher end of historical ranges for the back half of the year, with Q3 currently in a particularly strong position.
Underpinning this is a strong customer deposit profile for 2022.
Customer deposits for 2022 are significantly higher than the same time in 2019.
This demand and booking profile is quite encouraging, considering that we have only been spending about a quarter of our typical sales and marketing spend.
We are also optimistic that a number of larger macro indicators will provide further tailwinds to our future demand, increased vaccination rates around the globe, sharp increases in consumer confidence, and significant increases in personal saving rate versus the same time two years ago.
I will close by saying that we are thrilled for the flywheel to be spinning at such an accelerating pace.
We have been dreaming of this moment for more than 16 months, and it's finally here.
We feel very optimistic about our future and are thrilled to see more and more guests in the United States and around the globe enjoy incredible vacations onboard our ships.
And with that, I will ask Shelby to open up the call for a question-and-answer session.

user
royal caribbean group - anticipate 80% of our fleet to be back in service by year-end.
royal caribbean group - expects to incur a net loss on both u.s. gaap and adjusted basis for its q3 and 2021 fiscal year.
royal caribbean group - booking activity for 2021 sailings consistent with co's expected capacity, occupancy ramp up, at prices higher than 2019.
royal caribbean - while it's too early to make definitive conclusions of impact of delta variant on bookings, seen modest impact on closer-in bookings.
royal caribbean group - by end of this month, group expects to be operating 36 ships, representing over 60% of its capacity.
royal caribbean group - booked load factor for 2022 is within historical ranges.

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