Carnival Corp reported much a heavy decline in the fiscal second quarter as a result of much lower bookings and giving voyage refunds and future cruise credits during the pandemic.
The New York-listed cruise behemoth on Monday filed detailed quarterly results with the US Securities and Exchange Commission that showed revenue of $50m, down from $470m a year earlier.
Revenue for the first half of the fiscal year that began on 1 December was also very lopsided, coming in at $75m compared with $5.53bn for the same six months in 2020.
The Miami-based owner of 91 cruiseships last Thursday disclosed a $2.1bn net loss for the second quarter against a year-ago deficit of $4.37bn in a "business update" without giving revenue totals.
On an adjusted basis, the loss came in at $2.04bn compared with $2.38bn last year, when the second-quarter figure excluded $1.95bn lost as a result of impairments on sold ships.
Missed Wall Street expectations
Carnival also disclosed a quarterly loss per share of $1.83 that missed analyst consensus by $0.22 but beat the 2020 result by $4.24, having omitted these figures from Thursday's update.
In the absence of posting revenue last Thursday, the company reported at that time that customer deposits for future cruises totalled $2.5bn as of 31 May, versus $2.2bn at 28 February.
Tigress Financial Partners analyst Ivan Feinseth said the revenue was so much higher in the second quarter of last year because that figure included unearned revenue that was later given back as refunds and future cruise credits that were reflected in this year's revenue.
"When you book a cruise that, let's say, cost $2,000 and you give a $200 deposit, they book unearned revenue of $2,000 that is still part of revenue," he told TradeWinds.
"So since people were booking less during the pandemic and they had to giveback or issue credits and rollover booked cruises to new time periods, there was a difference in what they actually captured as earned and unearned revenue."
But he couldn't figure out why Carnival gave a "business update" last Thursday that did not include second-quarter revenue for fiscal 2020 and 2021.
"I don't know why they didn't do a traditional earnings call last Thursday and then published the actual documents today," he said.
According to the Monday SEC filing, Carnival reported a $4.05bn net loss for the first six months of fiscal 2021 versus a $5.16bn net loss for the same period in 2020.
