Josh Weinstein
President and Chief Executive Officer at Carnival Co. &
Thanks, Beth. Before I begin, I'd like to express my support and heartfelt sympathy for all those impacted by Hurricane Helene this past week. Our thoughts and prayers are with you. With that, I'll turn to our prepared remarks. As September comes to an end and we close out the year, I am happy to report that we are delivering well in excess of 2024 expectations. We've also built an even stronger base of business for 2025, and we're off to an unprecedented start to 2026. Our third quarter, by all accounts, was phenomenal, breaking multiple records and outperforming on every measure. Revenues hit an all-time high of almost $8 billion, $1 billion more than last year's record levels. Record EBITDA exceeded $2.8 billion, up $600 million over last year and $160 million over guidance.
And we delivered over 60% more net income than the year prior, achieving double digit ROIC as of the end of our third quarter. These improvements were driven by high margins, same shift yield growth across all major brands, not driven by capacity growth, and it resulted in EBITDA and operating income on a unit basis of 20% and 26%, respectively, to levels we've not seen in the last 15 years.
Strong demand enabled us to increase our full year yield guidance for the third time this year, and consistent with our historical emphasis on efficiencies, we also improved our cost guidance, which enabled us to drive more revenue to the bottom line. With around 99% of our 2024 ticket revenue already on the books, we're poised to deliver record EBITDA of $6 billion, almost $600 million above our prior peak and $400 million above the original guidance we set in December. ROIC is expected to end the year at 10.5%, a point and a half better than our original December guidance, and almost double last year's ending point.
Looking forward, the momentum continues as we actively manage the demand curve. At this point in time, 2025 is a historical high on both occupancy and price. All core deployments are at higher prices than the prior year. Every brand in our portfolio is well booked at higher prices in 2025, demonstrating the ongoing benefit of our demand generation efforts throughout our optimized portfolio.
Our base loading strategy is continuing to work well, allowing us to take price, thanks to having pulled ahead on occupancy. In fact, in the last three months, our 2025 booked positions price advantage versus last year has actually widened for the full year and for each quarter individually, and with nearly half of 2025 already booked, we feel confident in maintaining our trajectory.
While early days, the benefit of our enhanced commercial performance is carrying nicely into 2026 as we just achieved record booking volumes in the last three months for sailing that far out. This incredibly strong book position for 2024, 2025 and 2026 drove record third quarter customer deposits towards $7 billion, and that's along with continued growth in pre-curse purchases of onboard revenue.
It's also gratifying to note that onboard spending levels were not only up strong again this quarter, our year-over-year improvement in onboard per diems actually accelerated from the prior quarter. In essence, all demand indicators are continuing to move in the right direction, and we have so much more in the pipeline to sustain this momentum, including the North American premiere of the highly successful Sun Princess in just a few weeks. This will be followed by the introduction of her sister ship, Star Princess, the second next generation Princess ship coming online in a year.
We also continue to invest in the existing fleet with major modernization programs like Aida Evolution expected to deliver additional revenue uplift over the coming years. As you know, we're not just going to be buoyed by our ship. I can't wait for the introduction of our game changing Bahamian destination, Celebration Key. It has five portals, built for fun, will open in July 2025, but it really ramps up in 2026 when Celebration Key serves as a premium call for 19 Carnival Cruise Line ships. And rest assured, we're already planning for our phase two landside development to fully leverage the use of the four berths we're building.
In 2026, there's also the mid-year introduction of a two-berth pier at Half Moon Cay, our naturally beautiful and pristine beach, consistently rated among the top private islands in the Caribbean. These two destinations will be available to even our largest ships, further reducing fuel costs and our environmental footprint at the same time. Stay tuned as we'll be sharing more exciting reveals about Half Moon Cay in the next few months.
We're also stepping up our marketing efforts in the fourth quarter, which David will touch on. Our elevated marketing investment has been working as we continue to drive demand well in excess of our capacity growth, with year-to-date web visits up over 40% versus 2019, paid search up more than 60% and natural search up over 70%. Our brands are iterating on their creative marketing and constantly finding ways to attract more attention to the amazing product and execution we already deliver on board. And it is continuing to pay off as we chip away at the unwarranted price disparity to land based vacations. All of these activities, along with strong support from our travel agent partners, have allowed us to once again take share from land-based peers as we attract even more new to cruise guests. In fact, both new to cruise and repeat guests were up double-digit percentages over last year.
Now, turning to our balance sheet, we expect to continue on our path toward investment grades and have a clear line of sight for further debt pay down, having recently finalized our order book through 2028. We have just three ships spread over the next four years, that's one ship delivery in 2025, none in '26 and one ship in the each of 2027 and 2028. This limited order book should also position us well to continue to create demand in excess of capacity growth. Our continued focus on high margin, same ship yield growth should deliver improving EBITDA off of this year's record levels.
Of course, strong and growing free cash flow and further debt reduction provide a consistent formula for ongoing improvement in our leverage metrics and a continuation in the trajectory we have experienced already this year, resulting in a two-turn improvement in debt to EBITDA in just nine months.
We have certainly come a long way in a relatively short amount of time. In just two years, we've already more than doubled our revenue and are going from negative EBITDA to an expected all time high of $6 billion this year. This remarkable achievement is all thanks to our global team. They continue to outperform as we progress through 2024, and they are also setting us up for a successful 2025.
It is their continued execution that has put us firmly on the path to achieving our sea change target. And just as important, they once again powered our ability to deliver unforgettable happiness to nearly 4 million guests this past quarter, by providing them with extraordinary cruise vacations while honoring the integrity of every ocean we sail, place we visit, and life we touch.
With that, I'll turn the call over to David.
