Member Info for MrMagic

Just more flannel Helpful. The French stuff is immaterial.

A business was predicated on cheap electric power. So there needs to be a plan, risk mitigation for what happens if the cost of that power goes up esp if the business is dependent on it. Try to polish that any way you like and it remains a total nonsense. The cost of power went up, the business failed simple as. That Bell loaned a further £1.1m to that venture and did so without RNSing the fact remains appalling imo.

Helpful - "The whole point was access to cheap excess hydro power and then the French turned off their nuclear power generation which meant a shortage in Central Europe. There was no certainty about what the French did."

This is just flannel. I personally wouldn't say set up a taxi cab company without thinking about the costs associated with fuelling the cars with diesel and what the impact to my business would be if the cost of fuel might go up. Doing so would be poor management. I would factor in potential fuel price increases and have some kind of risk mitigation plan in place for such an eventuality.

It beggars belief that somehow an increase in the price of electricity could result in the Steelmin business going bust. Where was the planning and risk mitigation?

Hillseeker - "IMO they will get them off the ship ASAP somehow, so as not disrupt everyone's hols."

This is simply fantasy imo and I don't know of any practical evidence to support it. Every time a ship has had a case of COVID on-board AFAIK the passengers are quarantined ala the Diamond Princess and the ships are refused entry to ports and everyone's holiday essentially comes to an end at that point one way or another, either confined to cabin or shipped ashore to some hospital or holding place.

Hillseeker - "there is an argument to say, once all tested and on board - it is one of the safest places to be on holiday at the moment - one giant bubble!"

It's a weak argument. No ship is an island. There are lots of crew and security staff who go ashore at every port. They have to in order to conduct port business and set up security areas and so on. Ship's crew also have to be allowed off the ship from time to time where they can also get some down time and that usually happened in seaman's quarters/cafes and elsewhere. Crew need as much consideration as passengers imo.

The easiest way to contract COVID, like Norovirus, is simply to touch an infected surface. Any of the many 1000s of suitcases being loaded on-board. Any door handle ashore. Any cruise card. Any bannister or railing. Any of the 1000s of pallets of food, drink and other provisions being loaded onto the ship. The virus excels in the cold, can last up to 2 years in the freezer. Do you seriously think that cruise lines will be spraying all the suitcases that are loaded on board with disinfectant? Do you think they will be spraying every pallet of food that the fork lifts bring in? COVID lasts for many days on some surfaces especially plastic and glass.

All it takes is for just one single crew member to touch something that is infected. Then 5 or more days will pass by before he/she sees any symptoms by which time they will have spread COVID elsewhere and then once again you have COVID on-board and those "Diamond Princess" protocols kick in. Game over.

Nothing is going to change in the cruise world until and unless the authorities downgrade the virus to where it should be but that's not going to happen because of the wider agendas going on which are using the pandemic as their platform.
Therefore we currently have stalemate and the cruise lines continue to haemorrhage money.

No shareholder should have to go searching for the number of JMS shares held by the company. It should be clearly stated, openly, honestly and with basic courtesy in an RNS, ANY AND EVERY TIME the holding changes imo. Pawning off JMS shares behind shareholder's backs without any RNS is imo simply despicable if that is indeed what has been happening.

This is precisely why you can never, and should never, believe a word that the shyster rampers trot out on these boards.

How many times have these lame stock pumpers said "Oh but the MCAP here is underpinned by the JMS shares"???

Half Year Report stated the company only had £139k in the bank as at 31st Dec and was burning through cash on Admin at the rate of £47,000 per month.

It is obvious to me personally that large dilution or the pawning of company assets (or both) was always inevitable especially if the company now has to find 2.5 million out of thin air to pay for Migori on top of the regular burn for salaries and admin.

AB's response to Zumore yesterday pretty much lays it out. Dilution is not their preference he states which is laughable given RRR has spent much of its life time brutally diluting shareholders (just look at the 10yr chart here!). Otherwise it looks to me like basically holding a car boot sale of various assets and holdings here but I can't see that being enough.

It would imo be catastrophic if they pawned off all of the Jupiter shares.

But let's not be silly here. Confetti placing dilution is and always will be the penchant of this BOD. Bell has raised over £16m cash by placings and the like since 2012 whilst frittering over £12m on admin and expenses. Thus I remain utterly convinced that mega dilution is on its way here and I would not want to personally be holding here when it comes. But each to their own as always.

DYOR

RNS today suggests that the JMS holding is worth approx. AUD 4m (£2.21m).

The JMS share price has been around AUD 0.27 for the past week or so looking at the charts on ASX.

By my reckoning that would mean RRR held around 14.8m shares unless my maths is off. Even with an SP of 0.275 that would still be 14.5m shares.

However the last few RNS's concerning Jupiter have stated that RRR hold approx. 17.02m shares.

RNS 7th Jan 2020 stated 17,024,914 shares
RNS 14th Apr 2020 stated Red Rock has 17.02m shares
RNS 29th Apr 2020 stated Red Rock has 17.02m shares
RNS 8th July 2020 didn't state the number of shares but said the holding was worth AUD 4.35m (£2.41m).

Unless I have missed something, and it's quite possible that I have, the JMS holding appears to have been reduced . . . . again . . . .!

Have I missed something?

It's a nonsense Hillseeker and it's never going to be any kind of sustainable business model for cruising. Little more than a PR stunt imo. People aren't going to want to go on a cruise and have to wear a mask constantly on-board. Neither are they going to want to go travelling around the world and not be allowed to get off the ship and wander at their own leisure and instead have to take ship excursions that are rarely worth the money imo.

And none of this addresses the singular issue of what happens when someone DOES come down with COVID, which they clearly will. All this PR will go straight into the bin when there's a case of COVID on board and they start quarantining people or dumping them into land hospitals and/or flying people home. You only have to look at the other cruise line that tried this recently, the Norwegian one. Hurtigruten cruise line, MS Roald Amundsen, set sail 2nd August. DDidn't take long for COVID to appear:

Reported by BBC here:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53636854

"At least 41 passengers and crew on a Norwegian cruise ship have tested positive for Covid-19, officials say.
Hundreds more passengers who travelled on the MS Roald Amundsen ARE IN QUARANTINE and awaiting test results, the company that owns the ship said.

The ship, which belongs to the Norwegian firm Hurtigruten, docked in the port of Tromso in northern Norway on Friday.

Hurtigruten has halted all leisure cruises because of the outbreak.

Norway's government has announced it will stop all cruise ships with more than 100 people on board from disembarking passengers for at least 14 days."

Cruise lines have been trying to deflect from this singular show-stopping issue for months and months. Lots of talk of social distancing, lots of hand gel, lots of passenger swabbing and testing, mask wearing etc etc.

It's all a complete smoke screen imo covering the single biggest issue which is what happens when there IS a case of COVID on-board. It seems that the CDC/WHO or whoever's imposed protocols are still the big issue. Passengers are still going to be quarantined. Until those protocols are permitted to be changed then cruising as an industry is dead in the water imo.

This virus HAS to be downgraded to the same as Norovirus so that when someone gets it on board you only quarantine that sick person and/or remove them from the ship and then let everyone else get on with their holiday. That's not going to happen any time soon imo.

Noirua on ADVFN is a past arch ramper of RRR, recently turned rather sourer, not unlike the arch ramper Briarbank here.

On ADVFN Noirua has put into his thread header a statement in large red lettering which says:

"Warning: Red Rock is short of cash and a cash raising is awaited unless decisions have been made not thought to require an RNS:"

You'd have to be pretty green in the gills not to think that mega dilution is on the way here imo. The company stated in it's Half Year Report that it only had £139k in the bank and was burning cash on Admin at the rate of £47,000 a month.
That was 8 months ago. Now it needs to find pots of money for Migori and is now once again expending shareholder cash on projects in far flung places with "hand-me-down" licenses (Ivory Coast anyone!).

I feel sorry for those who bought into the "jam tomorrow" hyping and who bought at recent prices.

Helpful - " for about 150 years."

lols which co-incidentally is probably about the amount of time it's going to take RRR to recoup the $3m royalty from El Limon with it's paltry trickle.

Chirpy stuff Diveonin but the comparison of cinemas with cruising is somewhat farcical. If there's a person with COVID in a cinema they are not going to suddenly lock all the doors and imprison all the viewers in the auditorium for 2 weeks.
That's the difference. You're talking about completely different business models and completely different sets of protocols that business have to operate by. Cruise lines are beholden to CDC/WHO protocols. If cruise lines could, they would still be sailing today but it's those higher powers that have dictated the "No Sail" orders.

Cunard have cancelled their cruises until March, April, May 2021
Many expect P&O cruises to follow suit and also cancel Christmas cruises

The game continues. Tick tock as regular as clockwork. A few months go by and the cruise lines announce yet another extension of the "No sail" and all the cancellations. It will just keep going on, well into 2021 imho. Those who cling to the hope of vaccines changing everything are mistaken. It won't. The only thing that will change everything is the Green Light from the controlling powers to go back to normal which will then allow the cruise lines to state in writing to passengers that they will not be locked up in their cabins for 2 week quarantines if there is a case of CV on-board. We are a long way from that point.

So it's £3m not £2m? Not going to make a happeth of difference as my post explained and as PorridgeOats also highlighted as Bell will just squander the cash.

The Jupiter shares were once worth over £25m yet Bell didn't cash them in to liquidate that great sum of money and eventually sold most of them for a pittance. Dire result there for shareholders.

He's had £16m cash to play with since 2012 and still the company remains a tin pot AIM lifestyle venture.

He's had over £1m from Jupiter share buy-backs and much more from Jupiter dividends. That cash too has disappeared. Company stated it only had £139k in the bank as at 31st Dec.

How much more valuable cash is this BOD going to be allowed to fritter away on salaries, admin, expenses and spurious projects in far flung places?

All exemplified perfectly by the words of former 13%+ holder Daniel Sklan who himself had a personal royalty deal with RRR for the Ivory Coast project (which went nowhere):

"After holding RRR shares for a considerable number of years and seeing my holding drop from over 13% to under 2% and value drop by over 90% due to the constant “fund raising” and issuing of new shares; I have finally had enough and sold all my shares.
Let’s be honest - doesn’t matter how much money RRR receives it will always disappear paying "misc. expenses", directors salaries and investing in white elephants; sorry I meant Elephant Oil and various other ridiculous investments. I simply can’t understand how a business manages to plough through so much money with so little to show for it."

https://www.lse.co.uk/profiles/d_s_/

The picture is clear to see. Doesn't matter what cash arrives here. Shareholders will never see a penny of it and it will slowly seep away in salaries, admin, expenses and dubious projects imo.

DYOR

Porridge is correct. It's same old same old. You could give Bell £2m today and it would simply get rinsed through the coffers and most of it would end up spent on Admin and expenses. This remains the singular core problem of this lifestyle share. Cash coming into the company does not equate to value for shareholders imo. It should. But it doesn't.

The facts again are all in the Annual Reports:

2012 - Loss of £1,962,882 --- Cash raised £4,441,844 - Admin £2,275,786
2013 - Loss of £22,105,562 -- Cash raised £4,103,795 - Admin £4,751,948
2014 - Loss of £4,113,460 --- Cash raised £2,723,861 - Admin £1,563,808
2015 - Loss of £8,411,541 --- Cash raised £2,327,377 - Admin £1,334,404
2016 - Loss of £283,280 ----- Cash raised £1,155,323 - Admin £758,351
2017 - Loss of £1,114,213 --- Cash raised £300,000 --- Admin £644,688
2018 - Profit £78,120 ------- Cash raised £421,668 --- Admin £849,518
2019 - Loss of £1,723,881 --- Cash raised £853,089 --- Admin £591,777

Total Losses above - £39,792,939
Total Cash Raised - £16,326,957
Total Admin - £12,770,280

Just look at the extraordinary amounts of cash that Bell has had to work with. He's raised over £16m cash since 2012 which makes Helpful's "jam tomorrow" $4m look like chump change. In the same period he frittered over £12m of it just on Admin and expenses.

Helpful is desperately trying to wax lyrical about a possible $4m AUD which is about £2m It's pocket money and won't change fortunes here one iota. The company stated it is burning cash just on Admin alone at the rate of £564,000 a year !!!

That churn of utter wastage is the company's biggest stumbling block and until Bell and the rest of the BOD are removed from post the situation will never change imo. It is what it is.

DYOR

Keithie - "it’s true you could not get off the ship if you did not take the excursions but that was Italy making the decision not MSC"

Which confirms my earlier point that the cruise lines are now simply beholden to higher powers who have them by the short and curlies imo. As for operating cruise lines with a model of passengers never being able to walk freely off ships . . . no that is just a fantasy. It's true that some people like sea days and its true that it's sometimes nice to stay on-board when docked in port, but not for an entire cruise. There are not millions of such people as you suggest imo. People are not going to fork out £1000s on a cruise only to be confined to ship or confined to ship's excursions. Very especially if/when the cruise lines do not lower the ticket prices to reflect such a prison camp experience.

The future of cruising is actually already well known to many. It lies in the building of island complexes and dedicated on-shore campuses that are part of the cruise line. Ships will be travelling to such havens, passengers will be allowed to disembark at them and spend time there (with everything bought of course generating more profits for the cruise line) and they will all of course be one huge "bubble" confined to that campus or island. In short cruise lines will be little more than ferries taking passengers to their own style of Butlins. This IS where cruising is going. Another reason for it is the increasing resistance of locals in beautiful places like Venice and Dubrovnik and Caribbean ports who are sick of too many ships dumping many 1000s of passengers in their cities and towns all the time. We are a long way from the ultimate Butlin's ferry service model but make no mistake that is where cruising is going. In the meantime, it's game over imo.

I understand perfectly why the passengers were refused entry. That's not the point.

The point is there is absolutely no future in the cruising industry if passengers are not free to disembark at ports at their leisure and to go freely where they wish. That's an integral part of cruising. Remove that and you have no business model.
What MSC were doing was a rather desperate attempt to get a ship to sea but that model will never be sustainable.. P

Additionally you also have the stark example of the MSC Cruise ship a week or two ago where passengers were forced to take excursions with the ship at ports. That's no kind of a cruise imo. Passengers need to be allowed to disembark at ports and do their own thing. But MSC insisted passengers go on their own trips (nice cash revenue for them) and when a family did so and broke away from the organised group they were subsequently refused entry back onto the ship because they had broken the group "bubble".

Reported widely such as here:
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/travel/cruises/2020/08/19/msc-cruises-cracking-down-passengers-who-break-covid-19-regulations/5605867002/

Again this is just a nonsense. Forcing passengers to take ship excursions is just not going to fly as a business model.
It's just yet another indicator that the core issues are still unresolved and that the powers that be still have the cruise lines by the short and curlies. The cruising experience as it was is gone. Until it is restored it's game over. The cruise lines can't restore it unless and until the powers that be allow them to imho. The game of stalemate continues and meanwhile cruise lines are haemorrhaging £millions.

TalkingSense - "And for balance what will the SP be if there is a case confirmed on board one of the first cruises?
Thats the gamble every cruise now."

It's not a gamble, it's already happened. A Norwegian cruise ship attempted to set out as if all were normal again in August and quickly had cases of COVID on-board. Reported here :

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-53636854

"At least 41 passengers and crew on a Norwegian cruise ship have tested positive for Covid-19, officials say.
Hundreds more passengers who travelled on the MS Roald Amundsen are in quarantine and awaiting test results, the company that owns the ship said.

The ship, which belongs to the Norwegian firm Hurtigruten, docked in the port of Tromso in northern Norway on Friday.
Hurtigruten has halted all leisure cruises because of the outbreak."

"Norway's government has announced it will stop all cruise ships with more than 100 people on board from disembarking passengers for at least 14 days."

It's disingenuous to suggest that the cruise industry is anywhere near getting back to normal. It won't ever be until they properly state how they will deal with cases of CV on-board.

Diveonin - "We seem to hold the same opinions."

We do yes in relation to the pandemic itself and the deeper things going on n the background and the Orwellian nightmare that will emerge from it.

In relation to Carnival and cruise lines however the fundamental problem remains. The protocols that cruise lines have to follow if/when there is a case of CV on-board. Nothing is going to change until that singular issue is resolved. People are not going to resume cruising with the threat of mass quarantining still there. The protocols have to change. Until they do the cruise industry is finished and the share prices of all cruise lines, not just this one, are going nowhere but down.

Yep this exactly.

Bell has managed to post losses of £40m here since 2012.

He's raised over £16m cash via brutally diluting shareholders with the likes of Cornhill, YA and others.
He's also frittered away over £12m in that time just on Admin and expenses.

It's a complete nonsense, a lifestyle venture for the BOD and cronies.

It's not working, we need more Twitter links !!!!

What wrong with the punters ?!!!

Buy the flipping shares will you, Helpful and Co need their profits. Buy Buy Buy !

Yeah but we need more Twitter links. And tell us again about all that jam that's being delivered tomorrow.

That'll get the punters to buy the god damn shares.

@Diveonin

The blame around the Diamond Princess disaster is irrelevant. The fact remained for that ship and others that got CV cases on-board, that all passengers were locked up in their cabins, ships could not then dock at a lot of (most?) ports.
I've seen and read absolutely nothing from any cruise line that suggests the protocols have in any way changed. Vaccines are a complete red herring. Most cruisers aren't remotely worried about personally catching CV whilst on a ship esp given the vast majority of people have no serious issues with it. What they are worried about are the ENFORCED protocols that cruise lines HAVE to follow if anyone on-board presents with CV. i.e. the mandated quarantining of all passengers to cabins and the possibility of :

1) Not being able to call at any ports on the remaining itinerary (therefore wasting £1000s of holiday money)
2) Being dumped in a foreign country and having to be flown home (many people cruise because they don't fly)

Carnival and all other cruise lines are completely stuffed by those protocols which currently make cruising holidays totally untenable. Until the CDC/WHO etc relax those protocols and allow ships to continue sailing with CV cases on-board without quarantining everyone else, it remains Game Over. The status of CV has to be downgraded to the levels of Norovirus which cruise ships have handled for years without quarantining all passengers when there is an outbreak.
But of course to down grade CV to that level would be to burst the bubble of the current agenda scaremongering that you spoke of. Net result, the stalemate between cruise lines and health bodies continues. Tick tock. 8 months and counting.
My personal take is that they will force cruise lines to register themselves in taxable countries rather than tax havens like Barbados and elsewhere. That way the governments of those countries get a nice slice of the pie. It's all a game, to and fro. But the large powers hold all the cards because they can just sit and wait it out, siege tactics whilst the likes of Carnival burn through whatever it is, £600m a month is it with ships parked up in Weymouth Bay? Tick tock.
It's not going to end well either way.