Revenue during the quarter grew 6.04 percent to $3,935 million from $3,711 million in the previous year period. Total expenses were 84.83 percent of quarterly revenues, down from 86.26 percent for the same period last year. This has led to an improvement of 143 basis points in operating margin to 15.17 percent.

Operating income for the quarter was $597 million, compared with $510 million in the previous year period.

Carnival Corporation & plc President and Chief Executive Officer Arnold Donald noted, "We achieved the most profitable year in our company’s history as well as record fourth quarter earnings. The continued execution of our core strategy to drive consumer demand in excess of measured capacity growth, contain costs and leverage our industry-leading scale resulted in our third consecutive year of significantly higher earnings and return on invested capital. The delivery of over $5 billion in cash from operations for our shareholders enabled increased dividend distributions reaching $1 billion and the investment of over $2.3 billion in the repurchase of Carnival Corporation stock. This continued strong performance is a credit to the outstanding contributions of our 120,000 employees worldwide who work every day to exceed our guests’ expectations and our thousands of travel agent partners around the globe whose support is crucial to our success."

For the first-quarter, On an adjusted basis, the company forecasts diluted earnings per share to be in the range of $0.31 to $0.35 .

Debt moves up 
Carnival Corp has witnessed an increase in total debt over the last one year. It stood at $9,454 million as on Nov. 30, 2016, up 7.59 percent or $667 million from $8,787 million on Nov. 30, 2015. Total debt was 24.28 percent of total assets as on Nov. 30, 2016, compared with 22.39 percent on Nov. 30, 2015. Debt to equity ratio was at 0.42 as on Nov. 30, 2016, up from 0.37 as on Nov. 30, 2015. Interest coverage ratio improved to 10.85 for the quarter from 10.20 for the same period last year.