What Lies Ahead For Carnival Stock As Concerning New Covid Strain Emerges

What Lies Ahead For Carnival Stock As Concerning New Covid Strain Emerges

Cruiseline stocks saw a big sell-off on Friday, as the World Health Organization designated a new strain of the novel coronavirus that was first identified in southern Africa as "a variant of concern." Carnival stock (NYSE: CCL), the largest cruise line operator in the U. S., dropped almost 11% in Friday's trading. Although it's still early to tell if the strain is likely to cause another surge in Covid cases worldwide, hurting the cruising industry which is only slowly getting back to normal after remaining shut for over a year, investors in the cruise line space will need to be cautious. The new virus variant, dubbed Omicron, has many more mutations and is apparently more transmissible, and is also believed to pose a higher risk of reinfection versus the Delta variant of the virus, which is currently the dominant strain worldwide. It's also not yet clear whether the current crop of Covid-19 vaccines will be as effective against the variant. Now, Carnival has been looking forward to a solid 2022, recently noting that bookings for the second half of the next year was ahead of pre-pandemic levels, while guiding that it was likely to be cash-flow positive and profitable in