Arnold W. Donald
President and Chief Executive Officer at Carnival Co. &
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our business update conference call. I'm Arnold Donald, President and CEO of Carnival Corporation & plc. Today, I'm joined telephonically by our Chairman, Micky Arison, as well as David Bernstein, our Chief Financial Officer; and Beth Roberts, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Thank you all for joining us this morning.
Now before I begin, please note that some of our remarks on this call will be forward-looking. Therefore, I must refer you to the cautionary statement in today's press release.
We are absolutely thrilled to be back doing what we do best, delivering amazing, memorable vacation experiences to our guests. Our team members are overjoyed to be back on board and it shows our guests are having a phenomenal time. Our onboard revenues for guests are off the charts, and our Net Promoter Scores have been exceptionally strong.
I've had the pleasure of visiting a number of ships in recent weeks, both here in the U.S. and abroad. And I can tell you, the ship looks spectacular, and the crew has an amazing energy. There is such an incredible spirit on board. Our protocols have been working well, beginning with a seamless embarkation experience and have enabled us to build occupancy levels at a significant pace as we return more ships to service.
Our brands executed extremely well in this initial phase of our return to serve, particularly given significant restrictions on international travel, hampering our ability to offer our normal content-rich deployment options, as well as the operating requirements in certain jurisdictions that limit our normally high occupancy levels.
Our itinerary planners came up with creative deployment alternatives, our marketing department made them accessible with little investment, our yield managers priced them appropriately to achieve occupancy targets very close to them, and coupled them with bundled packages to drive exceptionally strong revenue on board. And despite all the additional protocols, our crew delivered an amazing guest experience. The combination of which enabled us to deliver cruise vacations at scale while producing significant cash from these restricted voyages.
Now while we normally don't disclose this level of information, we try to find a way to give you a sense of why we're viewing the restart as hugely successful beyond the enthusiasm of our guests and crew and the unprecedented Net Promoter Scores.
It became complicated because most of our voyages, while cash flow positive, are programs that could not be compared to 2019. And in most cases, would normally be priced lower than the 2019 alternatives. So for example, in the U.K., we're only able to offer senior cruises without any ports of call, and that's our version of vacation, which were not comparable in ticket prices to peak season Mediterranean or Baltic sailings offered in the summer of 2019. That said, even with occupancy limitations, these cruises generated cash for our stakeholders. They supported a return for our workforce, and they successfully served guests, resulting in high satisfaction levels.
Now at Carnival Cruise Line, we were able to offer more comparable itineraries than 2019, our revenue per dims were up 20% compared to 2019 and that's inclusive of the impact of incentives from previous cancellations, and that's despite the quoting nature of the bookings. In fact, Carnival Cruise Lines restarted more ships out of the United States than any of the cruise brand and still achieved occupancy above 70%, all of which combined to generate an even greater cash contribution. Clearly, Carnival Cruise Line is a brand that continues to outperform.
While the Delta variant and its corresponding effect on consumer confidence has certainly created a myriad of operating challenges for us to navigate in the near term and has led to some booking volatility in August, to-date it has not had a significant impact on our ultimate plan to return our full fleet to guest operations in the spring of 2022.
On our last quarterly business update, we said that we expected the environment to remain dynamic and it certainly have. Of course, agility has been a key strength of ours over the last 18 months, and we continue to aggressively manage to optimize given this ever-changing landscape. In fact, while by design, we're not yet at 100% occupancy. We have individual sailings with over 4,000 guests. To-date, we have carried over 0.5 million guests this year already. And on any given day, we are now successfully carrying around 50,000 guests, and expect that number to continue to rise as we introduce more capacity and as we increase occupancy over the coming months.
The Delta variant has clearly impacted our protocols, which will continue to evolve based on the local environment. In markets like the U.S., where case counts are higher, we've taken swift actions to reinforce our already strong protocol, such as additional testing requirements and indoor mass requirements with all U.S. sailings operating under the CDC's vaccination requirements.
Our protocols go above and beyond the terms of the conditional sale order and are much more rigorous than comparable land-based alternative. Again, our highest responsibility and therefore, our top priority is always compliance, environmental protection and the health, safety and well-being of everyone, our guests, the people in the communities we touch and serve and of course, our Carnival family, our team members shipboard and shoreside.
The Delta variant has also created some disruption in our supply chain, impacted the timing of opening for some destinations and created a heightened level of uncertainty that has been reflected in the broader travel sector and in our own booking trends. We quickly adjusted our deployment to push out the start date on a few select voyages. For some of our more exotic winter deployments, like our popular world cruises, we rebooked guests for our 2023 departures. Effectively, we've managed our near-term capacity to optimize the current environment, just as we indicated we would. The modifications we've made to the pace of the roll of our fleet will optimize our cash position in the near term.
Looking forward, we continue to work towards resuming full operations in the spring, in time for our important summer season where we make the lion's share of our operating profit. Of course, we have ample liquidity to see us through to full operation. And we continue with a prudent focus on cash management to ensure we have flexibility under a multitude of scenarios.
The current environment, while choppy, has improved dramatically since last summer, and it should improve even further by next summer if the current trend of vaccine rollout and advancements in therapies continues. For instance, in markets like the U.K., where vaccination rates are already higher, consumer confidence remains strong, and we are seeing strong momentum. So far, we've announced the resumption of guest cruise operations for 71 ships through next spring, and that's across eight of our nine brands. We're evaluating the remaining shifts through next spring, with a continued focus on maximizing future cash flow while delivering a great guest experience in a way that serves the best interest of public health. Importantly, even at this very early stage of our rollout, our ships are generating positive cash flow. Based on our current rollout, we expect cash from operations for the whole company to turn positive at some point early next year.
Looking forward, we believe we have the potential to generate higher EBITDA in 2023 compared to 2019, given despite our modest growth rate, additional capacity and our improved cost structure. As further insight into booking trends, we are well positioned to build on a solid book position and intentionally constrained capacity for the remainder of 2021 and into the first half of 2022.
With the existing demand and limited capacity, we are focused on maintaining price. Even recently with heightened uncertainty from the Delta variant affecting travel decisions broadly, we continue to maintain price. We have also opened bookings earlier for cruises in 2023, and we're achieving those early bookings with strong demand and good prices. And based on that success, we've begun to launch 2024 sailings even earlier. In fact, these efforts contributed to the $630 million increase in guest deposits, our long-term guest deposits. And that's deposits on bookings beyond 12 months, are 3 times historical levels, driven in part by our proactive efforts to open more inventory for sale in outer years. Now we expect guests deposits to continue to grow through the restart as we return more ships to service and as we build occupancy levels. Again, these favorable trends continue despite dramatically reduced advertising expense.
We continue to focus our efforts on our lower cost channels like direct marketing to our sizable past guest database of over 40 million guests, and earned media, as we build on our multiple new ship launches and restart news flow. Of course, and most importantly, we are delivering on our guest experience. Word-of-mouth remains the number-one reason people take their first cruise. And as I mentioned, our Net Promoter Scores are well above historical levels across our ships that have returned to service so far.
During the quarter, we furthered our strong track record of responsibly managing the balance sheet. We completed two refinancing transactions, among other efforts, resulting in a meaningful reduction in annual interest expense. We have many more opportunities for refinancing ahead and are working through them at an aggressive pace. Also importantly, we have continued to make advancements in our sustainability efforts.
Last week, we published our 11th Annual Sustainability Report, Sustainable from Ship to Shore, which can be found on our sustainability website www.carnivalsustainability.com. In the report, we build on the achievement of our 2020 goal by sharing more details on our 2030 goals and our 2050 aspiration. The report shares additional light on the six focus areas that will guide our long-term sustainability vision, including climate action, circular economy -- that's wage reduction, sustainable tourism, health and well-being, diversity, equity and inclusion and biodiversity and conservation. Now these areas align with United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.
Climate action is a top sustainability focus area. We are committed to decarbonization, and we aspire to be carbon neutral by 2050. As we have previously shared, despite 25% capacity growth since that time, our absolute carbon emissions peaked in 2011 and will remain below those levels. We are working towards transitioning our energy needs to alternative fuels and investing in new low-carbon technologies.
Now because of the pause in guest cruise operations, the 2020 sustainability performance measures are not comparable to prior year data. That said, there is a lot of valuable information on the progress we made in our sustainability journey despite what an incredibly challenging year. We were clearly among the most impacted companies by COVID-19, and I'm very proud of all we've accomplished collectively to sustain our organization through these challenging times, including all we did for our loyal guests, all we did for our other many stakeholders, and all we did for each other within our Carnival family.
In many regards, I believe our collective response to the pandemic is strong testimony to the sustainability of our company. For that, I again express my deepest appreciation to our Carnival team members, both shipboard and shoreside, who consistently went above and beyond. I'm very humbled by the dedication I've seen in these past 18 months. Of course, we couldn't have done it without the overwhelming support from all of you who are listening on this call, all of our stakeholders.
So once again, thank you to our valued guests. Thank you to our travel agent partners. Thank you to all the many communities and governments that facilitated getting our crews vaccinated. Thank you, to our suppliers and our other many stakeholders. And of course, thank you to our investors for your continued confidence in us and for your ongoing support.
We continue to move forward in a very positive way. Throughout the pause, we've been proactively managing to resume operations as an even stronger operating company. Our strategic decision to accelerate the exit of 19 ships left us with a more efficient and effective fleet, and has lowered our capacity growth to roughly 2.5% compounded annually from 2019 through 2025, and that's down from 4.5% pre-COVID.
We've opportunistically rebalanced our portfolio through the ship exits as well as a future ship transfer, any modification to our newbuild schedule to optimize our asset allocation, maximize cash generation and improve our return on invested capital. While capacity growth is constrained, we will benefit from an exciting roster of new ships spread across our brands, enabling us to capitalize on the pent-up demand and drive even more enthusiasm and excitement around our restart plan. And we will achieve a structural benefit to unit costs in 2023 as we introduce these new, larger and more efficient ships, coupled with the 19 ships leaving the fleet, which were among our least efficient, with the aggressive actions we've already taken, optimizing our portfolio and reducing capacity. We are well positioned to capitalize on pent-up demand and to emerge a leaner, more efficient company, reinforcing our global industry-leading position. We have secured sufficient liquidity to see us through to full operation.
Once we return the full operation, our cash flow will be the primary driver to return to investment-grade credit over time, creating greater shareholder value. Again, thank you for your support, and we can't wait to welcome everyone back on board.
With that, I'll turn the call over to David.
