PUNKT2

Except they have about twice as many shares outstanding as they did before Covid, so that $60 is more like $30, and they also have multiple billions more in debt to pay off (with ever-increasing interest), so it will likely be many, many years before the stock prices gets back to $60. Regardless, buying 100 shares for the OBC now is a much better deal than it was four years ago.

Of course - I was asleep at my keyboard. Saw late last week that 2H was revised to "nearly break even". I assume FY 2023 guidance will be shared on the Q4/FY '22 earnings call in a few weeks. Seems analysts are calling for $1.10-$1.15, which while a far cry from where it was, is at least positive.

There's clearly plenty of precedence for publicly traded companies staying alive for years without making money - see Amazon, Tesla, etc, and it was a profitable company (and industry) before. Given the $500m due in 2028 announced earlier, seems like that might be the timeline? Would be interesting to see the rate of paying down all the debt raised, and how that aligns with the new ships coming out, which *should* result in record revenues YoY during that same timeframe.

Depends on the amount of the "I", no?

RCCL says they will return to FY 2019 financial performance in FY 2025. NCL says they believe they will make all their future debt obligations without raising new capital. I haven't seen anything similar from CCL, which perhaps helps explain why RCCL and NCLH are back to about where they were six months ago (RCCL slightly down, NCLH slightly up) while CCL is off 40%.

For sure things are far from ideal - I sure that is why NCL is keeping that line of credit open. Those debt payments are steep so the fact that they have ~$1b more of cash on hand then they normally would have pre-pandemic means nothing when you've got $7b more in debt due in the next few years. My only point was, barring a significant recession, the worst seems to be past them. Some (terrible pun intended) choppy waters for the next couple of years even with record revenues, but if you got into the stock around where it is now and don't need that money for 3+ years, there are certainly worse companies to own. Short term I suspect all three are going to continue to be volatile, but I'm not a trader so as long as the general trend over the last 3-4 months continues, I'm content as a long-term investor.

I mean - that's what they said was their target three months ago, so they are on pace. And the cruise business has always been a cash business of spending customer's money in advance, so that isn't anything new post-pandemic or alarming. Pre-pandemic they used to only keep about 0.25B of cash on hand, so they are actually flush with cash now! 😉 Obviously that plan didn't work out too well with the pandemic, but you can certainly undersand why a company would want to put that money to work versus just having it sitting around, waiting for a once-in-a-century event. Costs sounded higher than they want (who's aren't these days?) but the rest of the figures seem to all be trending in the right direction for what amounts to a start up getting itself out of debt. On the call the CFO said the plan was to reach the same amount of leverage they had in 2019 by 2025. Given what the industry went through, I'm honestly surprised they'd be able to do that in three years. And Royal sounded even more aggressive with their EPS being back to 2019 levels by 2025. If NCLH debt levels get back to where they were in 2019 by 2025, and they don't buy back any stock between now and then, with ~2X the shares outsanding now versus pre-pandemic, that would put the stock price around $30ish in 2-3 years time, which from where it is today is a nice annual return. As a (biased) long-term holder, I was content with the messaging.

For sure. Just given the dilution with all the extra shares issued, the three cruise companies would be doing well to get their stock prices back to half of where they were three years ago in the next year or two.

Yet according to Jefferies bookings continue to come in with pricing remaining strong amidst growing yields - go figure!

Yep - for sure mid-80% still is dismal and not profitable, not arguing with you there. But since NCL was in the mid-60% range last quarter, saying "The reduced protocols could increase occupancy significantly, yet still leave fall occupancy less than 50% overall" would seem to be a gross exaggeration.

NCL is the worst of the big three, yet even they have said they are expecting to be in the low-to-mid 80% range for fall, so how do you figure?

That shouldn't be a problem, because Oceania's policy aligns with whatever the strictest country's rules on the itinerary are (which is why for Alaska you still have to be vaxed and tested - because Oceania is following Canada rules).

Blame the countries they are visiting, not the cruise lines. I'm sure they would rather make it simple and drop everything. The policy stated is basically the same as NCL - the reason you only have those home ports listed is because the other home ports offer cruises to countries that still have testing requirements, like Canada (for all Alaska cruises) and Bermuda (for cruises that go there from the NE). So they are dropping requirements everywhere they are allowed to.

This is not accurate. That statement about enhanced facilities has been there since day 1 of the return to sailing and has not changed.

That's for sure, or at least they'd need to tap some of that $1b line of credit. Hopefully (speaking as an NCLH stock owner) the trajectory of improvement from Q1 to Q2 will continue and (most) everything they theorized in the call this morning will come to fruition.