Carnival Corp stock (NYSE: CCL) closed roughly flat on Tuesday even after the company blamed omicron as it reported weaker-than-expected results for its fiscal first quarter.
Important points in Carnival Q1 earnings report
Narrowed quarterly loss from $1.97 billion to $1.89 billion.
Per-share loss stood at $1.66 versus last year’s $1.80.
Revenue jumped sharply from $26 million to $1.62 billion.
Consensus was for $1.28 a share loss on $2.26 billion in revenue.
Carnival values its liquidity at $7.20 billion as per the earnings press release.
Highlights from CEO Donald’s interview on CNBC’s ‘Closing Bell’
Commenting on how Carnival plans on dealing with higher fuel prices, CEO Arnold Donald said on CNBC’s “Closing Bell”:
First, we manage consumption. 25% of our ships will be new once we’re back at 100%. We took out less efficient ships about 22 of them. Plus, we have many initiatives for a better fuel efficiency from itinerary planning to fine-tuning the engines and using different lighting conservation.
About 75% of Carnival ships are sailing again as of march. According to the chief executive, booking have already started to pick up in recent week. Donald added:
75% of our ships as of March are sailing again. We’ve seen unbelievable strength in bookings in our Carnival brand over the past three weeks; extraordinary bookings at higher pricing. So, we have a lot of momentum.
The strength, he added, was evident across both North American and European brands. Carnival replaced itineraries to Eastern Europe due to the ongoing war, Donald revealed. He expects each of the company’s brand to have its full fleet back in 2023.
We’re looking at positive EBITDA in Q3. In 2023, we’re optimistic we’ll have the full fleet sailing. We already have 40 sailings that are now 100% occupancy. So, we see that as an additional indication of strong momentum.
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