Carnival Corporation Q3 Conference Call Highlghts

Carnival Corporation CCL reported its third quarter earnings on Tuesday. Shares of the company are neutral.

Below are some key highlights and takeaways from the company's conference call.

Operations and Growth:

• Our non-GAAP EPS for the third quarter was $1.58.
• I'm excited to report that this was $0.17 above the midpoint of our June guidance, driven essentially by three things.
• First, better than expected net revenue yields worth $0.11, which was evenly split between ticket and onboard and other yields.
• Second, lower than expected net cruise costs without fuel were $0.03.
• And third, lower fuel prices worth $0.02.
• We were pleased to see that net revenue yield and net ticket yields both turned positive in the third quarter.
• Net onboard and other yields increased over 5% despite lower occupancy, with increases on both sides of the Atlantic and across the board in almost all categories.

Guidance:

• Putting these factors together, our 2014 non-GAAP EPS guidance is $1.84 to $1.88 per share with a midpoint that is $0.19 higher than our June guidance.
• As we indicated in the press release, we expect net cruise costs per available lower berth day to be up around 3% for 2015.
• We expect these efforts to mitigate the vast majority of the impact the new eco requirements.
• As we indicated in the press release, we currently estimate that the new requirements will cost us about $0.10 in 2015.
• Going forward, we expect about half of this to disappear in 2016 and the remainder should just about disappear in 2017 as the result of the installation of EGCs on additional ships.