AL3XCruise

Just glancing at the income statement and "statistical information" it looks like in 2018 there were about 89.7M passenger days with 200M in interest, so about 2.23/day/pax. In 2023 91.4M passenger days with 2B in interest, so 21.88/day/pax. So while interest isn't the number one cost, its big enough that getting rid of the high interest debt ahead of schedule could make the company try and squeeze some extra cash out of operations. Of course, they'd probably squeeze anyway...

I don't have time to go through all the notes and quarterly data so apologies if I'm missing something you saw, but as far as "passing the point of covering debt" the 4.3B is substantially exceeded by the 7.7B in long term debt repaid in 2023. It looks like at least some of that was paid back ahead of schedule to avoid the ~10% interest rate on notes due in future years (as mentioned, I don't have time to dig in to the notes too much) so they may have had cashflow to cover maturing debt, but keep in mind they also issues 3B in new debt. This did contribute to the cash on hand dropping from 6B to 2.4B. All in all they are in a much better place than some thought they would be, but I think that 2B in interest expense on the income statement has a big impact on the numbers investors generally care about the most. A 4% reduction in interest expense would have made 2023 profitable for CCL. Pumping more cash from operations will help retire that debt faster (not to mention cut operating expenses). If anything, the fact that they have a stronger cashflow and more options to get cash if needed is going to decrease concerns about liquidity and move the focus more to income.

Canon made the smart move of supporting legacy glass quite well, with most lenses performing as good or better on mirrorless bodies than they did on DSLRs. It gave up some potential revenue, but made the barrier of switching to other brands (most notably Sony) much bigger. There are a handful of reasons some photographers still want DSLRs. The two I've heard most are battery life and physical size/layout. Mirrorless are improving with battery performance, and it seems most photographer's are willing to carry an extra battery if needed. Still, certain photographers or situations desire maximum endurance. There are also some photographers that like larger cameras. Given the majority of the market seems to want smaller and lighter, I doubt we are going to see mirrorless units get bigger. If you favor the ergonomics of a larger camera, a DSLR is going to be worth investigating. Other early issues, like EVFs vs optical viewfinders, seem to be going away with the advancement of tech. Its hard to argue with that, at least if you are a serious amateur or pro. Point and shoot fans may not have as much to look forward too!

In theory, this bow design should reduce the tendency to pitch up and down in waves. Hydrodynamics are complex and ship behavior is the result of a lot of design decisions, but it shouldn't make things any worse than angled bow. The lack of a sister ship to the Epic stems from issues between NCL and the Shipyard and has nothing to do with the design. Still, it seems like the cloud had a silver lining. While I don't know if Epic's design has materially impacted her financial performance, it is hard to argue that the Breakaway based ships are generally more popular and less polarizing amongst cruisers.