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The big reveal: Carnival's still burning $650 million every month.
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It's been nearly a month since Carnival Corporation (CCL +0.00%) shocked the stock market by revealing it was burning through its cash reserves at a faster-than-expected $650 million a month. It's been nearly a month since the company laid down a marker and promised to cut that burn rate to $250 million monthly, the better to help it ride out the recession.
But Carnival is not there yet.
Image source: Getty Images.
In an 8-K filing with the SEC this morning, Carnival updated investors on the state of its business as it crosses the midyear mark. Entering into H2 2020, Carnival says it's still expecting to burn through "approximately $650 million" a month in the year's second half. "Ship operating and administrative expenses, working capital changes (excluding changes in customer deposits and reserves for credit card processors), interest expense and committed capital expenditures" constitute the bulk of the cash burn, says the company.
Carnival "continues to explore opportunities to further reduce its monthly cash burn rate." In particular, the company will both "defer" and "delay" deliveries of new cruise ships, such that of the nine ships ordered for delivery in fiscal 2020 or 2021, only five will actually be delivered before 2022.
Carnival will furthermore sell 13 ships out of its fleet. One such sale has already been completed (in June). At least five and perhaps has many as eight more sales may be consummated "in the next 90 days." Four more sales, agreed upon last year, have yet to close.
When all 13 sales have been completed, Carnival's fleet size will shrink by 9%.
In the meantime Carnival notes it has "raised over $10 billion through a series of financing transactions" with which to fund its cash needs, including borrowing $2.8 billion "under a first priority senior secured term loan facility on June 30, 2020."