Carnival Corp., which owns Princess Cruises of Santa Clarita, has reported that it lost $4.4 billion in the second quarter and is speeding up the sale of six ships. What’s more, several cruise lines, including Carnival, said Friday they would delay the restart of service until Sept. 15, causing their battered stock to drop more. The federal no-sail order is set to expire July 24. The Miami-based Carnival, which also owns P&O and Cunard lines, said Thursday that it intends to accelerate the sale of ships that it planned to offload “over the ensuing years.” It has preliminary agreements to sell six ships during the next 90 days. The company “is currently working toward additional agreements,” and delivery of new ships will be delayed. It did not specify whether any of the ships to be sold would come out of the Princess fleet. Princess employed an estimated 2,100 at its Santa Clarita headquarters last year. Carnival said in the second quarter it suffered a net loss of $4.4 billion under generally accepted accounting principles and had an adjusted net loss of $2.4 billion. Revenue for the second quarter was about $700 million, way down from $4.8 billion in the same quarter last year. Carnival said it is reducing costs across the board and working on potential sales of non-ship assets. It said it has “implemented a combination of layoffs, furloughs, reduced work weeks and salary and benefit reductions across the company, including senior management.” Carnival’s stock fell 98 cents, or 6.2 percent, to $14.92 on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday, well below its 52-week high of nearly $52 before the pandemic.
