Norwegian Cruise Line says third-quarter results will beat its own guidance

The company also gives a first look at 2027 financing costs, guiding net interest expense to $860-880 million

Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings said its third-quarter 2026 results will come in above the guidance it gave with second-quarter earnings, pointing to stronger than expected revenue. The company reaffirmed its full-year 2026 guidance.

That baseline was set on July 30, 2026, when Norwegian's second-quarter release put third-quarter adjusted EBITDA at $874 million and an adjusted operational EBITDA margin of 41.2%, according to the company's Q2 2026 earnings release. The same release set full-year 2026 adjusted earnings per share at approximately $1.50.

Norwegian also gave its first outlook for 2027 net interest expense, guiding to a range of $860 million to $880 million. The figure is adjusted for transactions announced separately by its subsidiary NCL Corporation. As of June 30, 2026, Norwegian carried total debt of $15.0 billion and net debt of $14.8 billion, according to its Q2 2026 earnings release.

A preannouncement that tops guidance set only weeks earlier is a rarer sequence than simply meeting a target, and it suggests demand and pricing held up better than management itself had expected. That the company left its full-year outlook unchanged while raising the bar for the current quarter points to the upside being concentrated in the third quarter rather than a broader reset of the year. The new 2027 interest expense range gives investors their first concrete read on financing costs a year out, a number that will determine how much of any earnings improvement is offset by interest costs and how much reaches the bottom line.