Today’s Change
Current Price
Carnival (CCL +13.41%), a global cruise operator with a multi-brand ocean fleet, closed at $25.11, up 13.43%. Tuesday’s gain followed premarket earnings and revenue that topped Wall Street estimates. Investors are watching record bookings, customer deposits, and the higher full-year outlook to develop into a higher stock price. Trading volume reached 70.7M shares, coming in about 246% above its three-month average of 20.4M shares.
How the markets moved today
The S&P 500 (^GSPC -0.17%) fell 0.18% to 7,670, while the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC -0.09%) slipped 0.09% to 26,798. Among leisure travel and cruise operators, Royal Caribbean Cruises (RCL +7.45%) rose 7.48% to $260.73 and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings (NCLH +3.42%) gained 3.42% to $14.80 as cruise sentiment improved after Carnival’s earnings update.
What this means for investors
It was an excellent quarter for Carnival as the company sailed past Wall Street’s expectations on both the top and bottom lines. In the company’s Q3 press release, CEO Josh Weinstein explained,
We delivered another quarter of top and bottom-line records, with accelerating demand and even stronger cost discipline driving results ahead of our expectations.
Looking ahead, the company announced that 2027 is already half-booked, with bookings and pricing at record levels. Management also noted that 2028 is well ahead of its historical booking curve, painting a rosy outlook for CCL stock.
On top of this impressive demand, Weinstein noted that Carnival had reduced its total debt to below $24 billion — well below its 2023 high of $36 billion. This deleveraging should help with capital costs and leave debt at a much more reasonable level, given the company expects to earn over $7 billion in adjusted EBITDA this year.
Trading at 11 times forward earnings and with an EV/EBITDA ratio of 7.5, Carnival could still offer solid upside to investors comfortable taking on risks such as fuel pricing and geopolitical tensions that the company has recently navigated.
