Carnival’s passenger booking trend, guidance in focus during Q4 earnings

Carnival (NYSE:CCL) is set to report the fourth quarter results on Friday, and investors will keep an eye on the company’s FY25 initial guidance and passenger booking trends.

Wall Street expects the cruise operator to post EPS of $0.07, while revenue is expected to increase nearly 10% to $5.93B during the quarter.

Cruise line operators expect a record-breaking number of global passengers in 2025 as some forecasts indicate a 20% increase in cruise line passengers. Major cruise lines are already reporting robust advance bookings for 2025.

“At this point in time, 2025 is a historical high on both occupancy and price. Every brand in our portfolio is well booked at higher pricing in 2025,” the company said in its Q3 earnings call, adding that it is expecting 688 dry dock days in 2025, a 17% increase versus 2024, which will impact our overall Y/Y cost comparison by about 0.75.

Seeking Alpha analysts, Wall Street and Seeking Alpha’s Quant ratings are bullish and consider the stock Buy and above.

“We get the sense booking patterns remain healthy, and we believe CCL hasn’t witnessed any deterioration in their onboard customer spending patterns,” said Stifel analyst Steven Wieczynski.

Over the last two years, CCL has beaten EPS estimates 100% of the time and has beaten revenue estimates 88% of the time.

Over the last three months, EPS estimates have seen 11 upward revisions and five downward moves. Revenue estimates have seen 16 upward revisions versus one downward move.

Carnival stock has gained nearly 36% so far this year, outperforming the broader S&P500 Index’s gain of over 23%.