Royal Caribbean says it sold its luxury brand Azamara in part to focus on its Celebrity Cruises brand, among others. Here, the Celebrity Silhouette is moored in Miami on a recent day.
Daniel Slim / AFP via Getty Images
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Royal Caribbean Group
sells its three-ship Azamara brand to a privately held company for about $ 200 million.
In a press release on Tuesday,
Royal Caribbean
Group (ticker: RCL) said the deal allows it to focus on expanding its Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises and Silversea brands.
Shares hovered around $ 74 and traded around noon on Tuesday, with an increase of more than 1% in the price of the day and ahead of the S&P 500 gain of around 0.6%.
Brandt Montour, a JPMorgan analyst, described Azamara on Tuesday in a research note as “a high-end brand that focuses on more exotic / immersive itineraries.” He also noted that the transaction makes sense “given [that] Azamara’s fleet is likely to burn effective for the foreseeable future, and we believe RCL saw it as a non-core brand with no serious plans to make it grow significantly for the foreseeable future ”.
Royal Caribbean will record a one-time non-cash impairment charge of $ 170 million, though it added that it does not expect the sale to “have a material impact” on future financial results.
Royal Caribbean has been mainly closed for almost a year due to the pandemic.
While their ships are idle, Royal and his comrades have been burning hundreds of millions of troops each month. They have raised billions of dollars to capitalize on them, but they have also focused on reducing costs.
For example,
Carnival (CCL),
the largest cruise line company said last week it would withdraw 19 ships from its fleet.
Of the three major cruise operators based in the United States, Royal is the second largest, followed by
Norway Cruise Line Holdings
(NCLH).
Separately, Norwegian said on Tuesday that it has extended the suspension of all its cruises with boarding dates until April 30.
Write to Lawrence C. Strauss to [email protected]