Carnival Corp. reported that net income for the fourth was $216 million, a 13% decrease from $248 million earned a year earlier.
In a conference call with analysts on Tuesday, company CFO David Bernstein said fuel costs jumped 39% percent during the quarter, to $680 per metric ton.
Net ticket revenue yield across the company’s 10 brands increased 8% for the quarter and 2% for the year, Bernstein said. Revenue rose 9% for the year, to $15.8 billion from $14.5 billion.
Chairman Micky Arison called 2011 “an encouraging year” for the Carnival Corp. brands.
The higher revenue yields, he said, partially offset the increase in fuel prices, but higher fuel prices reduced earnings for the year by $535 million.
Carnival Corp. said it recently implemented a fuel-derivatives program to mitigate a portion of its risk to price spikes.
Bookings during the last 13 weeks, said COO Howard Frank, “show an ebb-and-flow pattern and a closer-in booking window.”
“We reduced prices,” he said, “and consumers have responded.
Booking levels have increased in the last six weeks, said Frank. A level of weakness still can be seen in summer Europe bookings, he added, due mainly to lower consumer confidence and the European debt crisis.
“Wave season will give a better indicator for revenue and yield for the remainder of the year. Our current status is that ticket prices for all brands are slightly higher, with slightly lower occupancies,” said Frank.
“We do believe that while the booking window has come in — not a huge amount but it has come in — at the end of the day we fill up. But we need to manage through that process. Each brand does it differently. It depends on how they see the world,” he said.
Frank said there is little inventory left to sell for first-quarter cruises in 2012, but “there is a significant amount of inventory to be sold” beyond that time.
In Europe, said Frank, bookings in the U.K., the Netherlands and Germany are holding up well but southern Europe, particularly Spain, Italy and to a lesser degree France, is “more of a challenge.”
“It could be air costs,” said Frank, “but the psychology of consumers is of greater concern.”
Austerity programs being implemented in several euro-zone countries are affecting consumer spending in those source markets, he said.
Arison told analysts that he’s expecting a good Wave season, which typically runs from early January into March.
“For us to be having the kind of [booking] volumes we’ve had in the [last six weeks] — the slowest time of the year — is an indication of having a pretty good Wave,” he said.
Follow Donna Tunney on Twitter @dttravelweekly.