Carnival Cruise Lines: Guest Post by Ryan Litwin


In a time span of about one month, Carnival Cruise Line (CCL) have had a number of issues that has caused their stock price to fall below Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL), a direct competitor in the luxury cruise industry.  Four ships have had technical problems such as malfunctions in steering systems, technical difficulties in sailing speed, restrooms not working properly, and the worst problem…having a fire in the engine room that left the Carnival Triumph stranded at sea.  The passengers were left alone in terrible heat and food was at a bare minimum.  Carnival has offered discounts and partial refunds to passengers that had to endure the malfunctions that ruined their utopian sea experience.  Carnival has released a statement detailing that investigations will be conducted on all twenty-three ships in Carnival’s fleet so that these malfunctions do not happen again.  The communication is a positive step forward but can Carnival rebound and get back to its spot atop the world of luxury cruise lines?  Issues like this can seriously injure a company’s reputation and is seen as a negative to many investors.  Carnival’s annual shareholder’s meeting is set for Wednesday, April 16.  CEO Micky Arison is going to have to defend his ailing fleet and corporation in order to avoid a plummeting of CCL’s stock price.  Where is the shareholder’s meeting?  It’s in London on Wednesday but if you were looking for information about it you would not be able to find any on Carnival’s Investor Relations web page.  Under “upcoming events” the site states “there are currently no events scheduled.”  I expect CCL’s share price to continue to fall steadily until the corporation proves to investors that all of their problems are taken care of and the US government is reimbursed for the aid they provided to the malfunctioned ships.

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