Shares of Carnival Corp. tumbled 11.2% in morning trading Thursday, to pace the S&P 500’s after the cruise operator caused investors to “panic” with its $1 billion public equity offering. The company said late Wednesday that the offering, which represented about about 10% of the current market capitalization of $9.79 billion, priced at $9.95 a share, or a 10.3% discount to Wednesday’s closing price of $11.09. The offering comes after the stock had rocketed 27.3% amid a four-day win streak to close Wednesday at a six-week high. “This equity raise will cause concern (actually let’s call it panic) across the investment community for sure,” said Stifel Nicolaus analyst Steven Wieczynski. He said questions clients have been asking him since the offering included will there will be more equity raises and does it mean business trends are getting worse? “While this equity raise is frustrating and will cause panic, we don’t believe this is any indication
that their business trends are deteriorating,” Wieczynski wrote. The stock has plunged 49.5% over the past three months while the S&P 500 has declined 9.6%.
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