CARNIVAL PLC
For the period ended Apr 5, 2024. Filed Feb 23, 2024.
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Apr 5, 2024 · Filed Feb 23, 2024
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UNITED STATES
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Washington, D.C. 20549
SCHEDULE 14A
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Carnival Corporation
Carnival plc
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| | | | OUR COMPANY | | |
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| | Carnival Corporation & plc (NYSE: CCL and CUK; LSE: CCL) is the largest global cruise company and among the largest leisure travel companies with a portfolio of world-class cruise lines. Cruising offers a broad range of products and services to suit vacationing guests of many ages, backgrounds and interests. Each brand in our portfolio meets the needs of a unique set of consumer psychographics and vacation needs which allows us to penetrate large addressable customer segments. With our global corporate headquarters in Miami and several regional headquarters around the world, we are the only company in the world to be included in both the S&P 500 index in the U.S. and the FTSE 250 index in the UK. | | |||
| | | | OUR VISION | | |
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| | As the global leader in the cruise industry, we will lead the way in innovative and sustainable cruising to deliver memorable vacations and build borderless connections. | | |||
| | | | OUR PURPOSE & MISSION | | |
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| | To deliver unforgettable happiness to our guests by providing extraordinary cruise vacations, while honoring the integrity of every ocean we sail, place we visit and life we touch. | | |||
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| | | | | Carnival Place 3655 N.W. 87th Avenue Miami, Florida 33178-2428 United States | | | | Carnival House 100 Harbour Parade Southampton SO15 1ST United Kingdom | |
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| | | | Letter to Shareholders from our Chief Executive Officer | |
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JOSH WEINSTEIN
President, Chief Executive
Officer and Chief Climate
Officer
Dear Fellow Shareholders,
2023 was a turning point for our company. We consistently set records and achieved other significant milestones during the year, including:
Full year revenues hit an all-time high of $21.6 billion.
For the first time since the resumption of guest cruise operations, net income was positive during the third quarter, generating $1.07 billion.
We entered 2024 with our best booked position on record, for both price and occupancy.
Total customer deposits for each quarter throughout 2023 consistently surpassed the previous quarterly records.
We reduced our debt balance by $4.6 billion from its peak in the first quarter of 2023 and ended the year with $5.4 billion of liquidity.
The strengthening demand environment across all our brands contributed to our revenue growth as we drove improvements in ticket prices while closing the double-digit occupancy gap from the start of the year and reaching historical occupancy levels for the second half of 2023.
We believe our advertising investments and other demand generation efforts during the past 18 months have successfully elevated awareness and consideration for our brands, leading to record booking levels and revenue results. In addition, these efforts enabled us to attract more new-to-cruise and more new-to-brand guests compared to 2019. We are building momentum in closing the value gap to land-based alternatives, capturing over 3.5 million new-to-cruise guests in 2023 and remain well-positioned to take share from land-based alternatives.
We continue to take actions to further stimulate demand and maintain our momentum through 2024 and beyond. We are focused on ongoing improvements across the commercial space as we further roll out advancements to our yield management tools and lead generation techniques, continue to invest in sales and sales support, and build on already strong relationships with our trade partners. This is complemented by our strategy to pull forward the sale of onboard items through bundled product offerings and pre-cruise sales.
We are also not losing sight of our expense base, as we have worked to mitigate the impacts of a high inflation environment by leveraging our scale through cost optimization initiatives. We have made investments that we expect to increase our cost efficiencies in the future, including successfully installing SpaceX’s Starlink next generation internet across our fleet, which is expected to drive more than a 20% reduction in cost per megabit in 2024. In addition, we expect it will increase our bandwidth pipeline, resulting in both improved guest experience and higher onboard
Letter to Shareholders from our Chief Executive Officer
revenues. We also launched Maritime Asset Strategy Transformation (“MAST”), a centralized system developed to optimize equipment and machinery management across our brands and our fleet.
During 2023, we continued to work aggressively to reduce our environmental footprint and fuel consumption. Our deep commitment resulted in industry-leading fuel efficiency and a more than 10% reduction in absolute greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions compared to our peak year of 2011, despite capacity growth of 30% over the same period. We also exceeded our shore power capability goal and our fleet now has twice as many ships ready to plug into shore power as there are ports currently able to provide it.
As a result of our fleet optimization efforts, our fleet is now one year younger than prior to pausing our guest cruise operations four years ago. During 2023 alone we benefited from the introduction of three fantastic new ships including Carnival Celebration and Arvia, leveraging the scale of our popular and exceptionally efficient series of excel-class ships, and Seabourn Pursuit, our second luxury expedition ship. In addition, Carnival Cruise Line welcomed Carnival Venezia, which was transferred from Costa, becoming the first ship as part of Carnival’s Fun Italian Style™ platform. We will continue to optimize our brand portfolio by transferring Costa Firenze to Carnival Cruise Line in 2024.
We also made meaningful progress in other strategic asset projects. We began construction on Celebration Key in Grand Bahama, which will be the largest and closest exclusive destination in our portfolio. While not expected to open until summer 2025, we have begun generating consumer awareness and excitement around this fantastic upcoming destination. We also started the process for a significant upsize in guest traffic at Half Moon Cay, our exclusive and beautiful pristine island destination in The Bahamas, with the creation of a pier-side berth that can accommodate our largest vessels. In addition, we commenced work with our Grand Bahama Shipyard partners on the construction of two floating docks, one of which will have the largest lifting capacity in the world. Together, these strategic investments are expected to significantly benefit us by helping to reduce travel time, further reducing our fuel consumption and preserving ship revenue days.
Our significantly improved 2023 cash from operations enabled us to notably reduce the substantial debt balance incurred during the pause of guest cruise operations. In 2023, we made sizeable debt prepayments and ended the year with over $5 billion of liquidity. Looking forward, we expect to continue to strategically refinance and prepay debt, leveraging our improving operating cash flow and the return of substantially all of the remaining credit card reserves during the first quarter of 2024.
In addition, with nearly two-thirds of 2024 on the books already, we are well positioned to achieve another year of record revenues. This, combined with excess liquidity, is expected to enable us to continue actively managing down debt and reducing interest expense, leaving us on our path back to achieving investment grade credit ratings and higher return on invested capital.
Letter to Shareholders from our Chief Executive Officer
This has been a truly remarkable year, and we have come a long way in an incredibly short amount of time. We delivered unforgettable happiness to over 12 million guests this year and look forward to continuing to provide our guests with extraordinary cruise vacations in 2024, while honoring the integrity of every ocean we sail, place we visit and life we touch.
Sincerely,
JOSH WEINSTEIN
President, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Climate Officer
February 23, 2024
The text of this filing, as the company filed it with the SEC, without its images or exhibits. This is not investment advice.