Earnings Labs

Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (RCL)

Q2 2008 Earnings Call· Tue, Jul 22, 2008

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Ciara and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the second quarter earnings release conference call. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Brian Rice. Sir, you may begin your conference.

Brian J. Rice

Management

Thank you, Operator and good morning, everyone. I would like to thank you for joining us this morning for our second quarter earnings call. With me here today are Richard Fain, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Adam Goldstein, President and CEO of Royal Caribbean International; Dan Hanrahan, President and CEO of Celebrity and Azamara Cruises; and Greg Johnson, our Associate Vice President of Investor Relations. As we have done in the past, we have posted slides on our investor website, www.rclinvestor.com, which we will be referring to during this call. Before we get into our results an the business overview, I would like to remind you of our forward-looking statement, which you will see on the first slide. During this call, we will be making comments which are forward-looking statements and are subject to change based on the items listed on our website, in disclosures in our SEC filings. Additionally, we will be discussing certain financial measures which are non-GAAP as defined by Regulation G and a reconciliation of these items can be found on our website. As you saw in our press release, we have quite a bit to talk about today. Richard will start with some perspectives on the current environment. I will then take you through our financial results, share some more insight into our cost-savings initiatives and our booking trends, and provide you with our forward guidance. Adam and Dan will then follow with more specific comments about their brands. Richard.

Richard D. Fain

Management

Thank you, Brian and good morning, everyone. I would like to do something a little different in my comments today. Usually on these quarterly conference calls, we focus on only the next quarter or so. But today I would like to make a few comments trying to put the current situation in context and to talk about our longer term perspective. The current situation may not meet the strict definition of unprecedented but it is certainly rare and the totality of circumstances that we are looking at is unlike anything we’ve experienced in our industry’s history. Against this background, the performance of our business continues to do astonishingly well. We see two particular challenges -- fuel and the economy. We see them as the biggest issues impacting our business. This morning, I would like to briefly discuss how we are responding to these dual challenges. I’ll start with fuel. The facts, unfortunately, are quite clear and the price of fuel actually accounts for more than 100% of the change in our performance for 2008, compared to our original guidance. As usual, there are a number of ins and outs but bottom line, our overall performance for the year looks to beat our original forecast, except for the price of fuel. We can take some steps to reduce the impact of fuel costs, and we are implementing those steps as quickly as we can. And you can see from our press release that these initiatives have helped us cope with the price increase this year, and it will help us even more next year. But the second major challenge is the economy. Here, I think our continued strong operating performance demonstrates clearly how well we are able to deal with this situation. Our business provides us with a surprising amount of…

Brian J. Rice

Management

Thank you, Richard. As we mentioned in our press release, net income for the second quarter was $85 million, and as you will see on the second slide, our earnings per share were $0.40 compared to our previous guidance of $0.40 to $0.45 per share. Net yields for the quarter increased 1%, slightly less than our guidance of an increase of around 2%. Nonetheless, our net revenue yields were the highest in our company’s history for the second quarter. Our Spanish brand, Pullmantur’s revenue performance was lower than forecast. Pullmantur’s Sky Wonder was involved in a grounding incident that resulted in two cancelled voyages and we also incurred some related charges for guest compensation. The main driver though appears to be a very weak Spanish economy, where unemployment is now close to 10% and the housing market fell over 30% in the first quarter. Spain is still a relatively young and small cruise market and as a result, we believe has more sensitivity to economic pressures. In contrast, in our more developed markets outside of Spain, all of our other brands performed well and consistent with our guidance. Despite all the economic pressures and falling consumer confidence, we continued to see very healthy close-in demand throughout the second quarter. On slide three, we show sailings for our last six quarters. This graph illustrates the quality of pricing for bookings made within 90 days of sailing as compared to the same period the previous year. As you know, the quality of our close-in bookings was very poor in the first quarter of 2007, but began to rebound in the spring of last year. We have now seen 14 straight months where close-in demand has booked at a premium to the prior year. Now going back to slide two, you will see…

Adam M. Goldstein

Management

Thank you, Brian and good morning, everyone. We are pleased with the second quarter results highlighted by the performance of our Caribbean products that continue to benefit from high quality close-in demand. As we strive to mitigate the challenge we faced from higher energy costs, we are also scanning the environment for signs that macroeconomic deterioration will negatively affect our forward bookings. I would like to note three considerations relative to the environment that we are facing. First, the Royal Caribbean International brand is more globally oriented than the North American-centric brands that are normally understood as our competitive set. We now view South Hampton, Barcelona, Venice, Sao Paulo, and even to some extent, Shanghai, as so-called drive markets, along with Galveston, Tampa, Baltimore, and [Bayun]. In other words, we are not focused on bringing ships back to North America in order to mitigate exposures related to air capacity, currency, et cetera. Second, the profitability of our newest ships continues to be outstanding. Our freedom class ships would perform well against our original expectations even if the price of oil would ascend to levels materially higher than what we are facing today. Oasis of the Seas, meanwhile, compares very favorably to our successful Voyager class ships in terms of balcony inventory of 72% versus 49%, and in energy consumption at 30% greater efficiency. Third, in our battle to minimize fuel consumption, we are evaluating our itineraries intensively. The time, speed, and distance we ask our ships to cover is the single greatest driver of our energy usage. On the other hand, the ability of our ships to visit multiple destinations during one cruise is one of the greatest drivers of our consumer value proposition. Navigating between these two drivers will always be a balancing act, but given current fuel prices…

Daniel J. Hanrahan

Management

Thank you, Adam. Good morning, everyone. The primary drivers for the positive second quarter results for Celebrity were driven by good performance with our Alaska and Caribbean products. We also saw a benefit from moving Azamara Journey out of Bermuda into Europe and the addition of Azamara Quest in the European markets this summer. Looking at the balance of the year, we are seeing some definite trends for Celebrity. Our yields are holding up in Europe with a 23% increase in capacity in Q3 and a 13% increase in Q4. We remain confident that the European products will continue to do well for us in the future, as we are benefiting from an increase in European sourcing. Alaska and the Caribbean are performing well for us. We are seeing good late season build on Alaska at this particular product remains in line with the expectations we had from the beginning of the year. The Caribbean and Panama Canal sailings for the balance of the year are meeting, and in many cases exceeding, what our beginning of the year expectations were. Celebrity Solstice has been particularly promising. We are seeing a nice ticket yield premium for the fourth quarter and through next year. The combination of the excitement that is being driven by our marketing and sales efforts, as well as the 85% balcony cabin mix is driving the trade and consumer interest in Solstice. We also have 18% more retail space on Solstice versus our Millennium class ships and feel confident that onboard revenue will benefit from the new design in many areas across the ship. And while the yield performance is encouraging, we will also be gaining economies of scale on the cost side with Solstice that will make her the top return on invested capital ship for Celebrity.…

Brian J. Rice

Operator

Thanks, Dan. Operator, at this time, we’d like to open the call for questions.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from the line of Felicia Hendrix with Lehman Brothers.

Felicia Hendrix - Lehman Brothers

Analyst · Lehman Brothers

Good morning, guys. I have a few questions for you; one is on your CapEx spend. So you’ve laid out, and this isn’t new but you are spending about over $6 billion in CapEx from ’09 to 2012, and I’m just wondering, can you walk us through how much you anticipate will get funded through free cash flow? And then for the balance, can you just walk us through how you plan to fund that? Obviously in this environment, there is a lot of concern about any company with large CapEx plans, so anything that you can walk us through would be very helpful.

Brian J. Rice

Operator

Our CapEx, as you know, is largely new ships that are under contract. I believe at this point in time we have about $7 billion on order. Our maintenance CapEx and IT and all the other money we spend tends to be a little below $200 million a year. We haven’t given specific percentages but I can tell you the majority of that CapEx will be funded through free cash flow from operations. Something we probably don’t do a good enough job talking about is the back-up financing that we have if we need it on all our new ship contracts. We financed the Independence of the Seas and the Solstice, we have committed financing for already and we’ll be taking delivery of in November. And all our new ship contracts come with the opportunity to have guarantees for anywhere from 80% to 85% of the new ship contract. So at this point in time, with the bond markets being as tight as they are, we’d be using bank financing and if necessary, we would be able to get government guarantees, both out of Germany and Finland, for the ships that we’ve built in those respective markets. So I guess the bottom line here is we’ve been very fortunate, despite the credit crunch, to really not be exposed to it at this point in time.

Felicia Hendrix - Lehman Brothers

Analyst · Lehman Brothers

And then, let’s just say the economy, for example, turns in Germany. How stable are those guarantees?

Brian J. Rice

Operator

They are backed up by the Government of Germany. There’s a branch of the German government called Hermes, which provides the guarantees and their contractual obligations that they have with us, and the same with Finland with [Finvarra].

Felicia Hendrix - Lehman Brothers

Analyst · Lehman Brothers

Okay, great. And then just switching gears on to Pullmantur, I’m just trying to understand the magnitude that it’s had on your -- on the guidance. So we’re calculating that it’s about 10% of total company berths. I’m just surprised the impact that it has on yields, so I was wondering if you could walk us through that.

Brian J. Rice

Operator

Sure, Felicia. Pullmantur has two impacts on our yields; first, they represent I believe the last number I saw was 7% to 8% of our cruise capacity, but remember Pullmantur also has a much larger tour division than we’re accustomed to having and any fluctuations in that benefits us on the cost side and hurts us on the yield side. Pullmantur, the Spanish market was down quite a bit in the second quarter. As I mentioned, our bookings as we get into the peak season look quite good but we’ve tried to be somewhat tempered in our expectations for that to continue to hold up. As you’ll recall on our last call, our full-year guidance was an increase of around 4% and despite the shortfall in Q2 and even recognition of taking Pullmantur down for the balance of the year, it has had a rather de minimis impact on our corporate yields and our current forecast is for improvement between 3% and 4%.

Felicia Hendrix - Lehman Brothers

Analyst · Lehman Brothers

Okay, great, and then just finally, can you just tell us how hedged, much -- how much hedging you have on for 2009?

Brian J. Rice

Operator

The number for the full year is 22% and I believe the first quarter, we’re 40%.

Felicia Hendrix - Lehman Brothers

Analyst · Lehman Brothers

Okay, great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Robin Farley with UBS.

Robin Farley - UBS

Analyst · Robin Farley with UBS

Yeah, a couple of questions, thanks. One is just to clarify, Brian, your comment about Pullmantur; I guess I’m trying to get a sense of whether yields are down double-digits or how much of this is the tour business, rather than actually just cruise ticket prices.

Brian J. Rice

Operator

Robin, we’re trying to be a lot more transparent on this call than we have in the past but we don’t want to get into specific yield changes by brand or by product. I will tell you that in the second quarter, Pullmantur’s cruise yields were down year over year, and we also saw some declines in the tour division, which includes Charters and also their air operation. That also did help us on the cost side though. As you’ve seen in the past, that tour division has been a little difficult for us to forecast and when yields are down, costs tend to be down and visa versa.

Robin Farley - UBS

Analyst · Robin Farley with UBS

I guess is the tour business specifically doing worse than you thought?

Brian J. Rice

Operator

It’s a combination of both the cruise division and the tour division.

Robin Farley - UBS

Analyst · Robin Farley with UBS

Okay, great. And then your comments about onboard spending, I guess it was up slightly in Q1, down slightly in Q2. I think you said you are expecting to be flat for the year but I wanted to clarify if I heard that right. And I guess in a sense, why wouldn’t you expect it to sort of continue trending down [inaudible]?

Brian J. Rice

Operator

Our onboard yields for Q2 were right where we expected them to be and I believe they were just about flat in Q2. And the brands look at this quite closely. We’re looking at itinerary changes and shifts of where we have our ships deployed. Recall that in the first half of the year, we had a tremendous amount of new products going into new itineraries. Adam alluded to Asia, for example, and generally speaking the first year in a market, it takes us a little bit of time to adapt. But I think overall, we’re quite pleased with where onboard revenue is.

Robin Farley - UBS

Analyst · Robin Farley with UBS

But in terms of -- you know, seasonally Q3, since there’s less Caribbean, it seems like maybe it would make onboard a little bit more challenging in the second half of the year than it’s been in the first half. I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but is that a fair expectation?

Adam M. Goldstein

Management

One of the experiences that we are having right now that runs a little bit counter to that line of questioning is that our excursion business has been strong, and in the third quarter, of course, there’s a lot of destination intensive product that we are offering. So while there are many revenue streams and they have variability in their performance, there’s an important revenue stream that’s a beneficiary of our third quarter deployment activities.

Robin Farley - UBS

Analyst · Robin Farley with UBS

Okay, great. Thanks. And then this last question is anymore color you can give on the expense reductions outside of headcount and clearing the scholarship program, because it looks like that would be less than half of it. I’m just wondering what other expense items you could talk about.

Brian J. Rice

Operator

It was pretty broad across the board. The headcount reductions range from officer level down to clerical staff. We have focus on things like travel and entertainment. We’ve looked at consulting. It’s rather broad. This has been almost a one-month process that our entire officer corps was really locked into with a lot of creative ideas, with a real mandate that we needed to operate much more efficiently. I would emphasize the fact that we’ve been growing quite a bit over the last several years and we’ve introduced a lot of new products in a lot of new markets and I’d say we somewhat took a pause here and really stepped back and said where can we drive efficiency and where do we have duplication of effort that can be eliminated. There was no silver bullet, as there never is in these things, but more just a broad-based, holistic view.

Robin Farley - UBS

Analyst · Robin Farley with UBS

Okay, great. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Steve Wieczynski with Stifel Nicolaus.

Steve Wieczynski - Stifel Nicolaus

Analyst · Steve Wieczynski with Stifel Nicolaus

Good morning, guys. First, is there any material change in the booking window from the last time we talked?

Brian J. Rice

Operator

Steve, not on any particular product group. I think Adam alluded to the fact that on his brand, we are getting more of our guests in drive markets as we’ve diversified our portfolio out around the world and those tend to book a little bit closer in. There’s a little less planning involved when you are closer to home, but I would say on a like-for-like basis, we haven’t seen any shifts in the booking window.

Steve Wieczynski - Stifel Nicolaus

Analyst · Steve Wieczynski with Stifel Nicolaus

And then second and final question, it looks like on the commission side of the business, it looks like you made another recent change where it’s -- you are going back and it’s actually going to benefit some of your larger agency groups. Can you just discuss the decision behind that?

Daniel J. Hanrahan

Management

We’ve got great partnerships across the board with the trade and we went back to a couple of trade partners and looked at some things that we could do that in the end we think will be a benefit to us on the commission side. So we made some adjustments to commission. We think that that will help generate more demand out of those big players for us and then the end result will be very, very positive for us.

Steve Wieczynski - Stifel Nicolaus

Analyst · Steve Wieczynski with Stifel Nicolaus

Thanks, guys.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Tim Conder with Wachovia.

Timothy Conder - Wachovia Capital Markets

Analyst · Tim Conder with Wachovia

Thank you. On capacity, gentlemen, your guidance for ’09 and 2010, it looks like there was a shift from ’09 to 2010. Could you give us a little more color on that? It’s a pretty meaningful shift, it appears. And then, any comments, Brian, as far as what foreign exchange impacted revenues during the quarter, or if you want to comment on it on an EBIT basis, and then what your expectations are overall for the year there?

Brian J. Rice

Operator

The primary shift in the capacity for ’09 was, as you saw at the end of April, we announced that the Galaxy will be leaving the Celebrity fleet and going to TUI. TUI is reported below operating income because it’s a 50% equity, so that is basically what caused the reduction in ’09. And then the reason for the increase in 2010 is the basis in ’09 was lower, so no real material shifts outside of that. There’s always tweaking on itineraries when you are looking a year or two out in dry-dock schedules.

Timothy Conder - Wachovia Capital Markets

Analyst · Tim Conder with Wachovia

And no change in any of the contracted delivery schedules, Brian?

Brian J. Rice

Operator

Nothing material, no.

Timothy Conder - Wachovia Capital Markets

Analyst · Tim Conder with Wachovia

Okay.

Brian J. Rice

Operator

As it relates to FX, we really -- it’s difficult for us to really guide you in terms of the impact, particularly on revenue, because the only brand that we have that is operating in a different functional currency than dollars is Pullmantur. That one, we could actually doe the calculation of the exchange gain or loss related to that, but for our other brands, it’s part of our revenue management equation. You know, Adam talked a lot about the diversification of the Royal Caribbean International brand and we are constantly evaluating pricing and elasticity and opportunities and how we can benefit or utilize FX in that, and it really is a pricing decision. There doesn’t -- I don’t recall that this quarter we had any real substantial impacts on FX. If you -- I can tell you that the revenue, the top line will benefit as the dollar weakens. We do have additional operating expenses as the dollar weakens because we have the Brilliance leases denominated in Pounds. We have some operating expenses for our European itineraries in Euro. Below the line in other income, you tend to get some noise related to FX as our customer deposits get reevaluated, and that adjustment is taken to other income and expense. But net net, I think a 1% change either way in the dollar has less than a $1 million impact on our whole P&L.

Timothy Conder - Wachovia Capital Markets

Analyst · Tim Conder with Wachovia

Okay, and I know there was a lot of noise, especially in the occupancy side, this quarter but in general, do you anticipate any major -- any ups or downs in occupancy, more than say 20 basis points or so on a year-over-year basis?

Brian J. Rice

Operator

Nothing -- on a like-for-like basis, nothing really material. In Q2, our occupancies were down I think it was about 200 basis points. Some of that was Pullmantur had a bad quarter but also it was impacted by some of the deployment shifts. As we send more inventory to Europe, European itineraries tend to have fewer kids on board, or fewer thirds and fourths, which will drive down your occupancies versus say the Caribbean, for example. But our strategy hasn’t changed in terms of pretty much managing to full capacity and the demand certainly is out there for us to be able to do that as well.

Richard D. Fain

Management

Tim, I think though we should qualify that, because you specifically mentioned 20 basis points, and I think 20 basis points is below even our ability to look at with a magnifying glass. I think in fact, there may well be a slight bias towards having a little lower capacity and holding price in some cases, and again it depends a lot on the area and the markets that you are in. But I certainly don’t want to give you the impression that we will maintain that within anywhere near 20 basis points.

Timothy Conder - Wachovia Capital Markets

Analyst · Tim Conder with Wachovia

That was the root of my question, is are you maybe willing in a more challenging overall economic environment to give up a little bit of occupancy to hold price, and then how much I guess of that dynamic are you willing to take.

Richard D. Fain

Management

We’re not really facing that at this point, but that is the kind of trade-off that we make all the time, in fact.

Timothy Conder - Wachovia Capital Markets

Analyst · Tim Conder with Wachovia

Okay. Lastly, gentlemen, you’d given some color on Europe overall, which still sounds very good. In particular, anything related to Ireland and the balance of the U.K. as similar to Spain, they are having probably the most challenging issues of all the European based economies?

Adam M. Goldstein

Management

Tim, although Ireland is a small country, it’s very notable to us because the Irish guests that we have rate us the highest of any country in the world, so we are very partial to our Irish guests. It’s a part of our U.K./Ireland selling effort and we are doing very well in that market, and to the best of my knowledge, Ireland is contributing its fair share to that growth.

Timothy Conder - Wachovia Capital Markets

Analyst · Tim Conder with Wachovia

Okay, great. Thank you, gentlemen.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Assia Georgieva with Infinite Research.

Assia Georgieva - Infinite Research

Analyst · Assia Georgieva with Infinite Research

Good morning. A couple of questions; first of all, onboard spend for the second half of 2008, I assume you are expecting flat onboard spend, even though comps were very difficult a year ago? And a related question, it seems that the costs for onboard revenues have been increasing over the past several quarters. Is that a trend that will continue and what drives that?

Brian J. Rice

Operator

A couple of comments; I would say that our second half projections, we feel very good about. We are looking at pretty much flat onboard spending throughout the year. I will mention that our onboard spending right now is still at historical highs. It’s the highest we’ve ever seen in our history. We feel very good about it. In terms of the increase in costs, Adam alluded to the fact that shore excursions in particular are doing quite well. Shore excursions tend to be a little bit lower margin and I think we’re also seeing some impact from the weakening dollar and that our costs in Euros for our European shore excursions have been increasing. But again, on a net basis our onboard spending is about flat year over year and again, given the new markets and itineraries that we are serving, we think that’s held up pretty nicely.

Assia Georgieva - Infinite Research

Analyst · Assia Georgieva with Infinite Research

And you expect that to continue for the second half, despite the very difficult comp?

Brian J. Rice

Operator

Yes.

Assia Georgieva - Infinite Research

Analyst · Assia Georgieva with Infinite Research

Okay. And another question, maybe to follow-up on what Tim was asking about, have you seen any weakness in the U.K. market in terms of bookings, maybe early indications for 2009?

Adam M. Goldstein

Management

Our outlook at this point, given the limited visibility that we have for our business overall, which would include the U.K., is positive at this point in terms of year-over-year status looking into ’09.

Assia Georgieva - Infinite Research

Analyst · Assia Georgieva with Infinite Research

So even over the last three months, you have not seen any negative changes, Adam?

Adam M. Goldstein

Management

Correct.

Assia Georgieva - Infinite Research

Analyst · Assia Georgieva with Infinite Research

Okay. All right, thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Steve Kent with Goldman Sachs.

Steve Kent - Goldman Sachs

Analyst · Steve Kent with Goldman Sachs

Good morning. A very general question, which is two years ago you indicated that consumer trends were weak and that’s why you were experiencing softer performance relative to other discretionary categories. Now, with consumer trends weak from retail to [all travel], you’re indicating your results are solid. So I guess broadly, maybe you could just try to explain the disparity and are you on a different cycle, or something like that? Separately, maybe it’s the value product appeal but that would seem to appeal to customers no matter what. And I guess third, because I think this might be the answer, is just simply a change in the amount of supply in certain markets and a change of the itineraries. And if that’s the case, why not commit this morning to not build anymore ships than what you currently have planned?

Richard D. Fain

Management

Steve, I think you are referring -- I’m not sure of the specific thing you are referring to, but I think you are referring to a one quarter snapshot that we were looking at. I think I would continue to emphasize we’re not claiming that we are immune from the effects of consumer sentiment, consumer spending, et cetera. We just think that we have ways to respond to that, and those ways don’t necessarily happen instantaneously. We are fortunate that in some of this, we’ve anticipated some of those changes, so we’ve repositioned ships, et cetera. I would emphasize we don’t think this is a terrific year. I am disappointed that we are looking at these kinds of yields and I think that if consumer sentiment was better, we would be looking at better yields. I think we did say in our press release that clearly in today’s world, we think that we would certainly be a lot more cautious in looking at new orders, both because of the operating environment and because of the cost of the ships. But I think overall, we think we’ve held -- we don’t think we’ve changed our view that our industry and particularly our brands hold up better than you would expect, but still are influenced by the general economy.

Steve Kent - Goldman Sachs

Analyst · Steve Kent with Goldman Sachs

I guess it’s just that a few years ago, it seemed like relative to other industries, you were having a much more difficult time and appropriately, you changed your itineraries, reduced your supply in certain key markets and that seemed to help. So I guess I’m saying why not continue to do that? For example, can you maybe move to changing your itineraries faster and not committing to them out a year-and-a-half or two years, and maybe commit to them shorter and see what the reaction is to that and moving ships more quickly to areas that need demand and taking them out where demand is not so strong.

Richard D. Fain

Management

Well, you know, Steven, you can move more quickly and we actually have done that in very narrow circumstances where special circumstances dictated. But -- and I think what is unique about our industry is the ability to reposition, but it does take a while. You have to build up a market, you have to build up an infrastructure. The market needs to be aware the products are there. The travel agents need time to assimilate the information and disseminate that to their clients. And so yes, we’ve been making some fairly dramatic changes. As I mentioned a year-and-a-half ago, our non-U.S. sourcing was, in terms of passenger count, was 13%. It’s now closer to a third and we think that’s a pretty dramatic shift. Can you do it in shorter time? Possibly but we think that is probably the appropriate thing to get the best value for our investment.

Steve Kent - Goldman Sachs

Analyst · Steve Kent with Goldman Sachs

Okay, thanks.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of David Leibowitz with Burnham.

David Leibowitz - Burnham Securities

Analyst · David Leibowitz with Burnham

Good morning. Did I hear Mr. Rice say that there was going to be an $18 million legal settlement added to the third quarter’s profit? And if that is accurate, what lawsuit is that and when will the settlement actually be announced?

Brian J. Rice

Operator

Actually, David, we have reached an agreement. If you look in our disclosures, we had a lawsuit against assets related to the Legionnaire’s case from back in the 1990s with the Horizon.

David Leibowitz - Burnham Securities

Analyst · the Horizon

1994 -- it’s only been 14 years.

Brian J. Rice

Operator

We have reached an agreement. The agreement is signed. It was signed after the close of the second quarter, so we’ll be recognizing that in the third quarter.

David Leibowitz - Burnham Securities

Analyst · David Leibowitz with Burnham

Okay, now, is that included in the earnings estimate then?

Brian J. Rice

Operator

Yes, it is.

David Leibowitz - Burnham Securities

Analyst · David Leibowitz with Burnham

And yet we are not including in the earnings estimate the other costs, the fuel costs when you were speaking -- I have to get it out of the press release.

Brian J. Rice

Operator

The earnings, the numbers that I gave you for fuel I believe was $224 million, something in that range for the quarter, and 772 I think for the year. That’s all baked into our EPS guidance.

David Leibowitz - Burnham Securities

Analyst · David Leibowitz with Burnham

Okay. And second of all, the New York Times had a major article I guess a week ago today or a week ago tomorrow about Park West and art auctions at sea. Has there been any change in either their policies or are you negotiating any changes with them regarding the terms of their remaining on board your ships?

Adam M. Goldstein

Management

Nothing dramatic has happened in our relationship with Park West in the last week. We expect them to operate at the highest standards of credibility in the business that they are in and we are pretty demanding of our revenue partners in general, so they wouldn’t be excluded from that. We’ve noted in previous calls that their revenue stream has been an area of weakness compared to other things happening in the onboard environment, and that continues to be the case. So we will be focusing quite a bit of attention on them -- this is all our brands now -- to make sure that they are both operating properly and producing properly.

David Leibowitz - Burnham Securities

Analyst · David Leibowitz with Burnham

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Joe Greff with J.P. Morgan.

Joe Greff - J.P. Morgan

Analyst · Joe Greff with J.P. Morgan

Good morning, guys. You gave us some helpful information on ’09 load factors and pricing. What percentage of ’09 capacity has been booked? How does that compare to this time last year and if you could break that out between North America and international, that would be helpful. Thank you.

Brian J. Rice

Operator

Joe, we really don’t break out that specific information. The information that we gave you for Q3 and Q4 is well above anything we’ve given in the past. I can tell you the only guidance we’ve traditionally given in terms of the future year is generally by the time we get to the end of the year, we’re normally about half sold.

Joe Greff - J.P. Morgan

Analyst · Joe Greff with J.P. Morgan

Okay, thanks.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of David Campbell with Owl Creek.

David Campbell - Owl Creek

Analyst · David Campbell with Owl Creek

Thank you. You don’t tell us everything about the fuel hedges in terms of what the strike prices are, and I know you buy different kinds of fuel in different places around the world, so to simplify, I’m just trying to figure out what the average cost per ton of fuel would be if you were paying spot today for everything.

Brian J. Rice

Operator

David, if you could follow-up with Greg after the call, we can try and provide you with some of those details. What we’ve tried to do is the fuel calculation and the hedges and the different instruments and what not and where we are purchasing can get very, very complicated, so what we’ve tried to do is keep it as simple as possible and give you what it is based on the current pricing, our best estimate of fuel. We provide you with consumption in the press release, which would enable you to back into the cost per ton, and then give you the sensitivity based on changes in WTI, assuming a perfect correlation but over time, it gets pretty close. We think that that’s really the best way to look at fuel, but if you’d like to follow-up with Greg, he I think would be happy to help you go through all the details on that.

Richard D. Fain

Management

And David, we have changed the way we are providing that information. We used to give it as percent change and we are now giving it as a -- what an impact of a $10 change in crude does. As Brian says, it’s not a perfect correlation but over time it’s been a remarkably good surrogate. So you pretty much ought to be able to simply plug in off of your computer screen what today’s crude price is and see pretty accurately what our costs ought to be.

David Campbell - Owl Creek

Analyst · David Campbell with Owl Creek

That doesn’t answer my question because you know, I could get what your pro forma fuel costs would be including the effect of your hedges, because the sensitivities you give include the effect of your hedges. What I’m trying to calculate is the pro forma fuel spend once hedges run off based on today’s fuel prices.

Richard D. Fain

Management

Right, and if you call Greg offline, we can give you a little more detail that will help you with your calculation.

David Campbell - Owl Creek

Analyst · David Campbell with Owl Creek

Okay, thanks.

Brian J. Rice

Operator

Operator, I think we have time for one more question, please.

Operator

Operator

Your final question comes from the line of Greg Haendel with Transamerica Investments.

Greg Haendel - Transamerica Investments

Analyst · Transamerica Investments

Thank you. First of all, thank you for providing a little bit more detail on your financing. As I calculated it, I don’t know, free cash flow wouldn’t be able to cover the ship costs but it’s good to know about the government guarantees. What are the -- as best as you can say, what are the terms of that financing? I mean, are they short bridge loans or are they termed out for an extended period of time and are they at exorbitant interest rates?

Richard D. Fain

Management

No, actually, I guess you can -- I’m not sure exactly how much we’ve disclosed on that but we’ve given quite a bit and I will tell you that it has always been our policy that when we order a ship, we always, or almost always, arrange to have a financing in place that may or is at least acceptable to us. It tends to be at or less than LIBOR plus 100 basis points. You can see in the past, for example, we just did one which was fairly extensively disclosed, which was that type of financing on the Independence of the Seas. The term tends to be eight to 12 years, depending on the situation. So they are always acceptable financing; in fact, they’ve been quite favorable recently.

Greg Haendel - Transamerica Investments

Analyst · Transamerica Investments

Okay, and then I think you guys mentioned this earlier but short cruises are doing very well, somewhat at the expense of longer cruises. You are seeing more people going to shore cruises, is that correct?

Adam M. Goldstein

Management

We have been doing relatively well on our short cruises but it’s not at the expense of other products in our portfolio. The seven-night Caribbean product range, for example, has held up well and so forth and we’ve given some color around Alaska and Europe. So we are experiencing positive performance with our short products but it’s not out of color to the rest of our range.

Greg Haendel - Transamerica Investments

Analyst · Transamerica Investments

Okay, thank you.

Brian J. Rice

Operator

Great. Well, thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We certainly appreciate your questions and we wish everyone a great day. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you for participating in today’s second quarter earnings release conference call. You may now disconnect.