Royal Caribbean Cruises has announced board authorization for a $500 million share repurchase program. The company said that it received board approval to implement a program to repurchase up to $500 million of its common stock. The plan will include opportunistic open market purchases over the coming periods. Last week we achieved our financial objective of becoming an Investment Grade company with Moody's announcement improving the company's credit rating to Baa3 with a stable outlook. "We continue to execute on our core financial objectives: improving shareholder returns, being an investment grade credit and moderately growing our business," said Jason T. Liberty, executive vice president and CFO.