Carnival Corp has met analyst expectations off of slightly improved revenue for the fourth quarter.
The New York-listed cruise major posted adjusted net income of $92m versus a $452m profit during the same period last year.
Quarterly earnings per share (EPS) came in at $0.70, matching Wall Street forecasts and beating year-over-year results by $0.07.
"We delivered strong fourth quarter earnings and record adjusted fourth quarter earnings to top off a record breaking year," chief executive Arnold Donald said.
As a result, Carnival achieved double-digit return on invested capital in line with a five-year goal, he noted.
"I thank our 120,000 team members around the globe who encountered multiple headwinds and still delivered for our shareholders a more than doubling of return on invested capital in just five years,” he said.
Gross cruise revenue for the period totaled $4.4bn, up 4.3% from a year ago. In constant currency, net cruise revenue gained 6.1% to $3.7bn.
Full-year revenue gained $1.4bn to $18.9bn.
Next year's booking outpacing this year's
Carnival said cumulative advance bookings for full year 2019 are considerably ahead of the prior year at prices in line with this year.
“Based on continued strength in underlying fundamentals, we are poised to deliver another year of strong revenue and earnings growth, with booking volumes running significantly ahead of our higher capacity growth and net revenue yields expected to exceed last year’s record levels (constant currency)," Donald said.
Based on current booking trends, the company expects full year 2019 constant currency net cruise revenue to be up 5.5%, with capacity growth of 4.6 percent.
“Based on the foundation we have put in place we are well positioned to continue to drive shareholder returns as we execute along a path toward growing earnings and return on invested capital over time," he said.
Carnival expects adjusted EPS for the first quarter 2019 to be in the range of $0.40 to $0.44 versus $0.52 a year earlier.
Shares down after earnings release
Still, that guidance missed analyst forecast of $0.45 for the period as the stock fell almost 11% since results were announced before today's opening bell.
Suntrust analyst Patrick Scholes wrote in a client note that the guidance was "light of consensus" and "yields are weaker", particularly constant currency net revenue yields flat from last year.
Carnival's stock fell 11.3% to $48.83 by mid-afternoon.
