The brand new Carnival Cruise Line ship Mardi Gras, docked in Canaveral, Florida, on July 30, 2021.
Joe Burbank | Orlando Sentinel | Tribune News Service | beautiful pictures
Shares of Carnival fell below their pandemic lows on Friday after the cruise company released third-quarter earnings revealing higher costs related to inflation, supply chain disruptions and maintaining protocols. health and safety.
Shares of Carnival fell about 20% in late morning trading. Shares fell to a 52-week low of $7.01 in early trading, below the stock’s pandemic low in April 2020, when the stock traded around $7.80. during the day.
If Friday’s loss were to hold, it would knock nearly $3 billion off Carnival’s market value. Shares of Norway and Royal Caribbean also fell Friday, down 14% and 11% respectively.
Carnival reported an adjusted net loss of $770 million, or 65 cents per share, on $4.3 billion in revenue. Total operating and expenses totaled $3.4 billion in the quarter, compared with $1.6 billion in expenses in the third quarter of 2021.
Carnival said bookings improved 15 percentage points from the previous quarter to 84%. This compares to a 54% occupancy rate in the same period in 2021. Despite governments easing pandemic-era protocols in both the US and more recently Canada, the company is projecting fourth-quarter bookings below 2019 levels – at lower rates.
Travel agencies around the world are struggling with huge debts done during the Covid lockdown, driving interest rates higher. Carnival on Friday morning reported a principal payment of $1 billion so far for 2022 and a total of $9 billion due in 2025.
