The last earnings report out of the cruise line industry for the 2024 calendar year shows that folks still can't get enough of watery escapes. Carnival Corp. (CCL -2.26%) (CUK -2.41%) posted its fiscal fourth-quarter results on Friday morning, and it once again exceeded expectations.
Carnival shares have more than tripled since the start of 2023. A strong report for the seasonally sleepy fall season is encouraging, and the world's largest cruise line operator continues to set new records for revenue, net yields, and bookings for future sailings. Indeed, the word "record" appears 17 times in its earnings release.
Let's take a closer look at how Carnival is now positioned heading into 2025.
It's been a pleasure cruise
A strong showing by Carnival isn't really a surprise. It's been consistently topping expectations over the past two years. There were also at least seven different analysts jacking up their price targets for the stock over the past two weeks. It was still a seaworthy performance.
Revenue rose 10% to $5.94 billion, just ahead of Wall Street projections. The beats get bigger as we work our way down the income statement on widening gross, operating, and net margins. Adjusted earnings per share clocked in at $186 million of $0.14 a share.
But don't let the large disparity between the top and bottom line get you down. Just three pennies of every dollar collected in revenue made its way down to Carnival's adjusted profit, but fall is always a challenging time for cruise line stocks that generate the lion's share of their profits during the summer.
The real takeaway is that Carnival's guidance was calling for just $60 million -- or a single penny on the revenue dollar -- for the fiscal fourth quarter just three months ago. Carnival's adjusted profit of $0.14 a share is double what analysts were modeling. It's the sixth quarter in a row that Carnival comes through with at least a double-digit percentage beat on the bottom line.
| Period | EPS Estimate | Actual EPS | Surprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fiscal Q4 2022 | ($0.87) | ($0.85) | 2% |
| Fiscal Q1 2023 | ($0.60) | ($0.55) | 8% |
| Fiscal Q2 2023 | ($0.34) | ($0.31) | 9% |
| Fiscal Q3 2023 | $0.75 | $0.86 | 15% |
| Fiscal Q4 2023 | ($0.13) | ($0.07) | 46% |
| Fiscal Q1 2024 | ($0.18) | ($0.14) | 22% |
| Fiscal Q2 2024 | ($0.02) | $0.11 | 650% |
| Fiscal Q3 2024 | $1.15 | $1.27 | 10% |
| Fiscal Q4 2024 | $0.07 | $0.14 | 100% |
Data source: Yahoo! Finance. EPS = earnings per share (adjusted).
Carnival posted an adjusted loss for the same quarter a year ago. Now it's riding higher ticket prices and onboard spending, along with improving costs, to deliver chunky bottom-line results. Stringing together nine consecutive quarters of earnings beat is impressive, but the real key to the stock's success is that analysts don't seem to be getting any closer to nailing Carnival's financial performance.
Image source: Getty Images.
Fiscal 2025 is looking even better
The near-term outlook is promising. Customer deposits for future sailings stood at $6.4 billion at the end of November, 7% higher than where they were a year earlier. It's just another high-water mark stacked on top of the prior year's record. The next few quarters should be solid, and even 2026 is off to an encouraging start. Carnival has never had stronger bookings for two fiscal years out than it does right now.
Despite the surging share price, Carnival is probably cheaper than you think. It's now trading for less than 15 times what analysts see Carnival earning in its new fiscal year, and that profit goal will likely inch higher in the coming days to drag the earnings multiple even lower.
The multiple does get higher if you turn to enterprise value instead of market cap as the numerator. The entire cruise line industry had to take on a lot of debt along with stock issuances to stay afloat during the prolonged pandemic shutdown, but the operators are using their newfound wealth to eat into the leverage binging of 2020. Carnival has trimmed its debt by more than $8 billion over the last two years. It's a little lighter now, and that should only make this leading cruise ship operator coast even better into fiscal 2025 with strong tailwinds helping it along the way.
