Royal Caribbean Cruises stock soars as Q4 bookings exceed pre-pandemic levels

Yahoo Finance Live checks out Royal Caribbean Cruise shares as the cruise line experiences an uptrend in fourth quarter bookings.

Video transcript

- My play? Royal Caribbean. The stock surging today on a bullish forecast and bookings that significantly exceeded pre-pandemic levels. The cruise line reported Q4 earnings today topping EPS expectations by $0.22, although narrowly missing revenue estimates with $2.6 billion. That's a 164% increase, though, from the prior year.

Their CEO, Jason Liberty, bullish, saying, quote, "We are experiencing a recordbreaking wave season." What's a wave season? That's the time-- right now, generally speaking-- where prices are lowest, often the first quarter. Liberty also adding, "Leisure travel strength continues as consumers spend is shifting towards experiences, with cruises maintaining an attractive value proposition." You can see shares popping big time, up 7%.

Carnival and Norwegian also up on this news, trending tickers all of them. We heard some great news from an analyst that covers all these stocks saying this is a strong year. Demand is back.

- Yeah, James Hardiman from Citi joining us last week, talking about the investment opportunity that he sees not only in Royal Caribbean, but really across the board in the space right now from the big three cruise lines here in the US. You're looking at gains year to date-- so just in the past, what, five, six weeks or so-- of almost 50%. And we asked him, we said, is a lot of this good news already priced into the stock? And he actually said that no, he thinks it has further room to the upside. That's clearly proven by the announcement today, by the move in the stock.

My question though, is when I talk to people, there's a lot of hesitancy when it comes to booking cruises. People aren't necessarily jumping back into it--

- Are you talking COVID hesitancy?

- COVID hesitancy.

- Yes.

- And I think also people just changed some of their behavior. Maybe people who were taking cruises before aren't necessarily jumping back in right away. These numbers seem to be proving it wrong. I'm just saying, in terms of who I'm talking to--

- It's the bowling hangover, man. People don't want to bowl anymore because they don't want to stick their fingers in a dirty ball.

- No. But that's a little bit different than being trapped on a cruise.

- People were trapped on these ships for weeks. I am shocked by this. I mean, it was a huge story. I get the value play. It's unlimited ice cream. Who doesn't like that? But they were literally trapped. I have friends that, like, would never, ever go on a cruise ever again. So this--

- Maybe we aren't the right demographic, because a lot of times--

- Yeah.

- Check the websites, man. They are all on sale. It is an unbeatable deal.