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Carnival

CCL on NYSE. Carnival sells cruise vacations to people who want to travel by ship. Market value $34.4bn.

Watch this stockFree. We tell you when something changes.

Price checks use the past 12 months to August 2026. Quality checks use five annual reports, the latest for the year to November 2025.

Should I look at this?

Not a fit for our list right now

Why it could be worth it

What to watch out for

See Retail & consumer stocks that passed both tests

This is not advice. Check the numbers below.

Compare with another stock

Cash yield
past 12 months to August 2026
8.9%high

For every $100 of what the whole company costs, it produced $8.89 of spare cash in the past 12 months. A savings account pays about $4.

Price to profit
past 12 months to August 2026
13.4×fair

You pay 13.4 years of operating profit for the business. The average large US company costs around 18.

Return on capital
five annual reports to November 2025
4.3%five-year median

Each dollar kept in the business earns 4 cents a year. Above 10 is good.

Quality score: 57 of 100. Price score: 97 of 100. Our list needs 70 on quality and 60 on price.

$26.58 a share, 24% above its 1-year low

Over the past year the price has ranged from $21.45 to $34.03.

Pays no dividend

Prices from Tuesday’s close (6 October).

Five years of cash, in billions

-7.7
-6.6
1.0
1.3
2.6
3.2
2021202220232024202512 monthsto Aug '26
Revenue
$1.9bn$12.2bn$21.6bn$25.0bn$26.6bn
Operating margin
-371.5%-36.0%9.1%14.3%16.8%
Debt to equity
2.975.044.553.052.23
Shares outstanding
1.11bn1.12bn1.15bn1.17bn1.34bn

Health checks

  • Free cash flow positive3 of 5 years
  • Accounting looks honest (Beneish)Not enough data
  • Financial strength (Piotroski)7 of 7 checks we could run
  • Profit backed by cash (accruals)Yes
  • Debt2.23× equity
  • Revenue growth, five yearsStrong, 36.6% a year
  • Buying back its own sharesNo, 21% more shares since 2021

The quarter to August 2026

How the business did, compared with the same quarter a year earlier.

  • Sales: $8.4 billion last quarter, up 3% on a year ago.
  • Profit: $1.9 billion, about the same as a year ago.
  • It keeps 16 cents of each $1 of sales as operating profit, about the same as a year earlier.
  • Spare cash over the past 12 months: $3.2 billion, up from $2.9 billion.
  • 2% fewer shares than a year ago. Each share owns a bit more of the company.
  • Debt is $23.3 billion more than cash, down from $25.4 billion a year ago.
  • Sales grew on a year ago in each of the last 4 quarters.
Sales by quarter
Sales by quarter
Quarter toAmount
November 2024$5.9bn
February 2025$5.8bn
May 2025$6.3bn
August 2025$8.2bn
November 2025$6.3bn
February 2026$6.2bn
May 2026$6.7bn
August 2026$8.4bn
Profit by quarter
Profit by quarter
Quarter toAmount
November 2024$303m
February 2025-$78m
May 2025$565m
August 2025$1.9bn
November 2025$422m
February 2026$258m
May 2026$537m
August 2026$1.9bn

From the company's quarterly reports to the SEC.

Dates

Next results (estimated)
18 December 2026
Last annual report (10-K)
27 January 2026
Next quarterly (estimated, 10-Q)
29 December 2026

Who owns it

7 long-term investors we follow own it, up from 0 last quarter. 989 funds in all.

Jun '25
Dec '25
Jun '26
Largest holders overall

From 13F filings for the quarter ended 30 June 2026.

Big holders and activists

3 investors own more than 5%.

From Schedule 13D and 13G filings: anyone owning more than 5% must file one.

What insiders did

No insider bought shares on the open market in the last 12 months. 4 sold $14m.

  • deynes bettina alejandra
    Chief Human Resources Officer
    Sold
    Date
    28 May 2026
    Shares
    43,058
    Price
    $28.10
    Value
    $1m
  • SUBOTNICK STUART
    Director
    Sold
    Date
    11 May 2026
    Shares
    0
    Price
    $25.22
    Value
    $5
  • BAND SIR JONATHON
    Director
    Sold
    Date
    1 April 2026
    Shares
    11,988
    Price
    $26.19
    Value
    $313,966
  • BAND SIR JONATHON
    Director
    Sold
    Date
    31 March 2026
    Shares
    12
    Price
    $24.98
    Value
    $300
  • Bernstein David
    CFO & CAO
    Sold
    Date
    10 February 2026
    Shares
    361,790
    Price
    $33.22
    Value
    $12m

From Form 4 filings: insiders must report trades in their own company's shares within two days.

Warning signs in its filings

Problems the company itself reported to the SEC, in its own words.

None of the warning signs we check for were found.

We look for five warning signs: doubt it can keep going, weak checks on its own accounts, a notice that its past accounts can't be relied on, a change of auditor, and one customer bringing in a big share of sales. We don't check lawsuits, investigations or debt yet.

We checked the auditor's report, internal controls, restatement notices, auditor changes and big customers in the 10-K filed 27 Jan 2026, plus the 10-Q filed 29 Sep 2026 and 8 later 8-Ks.

A 10-K is the yearly report every US company files with the SEC. An 8-K is a short notice of a big event.

What could go wrong

  • It carries a lot of debt: 2.2× its equity.

Whether the price already reflects the risks is what the deep dive is for.

The deep dive

Everything above is arithmetic on public filings. The deep dive reads the last ten years of annual reports, the proxy statements, and the earnings calls, then argues the case the way Buffett, Klarman, and Hohn would, and checks every claim against the source.

  • What the business is worth, as a range, and the margin of safety at today’s price
  • Prices to start buying, buy, and buy hard
  • The three things that would make this a mistake
  • Every number footnoted to the filing it came from
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What a finished deep dive looks like

Not advice. Numbers on this page come from SEC filings and are updated each night; prices are updated again after the US market closes. The five-year figures are rounded.