8th Oct 2020 15:22
(Alliance News) - Carnival PLC on Thursday said it swung to another quarterly loss but the cruise ship company was optimistic about the future of leisure travel and unveiled plans to optimise its fleet.
In the three months ended August 31, Carnival reported revenue of USD31 million, meagre by its standards and down sharply from USD6.53 billion from a year earlier, demonstrating the hit from the Covid-19 pandemic.
For the nine-month period, revenue is down 65% annually to USD5.56 billion from USD16.04 billion.
Carnival swung to a pretax loss of USD2.86 billion, from a USD1.83 billion profit the prior year. For the nine months, its pretax loss ballooned to USD8.02 billion, from a profit of USD2.62 billion.
"Just six months after we paused cruise operations across our global fleet, this past weekend, we successfully completed our first seven day cruise on our Italian brand Costa. Soon a second of our nine world's leading cruise lines' brands will resume guest operations, our German sourced brand AIDA," Chief Executive Officer Arnold Donald said.
Donald added that leisure travel has been "historically proven to be far more resilient than business travel", since it cannot be as easily replaced by video conferencing.
"Our portfolio includes many regional brands which clearly position us well for a staggered return to service in the current environment," Donald added.
"We continue to take aggressive action to emerge a leaner more efficient company. We are accelerating the exit of 18 less efficient ships from our fleet. This will generate a 12% reduction in capacity and a structurally lower cost base, while retaining the most cash generative assets in our portfolio."
Carnival resumed guest operations on September 6, with its first voyage since mid-March.
"The company plans to continue the limited resumption of its guest cruise operations with additional Costa ships over September and October, as well as with AIDA Cruises during the fall 2020. These brands are beginning the company's anticipated gradual, phased-in resumption of guest cruise operations. The initial cruises will continue to take place with adjusted passenger capacity and enhanced health protocols developed with government and health authorities, and guidance from our roster of medical and scientific experts," Carnival said.
Carnival shares were 0.1% lower at 1,035.00 pence each in London on Thursday afternoon.
By Eric Cunha; [email protected]
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