Carnival Corporation claims record revenues as Europe 'outperforms expectations'

He explained the strong bookings performance was “driven by strength in demand, with both our North America and Australia segment and Europe segment equally outperforming expectations”. 

Weinstein said it was “gratifying” to see the company’s European brands had “stepped up nicely”.

This year Carnival Corp has managed to close the occupancy gap by 11 percentage points, Weinstein confirmed. 

Occupancy in the third quarter of 2023 was 109%, which exceeded the company’s expectations and was a return to historical levels. 

Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, the company expects EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) to be between $800 and $900 million and net yields to be up “mid-single digits” compared to 2019.

It predicted occupancy levels to be in line with historical levels and net per diems to increase between 7% and 8%, compared to 2019. 

During the third quarter of 2023, Carnival Corp reduced its debt by $2.4 billion and ended the third quarter with $5.7 billion of liquidity, including cash and borrowings available under a credit facility.

Chief financial officer David Bernstein said: “We are accelerating our debt repayment efforts and aggressively managing down our interest expense. 

“In just the last six months, we have reduced our debt balance by over 10% - or nearly $4 billion. 

“With improving performance, growing operating cash flows and $5.7 billion of liquidity, we are on a path to end the year with less than $31 billion of debt."