CCL: Don't fret over oil, relax with Carnival Cruises

Carnival Cruises (CCL) is a vacation cruise line company with ports of call popularly placed all over the Caribbean, Hawaii, Alaska, and any other exotic place near the US. A growing company in a fairly stable industry, CCL is one of the few giants in the US business. You should know CCL has a very strong balance sheet and therefore a strong infrastructure. Since this is a high capital industry, the competition is tight and only the big players will come out on top. Like so many other companies right now, Carnival is being pummeled by oil prices. However, as oil is assumed (as we all hope) to go down with the emergence of alternative energy and the election of a new US president (both focused on the energy crisis), Carnival will rise to the top. Until that time arrives when oil will go back down and the US cruise line industry will stop crying about oil to its customers, CCL will take market share. Here's why. Out of the few US cruise lines out there, carnival markets its services to the cheaper crowd. Its operations are efficient and at a low cost, CCL can charge its customers lower prices than the rest (kind of like Wal-mart). CCL can see the oil market in two ways, both potentially beneficial to its cause. If oil goes down (in which we all hope) CCL and the rest of the industry will go up. If oil goes up however, CCL will still win in the long run from grabbing market share. This is still a growing industry, but I see this it maturing to the levels of competition you see with Microsoft where an oligopoly exists. So pick up Carnival while it's on sail (sale) and watch as the competition sinks to the bottom with the Titanic (or just get their ships sold to CCL).