The brand recent Carnival Cruise Line ship Mardi Gras, docked at Port Canaveral, Florida, on July 30, 2021.
Joe Burbank | Orlando Sentinel | Tribune News Service | Getty Images
Shares of Carnival fell below their pandemic lows Friday after the cruising company posted third-quarter earnings that exposed higher costs related to inflation, supply chain disruptions and the upkeep of health and safety protocols.
Shares of Carnival shed 23% through the session. The stock closed at a recent 52-week low of $7.03, below its pandemic plunge lows of April 2020, when shares traded around $7.80 intraday.
Friday’s losses knock about $2.5 billion off Carnival’s market value. Shares of Norwegian and Royal Caribbean also fell Friday, down 18% and 13%, respectively.
Carnival reported adjusted net losses of $770 million, or 65 cents per share, on $4.3 billion in revenue. Operating costs and expenses totaled $3.4 billion through the quarter, compared with costs of $1.6 billion within the third quarter 2021.
Carnival said bookings improved 15 percentage points from the prior quarter to 84%. That compares with 54% occupancy through the same period in 2021. Despite governments rest of pandemic-era protocols in each the U.S. and, more recently, Canada, the corporate is projecting fourth-quarter bookings below 2019 levels — at lower prices.
Cruise corporations across the board are scuffling with massive debts taken on during Covid lockdowns, made dearer by rising rates of interest. Carnival on Friday morning reported $1 billion in principal payments to date for 2022 and a complete of $9 billion due by 2025.
