What happened
Shares of Carnival (CCL 1.08%) continued their rally on Thursday, with shares up as much as 14.5% in early trading. At 10:50 a.m. EDT today, shares were up 10.4%, and are up 57.8% so far this week.
So what
Carnival has officially closed on the largest tranche of funds it raised this week. Management said that its $4 billion of 11.5% first-priority senior secured notes due 2023 have closed, and underwriters exercised their option to buy $62.5 million of additional convertible notes, which were originally sold earlier this week.
Image source: Getty Images.
In total, Carnival raised $6.6 billion this week, including selling 72 million shares of stock. The funds should give the company enough cash to survive the year, by which time it hopes that customers will return to cruises. Management has certainly done all it can to shore up the company's balance sheet; now it's waiting for the COVID-19 pandemic to pass.
Now what
Shares of Carnival have had a quick recovery this week, but there are still a lot of unanswered questions. The company isn't anywhere close to returning to normal operations, and even when the business opens again, it's not clear if customers will want to be in the type of a confined spaces where multiple COVID-19 outbreaks have been recorded.
We may see a recovery in cruise stocks as consumer discretionary spending improves in the coming years, but don't be surprised if the route to recovery takes a long time and shares are volatile until COVID-19 is in the past.
