Page 29: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (February 2025)

ON THE REBOUND ost-Pandemic, the fortunes of the big cruise companies have brightened dramatically. A late

December, 2024 earnings release from Carnival

Corporation & plc (NYSE: CCL), encompass-

Ping brands including Carnival Cruise, Holland

America, Cunard, Princess Cruises and others, says it all: “This has been an incredibly strong ? nish to a record year,” said CCL’s CEO Josh Weinstein, in its statement. “Revenues hit an all-time high driven by a strong demand environment that we elevated throughout the year, enabling us to outper- form our initial 2024 guidance by $700 million and deliver nearly $2 billion more to the bottom line, year-over-year,” with overall revenue surging above $25 billion in 2024.

And CCL is not done: “2025 is shaping up to be another banner year …” said Weinstein.

Rebounding from Covid-19 3030 E. Pershing St.

The pandemic, which began abruptly in March 2020, sent

Appleton, WI 54911 USA the cruise industry, among others, into a seeming death spiral, with many cruise ships sent to the scrap yard and cruise com- [email protected] panies bleeding cash. During the Pandemic era with its vessel www.appletonmarine.com anchored outside the big ports, the cruise industry’s debt load ballooned, as the companies needed to keep themselves a? oat

Phone: (920) 738-5432 (as well as ? nancing newbuilds that were on order). Consider

Manufactured in the USA the case of CCL: at end 2019, CCL’s long-term debt stood at just under $10B. A year into the pandemic, the measure had soared to $26.5B on the balance sheet; fast forward another year, February, 2022, and the CCL balance sheet showed just under $30 billion of long term debt, reaching a zenith around $35 billion in January, 2023, before the tide began turning.

But by mid-2022, when the Center for Disease Control (CDC) ended its Covid-19 restrictions, the industry that had been brought to a standstill (with passenger counts of 5.8 mil- lion and 4.8 million in 2020 and 2021, respectively compared to 29.7 million in 2019), the comeback started.

Its turnaround didn’t even take three years, as Cruise Lines

International Association (CLIA) noted in its mid-2024 “State of the Cruise Industry” report that passenger counts had re- covered from pre-Pandemic levels with 31.7 million passen- gers sailing in 2023, with CLIA was forecasting 40 million total passengers sailing annually by 2027.

To that end, the cruise majors are girding up for this increased demand with new ship orders. Royal Caribbean Group (NYSE:

RCL) placed an order with Meyer Turku for a fourth Icon class 7,600-passenger ship, which coincided with initiation of op- tions for two additional vessels with an anticipated 2027 de- livery. The lead ship in the Icon class, the LNG-fueled ICON

OF THE SEAS, cost around $1 billion, and was delivered at the beginning of 2024. Two others, STAR OF THE SEAS, and a still un-named vessel, are set for deliveries in Q3 2025, and Q2, 2026, respectively. A smaller “Xcel Class” vessel, the 3,950-passenger CELEBRITY XCEL, is under construction at

Chantiers de l’Atlantique with an anticipated Q4 2025 delivery.

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