{"id":34171,"date":"2023-05-04T15:59:30","date_gmt":"2023-05-04T15:59:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/royal-caribbean-raises-profit\/"},"modified":"2023-05-04T16:37:17","modified_gmt":"2023-05-04T16:37:17","slug":"royal-caribbean-raises-profit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/royal-caribbean-raises-profit\/","title":{"rendered":"Royal Caribbean raises profit forecast buoyed by travel boom, higher prices"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Deborah Mary Sophia<\/p>\n<p>(Reuters) &#8211;     Royal Caribbean Group raised its annual profit forecast after upbeat quarterly results on Thursday, cruising on the back of higher ticket prices and pent-up leisure travel demand, sending shares up nearly 8%.<\/p>\n<p>The Miami, Florida-based company also projected current-quarter earnings well above Wall Street estimates and said bookings outpaced 2019 levels by &#8220;a very wide margin&#8221; throughout the first quarter and into April.<\/p>\n<p>Higher ticket prices from cruise liners aimed at offseting the impact of rising fuel costs have not deterred well-to-do Americans from splurging on cruise vacations including on-board amenities such as spas and gaming after the easing of pandemic restrictions.<\/p>\n<p>That has driven a sharp rebound in occupancy rates and booking volumes, propelling Royal Caribbean to a record &#8220;wave season&#8221;, a crucial period between January and March when cruise operators offer special deals and discounts for the year.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We knew that demand for our business was strong &#8230; (but) what transpired over the past four months was much better than we had anticipated,&#8221; Royal Caribbean CEO Jason Liberty said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The fact that demand for the coming 9 months is so much stronger &#8230; says a lot about the strength of the consumer,&#8221; Liberty added.<\/p>\n<p>Royal Caribbean, which owns Celebrity Cruises and Silversea Cruises, said on-board and other revenue more than doubled to $988.6 million in the quarter. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This was the best quarterly cruise result vs. expectations we have seen in many years,&#8221; Truist Securities analyst Patrick Scholes said. <\/p>\n<p>The company reported a per-share loss of 23 cents, excluding items, for the quarter ended March 31, much smaller than estimates of 70 cents. Revenue of $2.89 billion topped expectations of $2.82 billion.<\/p>\n<p>Royal Caribbean now expects annual adjusted profit of $4.40 to $4.80 per share, a &#8220;big uptick&#8221; from its earlier forecast of $3.00 \u202fto \u202f$3.60 per share. <\/p>\n<p>Earlier this week, rival Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd also raised its annual profit forecast.<\/p>\n<p \/>\n<p> (Reporting by Anne Florentyna Gnanaraja Sekar and Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Vinay Dwivedi)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/royal-caribbean-lifts-profit\/file-photo-illustration-shows-royal-caribbean-logo\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportBusinessNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ430HX-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ430HX-VIEWIMAGE\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Deborah Mary Sophia (Reuters) &#8211; Royal Caribbean Group raised its annual profit forecast after upbeat quarterly results on Thursday, cruising on the back of higher ticket prices and pent-up leisure travel demand, sending shares up nearly 8%. The Miami, Florida-based company also projected current-quarter earnings well above Wall Street estimates and said bookings outpaced [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":34172,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1213],"tags":[1223],"class_list":["post-34171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-business","tag-updated"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportBusinessNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ430HX-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34171"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34503,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34171\/revisions\/34503"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}