Carnival Corp has exceeded the market’s expectations by reporting its strongest ever quarterly earnings figure.
For the third quarter of 2016, the cruiseship owner booked adjusted net income of $1.42bn, against $1.37bn in the corresponding period of 2015.
Adjusted earnings per share of $1.92 beat the analysts’ consensus by four cents.
Arnold Donald, president of Carnival, said: “We delivered the strongest quarterly earnings in our company’s history affirming our ongoing efforts to expand consumer demand in excess of measured capacity increases and leverage our industry leading scale.”
Carnival reported quarterly revenue of $5.01bn, up from $4.88bn a year earlier.
Following the latest record performance, the cruiseship giant has raised its full year earnings per share outlook from between $3.25 and $3.35 to between $3.33 and $3.37.
Besides the strong third quarter, Carnival said advance bookings for the first half of 2017 are ahead of the prior year and at higher prices.
Donald added: “We are well on track to deliver nearly 25% earnings growth in 2016.
“With cash from operations expected to reach a record $5bn this year, we continue to fund our growth and return cash to shareholders.”
Earlier this month, Carnival ordered its largest ever ships at Meyer yards at the same time as buying back $700m of shares during the third quarter.
