Carnival's stock drops after swinging to wider-than-expected loss
Shares of Carnival Corp. dropped 3.6% in premarket trading Thursday, after the cruise operator reported a wider-than-expected fiscal second-quarter loss and revenue that fell more than forecast, but said it was seeing growing demand from new booking for next year. For the quarter to May 31, the company swung to a net loss of $4.37 billion, or $6.07 a share, from net income of $451 million, or 65 cents a share, in the year-ago period, as cruise operations had been halted for most of the quarter because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Excluding non-recurring items, such as a $2 billion of impairment charges, the adjusted loss per share was $3.30, compared with the FactSet consensus of $1.52. Total revenue fell to $700 million from $4.8 billion, to miss the FactSet consensus of $809 million. As of May 31, about half the guests with bookings have requested cash refunds. For 2021, capacity available for sale are within historical ranges, but at prices that are down in the low to mid-single digit percentage ranges. Booking volumes for 2021 for the six weeks ended May 31 were "meaningfully behind" the prior year, but volumes for the six weeks ended May 31 saw an improvement over the prior six weeks. Separately, Carnival said it plans to accelerate the removal of ships this year which were previously expected to be sold in coming years, with 6 ships expected to be disposed of in the next 90 days. The stock has more than doubled (up 105.3%) over the past three months through Wednesday but has tumbled 62.4% year to date, while the S&P 500 has slipped 3.6% this year.
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