Royal Caribbean Group will have its full fleet back in cruise service in time for the lucrative summer season, helping set up a path to profitability later this year.

“We expect a net loss for the first half of 2022 due to the impact of Omicron and a return to profitability in the second half of the year,” said Jason Liberty, president and CEO, on the company’s fourth quarter and year end earnings call on Friday.

Liberty said that Omicron had created some short-term challenges and will likely delay the company’s return to profitability by a few months.

“We remain confident that we will have a strong spring and summer season with great demand for cruising, both domestically and internationally,” he said. The robust secular trends of experiences over things that has propelled our business in the past few years is now recovering towards pre-COVID levels.”

Naftali Holtz, chief financial officer, said the company expected load factors of 60 percent on core itineraries in the first quarter, which would improve.

“We expect our load factors to continue to steadily increase month-over-month and approach historical levels in the third quarter,” he said.