Arnold Donald
Management
This is Arnold Donald, CEO of Carnival Corporation and Plc. Thank you all for joining us for our first quarter 2015 earnings conference call. Today I am joined by our Chairman, Micky Arison; David Bernstein, our Chief Financial Officer; and Beth Roberts, our Vice President of Investor Relations. Before I begin, please note that some of our remarks on this call will be forward-looking. I must refer you to the cautionary statement in today's press release. We are off to a strong start with our significantly improved first quarter earnings exceeding both prior year and December guidance. It is extremely gratifying to see the hard work of our team members pay off. It is the power of their efforts which have allowed us to overcome much of the impact of the dramatic currency movements that have plagued all global companies. Consistent with the strengthening of our business, our travel partners are helping to drive and are benefiting from our improved performance and we specially thank them for their support. Now despite the nearly $0.30 drag from currency movements, we continue to expect roughly 25% earnings growth over 2014 based on our improved operating performance. Looking ahead, we are working hard to accelerate that growth as we continue to execute along the path to a double digit return on invested capital through our two-pronged strategy. To drive demand in excess of measured capacity growth and to capture the inherent value of our industry leading scale. The 8% onboard revenue growth achieved this quarter is an affirmation of the inherent power of harnessing our collective effort as we embrace the fundamental behavioral change of communicating, collaborating and coordinating across our nine world-leading brands. The outsize growth in casino, bar and communication realized this quarter in part resulted from best practice sharing. This…