Business
Benzinga
Investors who have owned stocks in the past year have generally experienced some big gains. But there is no question some big-name stocks performed better than others along the way. Carnival’s Big Run: One company that has been a great investment in the past year has been cruise line giant Carnival Corp (NYSE: CCL). Carnival is the largest company in the cruise industry, and for most of the past decade it benefited from an aging baby boomer generation. Coming into 2020, Carnival was on track to add 18 new ships to its fleet of more than 100 global ships over the next five years. Unfortunately, after a solid decade of returns, Carnival experienced a near worst-case scenario to kick off the 2020s. The global COVID-19 outbreak shut down all of Carnival’s operations in March of last year, and the company recently extended its cancellations of all cruises through June. In 2019, Carnival generated $4.32 in EPS on $20.82 billion in revenue. In 2020, those numbers plummeted to a loss of $13.21 per share on just $5.59 billion in revenue. At the beginning of 2020, Carnival shares were trading around $51. By the beginning of March, the stock had dropped below $35 after news of the virus spreading in China prompted concerns about a U.S. pandemic. On March 12, Carnival shares plummeted from $21.75 to close at $14.97. A day later, the company announced it would be suspending all cruises for 30 days. The stock broke below $10 for the first time on March 18 and ultimately bottomed at $7.80 in early April. Related Link: Are Americans Ready To Travel? BofA Sees Biggest Airline Bookings Jump Since Pandemic Began Carnival In 2021, Beyond: Carnival shares initially bounced as high as $25.27 in June on optimism cruise ships would be back on the water sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, the initial rally fizzled and the stock dropped back down to $12.11 by late October. In February 2021, Carnival shares hit new post-crisis highs and even reached the $30 level before pulling back to $28.93. Carnival investors who bought one year ago and held on have generated an okay return on their investment. In fact, $1,000 in Carnival stock bought on March 16, 2020 would be worth about $1,633 today. Looking ahead, analysts are expecting Carnival’s stock to run out of steam again in the next 12 months. The average price target among the 15 analysts covering the stock is $20, suggesting 31% downside from current levels. See more from BenzingaClick here for options trades from BenzingaThe Shopper's High: MIT Study Says 'Neural Reward Mechanisms' Trigger Credit Card SpendingThis Day In Market History: Bear Stearns Merges With JPMorgan© 2021 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
A year after buying the struggling Newsworld International 24-hour U.S. and Canada cable news channel, former U.S. vice president Al Gore and his partner, millionaire Ohio attorney and politician Joel Hyatt, plan to re-launch the channel with a new name, a new concept and a new target audience.

Starting August 1, the channel will be known as Current and will aim its news programming at the 18-34 year old demographic that traditionally does not tune into cable news. "The Internet opened a floodgate for young people whose passions are finally being heard, but TV hasn't followed suit. Young adults have a powerful voice, but you can't hear that voice on television ... yet," Gore said in a press release issued from the network's San Francisco studios.

Gore said the new channel will be partly created by citizen journalists, where viewer-created reports will find their way on air. "We want to transform the television medium itself, giving a national platform to those who are hungry to help create the TV they want to watch. We're creating a powerful new brand of television that doesn't treat audiences as merely viewers, but as collaborators," Gore said in the release. The network posted submission guidelines on its new website which launched Monday.

Gore bought Newsworld International (NWI) from Vivendi Universal last year for $70 million. It was the only TV asset of Vivendi's not snapped up by NBC in the creation of the NBC Universal media conglomerate. NBC already had two struggling cable news channels of its own. NWI's current news content is mostly rebroadcasts of news produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Originally, the network was going to be remodled as a liberal counterpart to the popular Fox News Channel, which some critics claim is a conservative-slanted newscast despite the network's denial that it is "fair and balanced" in its reporting. But after market research, the new owners of NWI decided that a liberal news network was not financially feasible.

Instead, they focused on a youth-skewed news channel under the code name "INdTV" (pronounced "Indy Tee Vee"). The new name, Current, and re-launch date announcement was timed to coincide with the annual National Cable & Telecommunications Association convention, which is being held this week in San Francisco, the same city as Channel's new headquarters.