Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (NYSE:RCL) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: Our final question will come from the line of Fred Wightman with Wolfe Research.

Frederick Wightman : I just want to make sure I understood the equity investment line commentary. Are you guys saying to just take a haircut to what you guys did in ’19, but it will be relatively similar from a seasonality perspective? Or were you trying to say something else?

Naftali Holtz: No. I think if you go through the guidance and our expectations of what we provided, our expectation is obviously, it’s going to be lower than 2019 because what Jason mentioned is the negative carry. So they continue to recover.

Frederick Wightman: Okay. And then there was a comment that 4Q new to cruise was above pre-COVID levels. Just curious, when you look at what you have on the books for ’23, does that percentage continue to improve? And could you give us a sense for order of magnitude?

Jason Liberty: Yes. Well, and just our general commentary on WAVE. What’s driving that strength is new-to-cruise and new-to-brand. And so, that mix is not only similar, but it’s better than what we saw take place in the fourth quarter. So we feel that propensity to cruise — and by the way, I think one thing that’s important on the new-to-cruise stat, especially relative to ’19 is because we don’t have China in the mix of our business. Pretty much every Chinese consumer back in ’19 was a new-to-cruise consumer. So that really talks about the strength of the North American and European consumer and their interest to go on a cruise for the first time or to go on to one of our brands for the first time.

Jason Liberty : We thank you all for your participation and interest in the company. Michael will be available for any follow-ups. I wish you all a great day.

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