Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. (NYSE:NCLH) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

James Hardiman: Okay. And just maybe a point of clarification, you talked for the fourth quarter, you talked about how revenues and net cruise costs ex-fuel or in line with your expectations with EBITDA was a bit short. What sort of was the hang up there sort of seems to point to fuel, but I thought fuel generally — at least the spot prices seem to get better since October. So, what led to that unless on the EBITDA line?

Mark Kempa: Yes, it was very slight, James. And it was really just truing up some of our year-end accruals and making sure that going into the year, we were fully stock, so to speak, to ensure that we had no lagging issues affecting our 2023 performance. So, nothing material. It was just all items on the margin.

James Hardiman: Got it. Thanks guys.

Operator: And our next question comes from the line of Paul Golding with Macquarie. Please proceed with your question.

Paul Golding: Thanks so much. My first question is around just a comment. I think Mark, you just made around the exotic destination. So, could you give us any qualitative background on how the destination mix right now compares to last year given the geopolitical disruptions last year? In other words, from just a Baltics and Eastern Med disruption last year, how the timing of these more exotic higher-yielding destinations line up to fill that gap on a year-over-year basis? Thanks.

Mark Kempa: Yes, certainly. So, I think when we look at the year overall, we do have more — we are leading to a more exotic deployment mix. But that’s not really concerning to us, because as we cycle through Q1 and we look toward the latter part of third quarter and fourth quarter, we see accelerating demand for those products. We do have more European capacity this year. We have slightly less Caribbean capacity and more Alaska capacity. So overall, we are trending to a, again, a bit more exotic or longer itinerary based deployments, but that’s shaping up well for us, absent this what we would call a one-time Q1 anomaly with the overall restart.

Paul Golding: Great.

Frank Del Rio: Okay. We have time for one more question, operator.

Operator: Okay. Thank you. And the final question comes from the line of Robin Farley with UBS. Please proceed with your question.

Robin Farley: Great. Thank you. I have two expense questions. One is you talked about how the exit rate by Q4 for expense would look a little bit more normalized. With the full year kind of up 18% and Q1 up 22%, does that imply the exit rate sort of going forward would still be in kind of the low to mid-teens increase versus 2019? Is that kind of what we should think of as sort of a normalized run rate for you? And then my other expense question is on the $1.3 billion in higher newbuild CapEx. And I know you talked about upsizing a number of the Prima ships and adding some alternative fuel to two of them. It seems like maybe there are some other things contributing to that $1.3 billion than just those additional bursts and alternative fuel just based on the numbers, it seems like there may be other things in the higher new build CapEx number? Thanks.

Mark Kempa: Hi, Robin, I’ll take that. I think there was two questions in there. So, I’ll start with the last one because that’s the one I can remember. Regarding newbuild, look, the — we’re increasing the size of four vessels pretty significantly by, I think, it’s more than 10% on three and four and almost more than 20%. So, there is a cost to that. There’s — it’s not just adding cabins, it’s lengthening the vessels, widening the vessels, but also more importantly, on five and six, we are getting them — those vessels to be methanol ready. I always say, going green is not free. There is a cost to it, but we think this is a good cost. We think it’s the right cost. I would hesitate or caution you to just simply take the additional burst and look at it as costing $1.2 billion, because there is a lot of technical aspects behind that in relation to making the vessels bigger.