NEW SHIPS
Ten new ships are under construction and will follow in the wake of Voyager of the Seas. The honor of the next ship out of the construction bay belongs to our Celebrity Cruises brand. The 90,000-ton Millennium is scheduled to set sail June 17 on a 14-night cruise from Amsterdam to Russia. Celebrity Cruises has a total of four new ships on order - all 90,000-ton Millennium-class ships. When these four vessels are completed by 2002, Celebrity Cruises will have nearly doubled the size of its fleet within three years.

Our Royal Caribbean International brand has two more 142,000-ton phenomenons in the wings in its Eagle-class series, and has four 88,000-ton vessels in the works in its Vantage design set. With all of these orders, the Company now has some $5 billion earmarked for new-ship construction. That computes to 23,000 new berths - an approximate 70 percent increase in capacity by 2004.

There is no question that adding more than one new ship every six months will be extraordinarily challenging. There is also no question that we are extraordinarily well-placed to meet that challenge, having successfully brought 10 new ships to market in the last five years. We have taken extra steps to improve our recruiting, training and retention of employees and, as always, we have enormous confidence in the men and women who make us so successful. Since 1997, all employees also have received shares in our Company under a program called "Taking Stock in Employees", thus allowing all employees to share in the Company's growth and prosperity.

We continue to finance our growth with our strong operating cash flow, as well as access to the capital and bank markets. Again this year, we completed a public offering of 10.8 million shares of common stock. This equity offering further strengthened our balance sheet and led Standard & Poor's and Moody's to raise our investment grade rating to BBB and Baa2, respectively. We are pleased that the market has responded so favorably to our strong capital structure and operating fundamentals.