Arnold Donald
Management
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our First Quarter 2017 Earnings Conference Call. I am Arnold Donald, President and CEO of Carnival Corporation & plc. Thank you all for joining us this morning. Today, I am joined by our Chairman, Micky Arison via phone from Europe as well as David Bernstein, our Chief Financial Officer; and Beth Roberts, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Here with me here in Miami. 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. Our company is off to a good start again this year with adjusted earnings of $0.38 per share exceeding the midpoint of our guidance by $0.05. Our first quarter results combined with our strong book position enabled us to increase the midpoint of our previous guidance range by $0.15 and raise our full year earnings expectations leaving us well positioned to deliver for the year. Year-over-year for the first quarter despite a $0.13 drag from fuel and currency both moving against us, strong operational improvement contributed $0.10 per share to the bottom line, which when combined with $0.02 of accretion from our share repurchase program enabled us to exceed the high end of our guidance range for the quarter. Our business, any business is all about the people. Our consistently strong financial performance is only possible because of the extraordinary efforts of our employees worldwide to exceed our GAAP expectations and to deliver memorable vacation experiences as well as our travel agent partners who support our brands around the globe. It was reinforcing to see constant currency revenue yield growth this quarter of roughly 3.8% and that's on top of the 4.7% improvement achieved in the first quarter last year. We continue…