Carnival is maintaining its share repurchase programme by giving another green light to its latest drive to rebuy $1bn in shares.
The Arnold Donald-led company's board has approved re-authorisation of up to $1bn in share repurchases covering both Carnival Corp common stock and Carnival plc ordinary shares.
"There was 25% of the authorization still available under the prior repurchase, so it made sense as to re-up the authorization," spokesman Roger Frizzell said.
The company rebought $754m of shares under the most recent April 2017 authorisation, he said.
Most recently, the company repurchased 55,551 shares, bringing the number of units in its treasury to just over 11 million and those outstanding to 206.2 million.
The share repurchase covers both Carnival Corp common stock traded on the New York Stock Exchange and Carnival plc ordinary shares traded on the London Stock Exchange.
Carnival resumed the programme in October 2015 after a two-year hiatus, launching four prior $1bn repurchase attempts over the past two-and-a-half years.
The company has repurchased 68 million shares worth $3.5bn over the life of the initiative, Frizzell said.
"With our strong cash flow of $6 billion — that enables us to self-fund our capital commitments —along our strong balance sheet, we generate excess cash that allows us to reinvest in Carnival shares that creates shareholder value," he said.
"We will continue to look to return excess cash to shareholders over time, but we do not have anything further to announced beyond today’s announcement," he added.
Repurchases, subject to prevailing market conditions and other factors, will take place in the open market or privately negotiated transactions in accordance with applicable law.
The company also announced upping its quarterly dividend 11% to $0.50 payable 15 June, "reflecting continued confidence in our outlook," said chief financial officer David Bernstein.
"In just three years, we have doubled our quarterly dividend and invested $3.5 billion in Carnival stock," he said.
