RCL Stock: Collect 13% Now, In Exchange For 19% Of Upside

For Royal Caribbean shareholders, here’s how to get paid a cash income now, which you keep no matter what, for simply agreeing to sell your stock at a profit later.

Royal Caribbean (RCL) stock has been navigating choppy seas, trading around $290 a share and still about 18% below its 52-week high despite a recent lift. For investors who already own the shares, this sets up a strong question: what if you could generate a meaningful cash income from your position today, an upfront payment you keep regardless of what happens next, in exchange for setting a profitable exit price above today’s level? That’s the logic behind the specific options trade laid out below.

13% annualized income on RCL shares you already own, with 19% of upside room, by selling a covered call.

• You own (or buy) 100 shares of RCL near today’s price of $293.95.
• Sell one call option on RCL expiring 6/17/2027, with a strike price of $350, about 19% above today.
• Collect roughly $3,405 in premium up front per contract (each contract covers 100 shares), which you keep no matter what the stock does.
• That premium is about 12.6% annualized on the $29,395 of stock, income you earn just for holding.
• If RCL finishes above $350, your shares are called away at $350. Counting the premium, your total return works out to about 34% annualized, but you give up any gains above the strike.

Two Outcomes, You Keep The Income Either Way

If RCL finishes below $350 on 6/17/2027, the call expires worthless, and you keep the full $3,405 premium and all your shares. That is about 12% over 336 days, income earned just for holding, and you are free to sell another call.

If RCL finishes above $350, your 100 shares are called away at $350. You still keep the $3,405 premium, and counting it as your total gain works out to about 31% (not annualized), a healthy exit. The cost of the trade is that any gain above $350 is no longer yours. And if the stock instead falls, you keep the premium but still ride the shares down, cushioned only slightly.

So the whole trade comes down to one thing: how much of that upside are you really likely to give up, and would you be content to sell at that higher price?

Is RCL Likely To Run Past Your Strike?

The only real cost to this trade is the opportunity you give up if the stock sails far past your exit price. So, how much upside are you really capping? The bull case for a continued run is anchored in what management just called a “record WAVE season,” signaling that consumer appetite for cruises remains incredibly strong. The company is guiding for double-digit revenue and earnings growth this year, fueled by a growing base of repeat customers who now make up 40% of the business and tend to spend about 25% more on board.

Yet the outlook isn’t all clear skies. Management also flagged a “short-term moderation in demand trends” for its lucrative Mediterranean sailings, a direct result of geopolitical turmoil that, along with higher fuel prices, is creating a drag on the full-year forecast. While recent revenue growth of 9.7% is solid, it represents a clear deceleration from its three-year average. This suggests the post-pandemic support may be easing, making it more sensible to collect a guaranteed income now for capping gains you might not fully realize anyway. The decision comes down to whether you think the powerful consumer will overwhelm those pressures. The one number to watch is net yield growth; if the company’s forecast for 1.5% to 2.5% growth this year starts to look conservative, the bulls have the better argument.

Turn A Stock You Own Into Income

You may not own RCL, but you almost certainly own something that could be paying you. Our Covered Call Finder lets you type in a stock, or a few, and instantly see the income a covered call could generate on each, then dial the strike up or down with a slider to balance more income against more upside. It is the quickest way to see what the names in your own portfolio could pay.

Pair The Premium With Real Diversification

Selling calls on a stock you own is a sensible way to manufacture income. It is still, by design, a concentrated position, and even owning a whole sector only trades single-name risk for single-theme risk. Real diversification means spreading across sectors, so one industry stumbling does not define your result.

The Trefis High Quality (HQ) Portfolio handles that: about 30 quality, cash-generative companies across sectors, chosen on the full weight of their fundamentals rather than one premium-rich setup, then sized and re-balanced with care. The payoff is a track record of outpacing a benchmark that combines the three major indices – the S&P 500, S&P Mid-cap, and Russell 2000. Keep the income from trades like this, without pinning your future to any single name or theme.