Stock of the day 26/03/2015 – Carnival Corporation & PLC

Multinational cruise company Carnival Corporation & PLC, will be hoping to make big waves with its Q1 2015 earnings release on Friday.

In the interest of our British traders the focus will be on Carnival PLC, the British-wing of the company that nevertheless remains a separate entity. Though of course, news for one will be news for the other, with the two factions sharing near, if not quite exactly, identical charts. In hindsight, what looked like a choppy start to 2014 now seems relatively flat, with Carnival PLC starting at £25.01; after flitting between $20 and $25 for the first half of the year, a surge that began in October, prompted, like the growth seen in airline stocks, by the increasing cheapness of oil led the stock to close 2014 at £29.14.

Carnival PLC then started 2015 at £29.30, and has lingered around this price for much of the year, dipping to a yearly low of £28.68 in mid-February. A push since the start of March led Carnival PLC to £32.02 at the end of last week; however declines since Monday, concurrent with steady gains for oil, has led to a current stock price of £29.86 (and $43.77 for Carnival Corp, a near identical price when the currency is converted).


(Source: IT-Finance.com 26/03/2015)

Carnival recently saw the naming ceremony of the most recent addition to its fleet, with the Britannia launching at Southampton in mid-March as part of its P&O Cruises brand, with another new ship to come later in the year. This steady expansion could soon be significantly ramped up, as rumours have begun to circulate today that Carnival Corp is going to make its ‘biggest cruise ship order in history’ at Italian shipyard Fincantieri and German shipyard Meyer Werft. This translates, to non-cruise ship order buffs, as 10 ships, with one a 175,000 tonne beast that, if produced, would take its place in the upper echelons of cruise ships size-wise. If there is any truth behind these reports then it is likely to be a prominent feature in tomorrow’s release.

Elsewhere, Carnival scored somewhat of a publicity win as its ‘Cruise-a-nality’ tool saw 250,000 unique users; this online service allows people to find the best cruise for them by answering personality-type questions, and has proven a big hit with Carnival’s customers.

Overall, analysts are mild on the stock, giving it an average rating of ‘hold’; however, this could change tomorrow if firmer details of that potentially huge ship order are revealed.