Cruise stocks have been on some ride over last few weeks. Both Royal Caribbean (RCL) and Carnival (CCL) touched new 52-week lows early this week, only to rebound with the overall market as stock prices whipsaw in reaction to the daily cycle of news out of Europe.
Headlines jump between “Greek Default Unavoidable” to “Greek Aid Likely,” and ”Eurozone Contagion” to “Banks are Stress Tested.”
Trying to predict and trade the swings boarders on madness, but one can predict the impact on cruise cabin prices for sailings with European itineraries.
Click on the interactive chart below. One can see with each “Priced on Month” closer to a European sailing departure, the Total Weighted Average* price has come down – more so for the nearer term sailing dates.
Indeed, European pricing trends were confirmed by Carnival’s most recent 3rd quarter earnings conference call.
“In Europe, the sovereign debt issues and the related concerns about the strength of the European banks contributed to the slowdown in EAA brand bookings. These issues, together with related declines in consumer confidence in the various markets in which we operate, seem to have contributed to the softened booking activity during this August and early September period.”
Insights into how the cruise lines are performing in other regions of the world, and how pricing changes impact forward earnings can be accessed from our proprietary database. It tracks daily ticket prices and passenger sailings to port destinations for over 8,000 annual cruises. With an exclusive window into the pricing of virtually every sailing, every day, world wide (including Carnival Cruise Lines (CCL), Royal Caribbean Cruises Lines (RCL) and Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL)) our subscribers can view cruise revenue and passenger trends in near real time.
* Cruise Market Watch’s proprietary weighted average of the daily advertised price for each ships cruise sailing for each cabin category (on a per sailing day basis). Weighting based on the total number of cabins on each ship in each category.
