Wall St. Set to Rise as Investors Take Heart in Signs of Progress: Live Updates

Cruise ship companies have virtually no revenue. They have become symbols of deadly contagion. And despite assurances from President Trump, they were left out of the $2 trillion stimulus package Congress passed last month.

The Carnival Corporation, which serves nearly 11.5 million travelers a year, or roughly 50 percent of the global cruise market, is at the center of the crisis. Over the last couple of months, the company has had highly publicized outbreaks on several of its ships, including the Diamond Princess and the Zaandam, which has been trying to unload sick passengers in Florida.

Since the beginning of the year, the company’s share price has plummeted more than 80 percent, though it rose to $10.21 a share on Monday after Saudi Arabia’s state investment fund said it had acquired an 8 percent stake in the company. And last week, Carnival, which has already drawn on bank credit lines, began an attempt to raise $6 billion by selling stock, bonds and other securities. It was selling some of those bonds with a suggested 12.5 percent interest payment to investors, a strikingly high figure.

Carnival’s chief executive, Arnold Donald, said in an interview that the sale would generate enough cash for the company to survive without revenue for the rest of the year and into 2021.

“If you run out of cash, you lose the company, and we can’t live with that,” Mr. Donald said. “So we want to make sure we’re prepared for an extreme case.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/business/stock-market-today-coronavirus.html