Carnival Corp.’s Glimpse into Non-GAAP Metrics

Cruise and hospitality giant Carnival Corp. ($CCL) delivered a solid earnings report last week, which gives us another opportunity to talk about one of our favorite financial analysis topics here at Calcbench: non-GAAP disclosures!

Carnival discloses several non-GAAP metrics to help analysts understand the company’s operations. Most important are:

• Passenger cruise days, or “PCDs,” which is the number of cruise passengers on a voyage multiplied by the number of revenue-producing ship operating days for that voyage. PCDs are typically expressed as a number in the millions.

• Available lower-berth days, or “ALBDs.” This is a standard metric in the cruise industry to measure total possible capacity in a period, and is also measured in millions.

• Occupancy rate, which is calculated by dividing PCDs into ALBDs. Occupancy rates can be higher than 100 percent in the cruise business because ALBDs assume two berths per cabin, but in practice some cabins have more than two passengers (say, a family cabin with parents and children).

• Passengers carried, which is pretty self-explanatory and doesn’t even get a fancy acronym.

For example, Figure 1, below, shows passengers carried per quarter from the start of 2023 through Carnival’s fiscal Q3 2026, which ended on Aug. 31. Note the trend-line in red, sloping appreciably upward. 

Unto itself the upward trend is nice to see, but it doesn’t necessarily mean robust growth and healthy consumer demand. Like, maybe Carnival is giving away its tickets at rock-bottom rates or customers are cashing in account credits accumulated during earlier periods. 

But analysts could test those concerns by studying other disclosures that Carnival makes, which Calcbench also keeps at the ready for your analytical adventures. For example, Carnival also reports onboard and other revenue each quarter — that is, the amount of money passengers are spending on food, drinks, and other entertainment while sailing the high seas. Figure 2, below, shows that spending over the same 2023-2026 time frame as passenger count.

So not only is Carnival steadily increasing its passenger count; those passengers are increasing their spending at an even faster rate while onboard. That’s a reassuring signal that Carnival’s business fundamentals are moving in the right direction.

We like to keep tabs on Carnival’s performance because it is such a colorful example of the analysis one can do when you have the right information at your fingertips, ready for processing. 

We could also say the same for airlines (and we will very soon, once Delta Air Lines ($DAL) kicks of Q3 earnings on Oct. 9) because they also report a wide range of disclosures, from passenger loads to average fuel costs to total revenue per seat mile; or the hotel industry, with its “RevPAR” metric for revenue per available room; or the freight industry with its costs per mile shipped; or the entertainment industry with subscriber numbers and average revenue per subscriber.

You get the idea. Companies disclose lots of non-GAAP metrics that provide all sorts of information. Calcbench captures it all and gives you the tools to go nuts with your analysis.