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Carnival Corporation leaned on cost discipline to offset a yield setback tied to the Middle East conflict, executives said on the company's second-quarter 2026 earnings call.
Cruise costs without fuel per available lower berth day were essentially flat year over year, outperforming March guidance by roughly 250 basis points and contributing five cents per share, CFO David Bernstein said.
The improvement came despite higher crew travel costs and freight resulting from the Middle East disruption.
During the quarter the company identified and implemented several initiatives that lowered its cost base and will continue to benefit earnings, producing a six-cent-per-share improvement that flows through to full-year guidance.
For the full year, Carnival now expects cruise costs without fuel per ALBD up approximately 1.3 percent on a normalized basis. Bernstein said the conflict trimmed full-year yield growth by about one percentage point, but intensified cost management generated an offsetting one-point improvement in cruise costs without fuel.
Bernstein described the savings as structural rather than one-off, citing hundreds of small changes across the business.
As an example, he said the brands have optimized forklift use on embarkation day, moving from 14 to 13 forklifts across multiple ships and thus saving hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
The company is also pressing suppliers and vendors for reduced rates as those partners adopt AI and gain efficiency, and expects fee reductions as a result.
Fuel efficiency improved more than 5 percent in the quarter, building on a more than 6 percent gain a year earlier.
Fuente: cruise industry news
