Member Info for MrMagic

Yep lots of rather desperate rhetoric being spouted here.

Cash burn is horrendous. There's still little light at the end of the very long tunnel the industry is having to get through imo. The cruise lines that have tried to dip their toes back into the water early have run into issues. The Hurtigurten debacle clearly not good. The current cruise of the TUI ship is being watched closely. A bunch of crew got false-positive test results which resulted in them being quarantined for around a day as far as I can determine. There are about 900 passengers on the ship which normally takes 2,500 so I find it hard to believe there's much, if any, profit there.

Very long way still to go for the whole industry and whilst Carnival continues to haemorrhage huge amounts of cash every month the SP here is surely only going to keep falling imo. Come back in a year's time.

Wini pumping this utter POS was the biggest signal you could hope for that dilution was imminent imo.

All very much tired old, same old, same old, from Bell

Nothing will ever change here until he and the BOD are removed.

Those who fell for the "jam tomorrow" rhetoric of board rampers deserved to lose their money I'm afraid.

DYOR

So there are 125 million shares coming in at 0.8p from the confetti placing.

Plus there are imo about 150 million shares to come at 0.6p as and when the Convertible Loan Note holders convert (deadline 19th Dec)

And there's a bunch of warrants sat waiting at 0.9p and another bunch now at 1.2p

I'd consider myself simply foolish to buy shares here above that 0.6p price. With so many better shares to go at right now I don't know why people give this a second look. Tomorrow's jam never comes.

DYOR

Just imagine how much more financially sound the company would be without a BOD constantly taking stupid salaries and frittering enormous amounts on admin.

Imagine how much better the company reputation would be without a BOD that fails to RNS key loans, transactions and events.

Imagine how much better the company would be without a BOD who constantly dilute shareholders with endless confetti placings.

Shame really

BOD have to go simple as.

DYOR

Saw another review from a passenger on the MSC Grandiosa. In regards to the aspect of passengers being forced to take and pay for cruise ship excursions if they want to get off the ship, they relate that:

"The packed lunch we were provided with in Rome was terrible also with just a ham role, an apple, water, cheese and nuts."

Can't say I am remotely surprised. Given the $billions cruise lines are losing I fully expect the levels of service and quality to plummet in regards to food. Imagine paying £1000s for a holiday and getting a ham roll and apple for your lunch !

It really doesn't look good TBH.

A cruise is a cruise. There is an expectation, a very reasonable expectation that it's a holiday that is a cut above the rest, a time of some decadence, extra quality, a little exuberance and something just a bit special. A ham roll and an apple is akin to packing your kids up for school. It's more Butlins than 4-5 star experience ! Sad times indeed.

Whatever they are peddling to try and get ships moving again, it doesn't to me appear to be "cruising". It's something very different, in much the same way that Corbyn and his rabble never represented the real Labour party but simply used the Labour banner.

If cruise lines want to offer something completely different that just happens to be on a ship, well good luck to them but don't try and price it at the levels of actual cruising because that's clearly just a rip off. Long long long way to go yet before cruising ever properly returns, if indeed it ever will.

@Aquaesulis

Thanks for the snippet of that cruise diary. Must say it all sounded fairly horrific. What a carry on! and if that's to be the "new normal" well I think a huge number of past cruisers will say "so long" and choose alternative holidays. There are so many unanswered questions arising from that review, I'd like to read the entire thing.

Could you provide a source link for it please

Thanks

Thriftygirl : "I have a friend on board . . . . But the press will only carry the initial story, "

Desperate stuff. I think I'll take the press version of the story than the "my mate down the pub" equivalent. Simple reason being that the press are LIABLE if they make stuff up and could be sued for large sums of money if they have misrepresented the facts. Your "mate" is not here making statements and thus has no liability.

It will be interesting to see how the Mein Schiff 6 situation devleops imo. If nothing else it proves that Covid IS going to continue to arise on cruises.

Here's a sample of the info on young people and the financial crisis many are in:

Millennials Don’t Stand a Chance

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/millennials-are-new-lost-generation/609832/

"What little data exist point to a financial tsunami for younger workers. In a new report, Data for Progress found that a staggering 52 percent of people under the age of 45 have lost a job, been put on leave, or had their hours reduced due to the pandemic, compared with 26 percent of people over the age of 45. Nearly half said that the cash payments the federal government is sending to lower- and middle-income individuals would cover just a week or two of expenses, compared with a third of older adults. This means skipped meals, scuppered start-ups, and lost homes. It means Great Depression–type precarity for prime-age workers in the richest country on earth."

And these are the people you and/or cruise lines think will be spending £1000s on cruises?!!! Just lols

Wake up and smell the coffee.

The old generation are the dependable bread and butter and always have been and always will be. There's a mountain to climb to attract these people back to cruising imo. It starts with abolishing the ridiculous protocols surrounding the isolation of all passengers when there are cases of Covid on board but it goes much further. You can not ever attract core cruisers back to ships by taking away everything they love about cruising. The current flavour of the day attempts to generate revenue concern forcing passengers to take excursions with the cruise line instead of being simply free to wander ashore at your own pace. That is never going to work, it's simply laughable. Visiting countries is an integral part of any cruise for most people. Force them to sit in coaches for hours wearing masks and at their own significant expense and you're just going to lose a ton of custom.

A token few will happily take a cruise and stay on-board for the entire duration, anything to get away, but they are a token few. The vast majority are simply going to go elsewhere, take a different type of holiday, accepting that cruising as it was, will never now return and those golden years are now over. There remains only one way out of this whole disaster and it's not a vaccine. The only solution is for the world health authorities to downgrade the virus to where it should be instead of perpetuating the ridiculous over-hyped scaremongering, but backing down at this point is incredibly difficult for them without losing reputation and credibility. So the stalemate continues and cruise lines will continue to lose $millions every month. As a result the share prices of cruise will simply keep tanking. imo.

Alyhels - " The cost of cruising is not as extreme as you make out - I suggest you DYOR - it is not uncommon to find a 7 night cruise for less than £1,000 pp, which including all food is damn good value"

It's not remotely a question of "value for money" that's an entirely different thing. It's about the amount of disposal income the younger generation has compared to the older generation. The total cost of motoring says that buying a very expensive sports car is less expense in the long run than your average Ford Mondeo repmobile because of less depreciation and so on. That doesn't mean youngsters can afford to go out and buy Porsches.

I'm well aware of the past demographics of cruises but that was then not now. We are now headed into the biggest recession since the 1930s although the media is not yet making any fuss about it but they will just as soon as the establishment allow them to. When they are ready. The direction cruise lines like Carnival/P&O were going in was flawed. Towering hulks like Iona were never a good idea for huge numbers of reasons. The notion of "rack 'em, pack 'em and stack 'em" in cabins for maximum profit has now utterly backfired. You're never going to be able to control killer viruses with such vast number of people in one confined space. Equally local ports are simply not going to want the risk of so many 1000s of passengers all descending on their towns and cities all at once. That was the case BEFORE Covid arrived but it is doubly so now. Beauty spots like Venice were already heavily into protests to keep cruise ships away but with the advent of Covid the opposition will be absolutely immense. Same for Dubrovnik, Barcelona and many other Med and Adriatic destinations.

The older people who will always be the stable bread and butter mostly prefer the smaller more traditional ships which they constantly flock to. Those might not be the ships with maximum profit for the cruise lines but if its a case of that or nothing then the smaller ships are going to have to prevail and the bigger ships are going to have to go. Were they to remove the small ships and leave only ships like Iona and Britannia then I can guarantee you that 1000s of loyal cruises will find alternative cruise lines and if none exist they will choose a different type of holiday altogether.

The young are going to be strapped for cash and will be looking for cheap flight holidays of a few hundred quid in resorts as soon as they are able to fly again.

Alyhels - "I can see already the signs from say CCL targeting the younger audience. "

It's a pipe dream. The younger audience is NOT the audience with tons of recreational cash. Even before COVID they weren't but now with an estimated 750,000 jobs lost in the UK due to lockdown and many more to come and with the largest recession looming since the 1930s the young are going to be very strapped for cash. Most will be more concerned with having a job at all and being able to pay their mortgage bills than contemplating spending £1000s on a cruise !! Most will settle for the odd break in the UK in a cottage or cheap B&B.

It is the older demographic who are retired, whose pension payments keep coming in regardless of any recession, who have long since paid off their mortgages and who are eager to get away and sail again that are the bread and butter of the industry.

Cruising is going to become a holiday for the very rich again very shortly imo.

The only exception of course is if cruise lines go the way of Stellios and "EasyCruise" "have it large" type holidays.

Thrifty - "It isn't clear from the article, the circumstances surrounding the outbreak, or whether any of the crew are displaying any symptoms"

lols wat?!

From the article:

"A DOZEN CREW MEMBERS on the first cruise ship to dock in Greece after the coronavirus lockdown have tested positive for the virus."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/28/crew-first-post-lockdown-greek-cruise-contract-coronavirus-maltese

Desperate attempts here to play down the continuing dire situation for the cruise industry. Some peeps are clearly in too deep. SP only going south imo with the usual fluctuations which the sharks are of course trading at the expense of mugpunters.

DYOR

Do you really think you're fooling anyone with this rhetoric Alyhels?!

If you walk into a supermarket and catch COVID they don't grab hold of you and dump you in a holding cell for 2 weeks do they?!! Nor do they charge you £1000s for the privilege of doing so!

This remains the fundamental problem for cruising. What happens when there ARE cases of COVID on-board and how are passengers treated. We will shortly find out, yet again, what the situation is in respect of this latest ship Mein Schiff 6.
Expect more news reports to update us. I predict the ship will be destined to float around whilst they see how many more people the virus has spread to.

People might want to ask themselves how they have a dozen cases on-board at all if every passenger and crew member were tested prior to boarding and if people have been regularly tested during the voyage.

The reality is this IS going to happen on most cruises imo so they HAVE to agree a downgrading of the virus with the world health authorities otherwise cruising remains dead in the water. You can't offer a holiday proposition if the holiday terminates at the first sign of COVID.

It was all so obvious TBH. I predict we'll see the same for the MSC ships that have gone out too.

Are all the passengers locked up in their cabins though? And if not, how many cases do there need to be for that to happen?

Long long way to go yet before cruising ever properly resumes

The core issue is still to be resolved imo

And there it is, soooooo utterly predictable and surely just the first of many to come imo

Doubtless the rampers and cronies have participated.

What a total joke this share is.

The company surely needs far more than £1m for it's outgoings imo. Kenya for example. Plus Admin alone here runs at £47,000 PER MONTH !

Anyone who bought above 0.6p (the CLN conversion price) and held the shares was simply foolish imo. Confetti Dilution was a nailed on certainty imo.

Remember also that there are still those £830,000 worth of CLNs to be converted at 0.6p plus interest at 12%. That will likely generate over 150m shares when it happens.

And God knows how many more valuable Jupiter shares Bell will pawn off to boot !

Expect copious amounts of lame ramping from the usual suspects to try and get the SP back over 0.9p so the warrants can be exercised to generate more cash.

It was all so utterly obvious. More such placings will come imo.

Nothing will ever change here unless and until the BOD are removed and replaced

DYOR

Warrants represent dilution to existing shareholders so no, not good.

Bringing cash into the company equally of very dubious benefit given the preposterous amounts Bell & Co fritter away on salaries, admin and expenses.

As previously highlighted, since 2012 Bell has raised over £16m cash from diluting shareholders and thereby destroying the SP. In the same time he frittered over £12m on admin and expenses.

Anyone who suggests this is good for shareholders is either insane or wholly disingenuous imo.

Nothing changes. The BOD need to be removed and replaced imo for anyone to take this seriously.

DYOR

Don't forget all the warrants at 0.9p.

That's the 3rd time you've completely evaded the issue which is Jupiter shares.

I'm sure readers here will take note. So a holder of CLNs and one full of fluff and bluster about the company dare not even tell readers here how many JMS shares the company has left nor will make any comment on Bell selling those shares without directly RNSing it. Speaks volumes.

Keep wriggling old son. Keep evading. Comical to watch

TS - "I did see a video yesterday of a cruise ship in which they have built Covid isolation rooms within the medical centre on board. A good move if the air circulation is isolated from the rest of the ship."

Far be it from me to spot the flaw in this but . . .

It will on average be 5 days before any passenger with COVID presents with symptoms in which case they will have been spreading their germs throughout the ship for 5 days through the air con system and on numerous surfaces. So having isolated quarters in the med bay is locking the stable door after the horse has bolted TBH. Still worth having but in no way is it going to stop the spread which will have happened well before the passenger ever gets to the medical centre.

The only way to stop spread is to conduct daily testing of all passengers which will require lots of the new test kits which work like pregnancy tests and take about 15 mins to produce results and don't require any labs. But the logistics of constantly testing large numbers of people are unwieldy and would take a long time and many staff to administer. You can't trust passengers to test themselves and give truthful answers either so it would be a daily misery of 1000s queuing up to be tested and sitting around.

If there are cases of COVID on-board (and there will be) then they will spread around by the time anyone becomes aware of them.

So you come back, as always, to the fundamental issue. How will the cruise line be required to operate as soon as cases are confirmed? Answer remains Diamond Princess scenario imo until and unless they confirm otherwise. At the very least it becomes a numbers game. Say up to 5 cases on-board in the medical isolation area ok, beyond 5, lock the ship down etc.
Either way it's still game over for cruising imo. The virus has to be downgraded to where it should be, but that requires lots of careful political climb downs, much like the CDC/WHO climb down on the lies they told about masks.

I agree TalkingSense but it's typical of rampers. Note once again and as I said earlier they have absolutely no response to the core problem cruisers face, the Diamond Princess scenario so they once again just ignore it and do their best to disparage the poster. Anyone who follows such rampers simply deserves to lose their money.

At the moment the actions of cruise line seem to be concerned purely with trying to MINIMISE the risk of getting cases of COVID on-board. Distancing, masks, gel, hygiene etc etc.

What has NOT changed is what they will do when THERE ARE cases of COVID on-board. As far as anyone knows it will still be a case of locking everyone up. Until they state otherwise that's what cruisers have to assume.

So the stalemate continues. Cruisers won't cruise for the most part. They will keep booking holidays in advance in case this show-stopping issue does get solved in the future, but if it doesn't those future bookings are utterly worthless as they are in reality just cancellations waiting to happen. imo.

Another tirade of personal drivel and again completely evading the point being discussed, which is the Jupiter shares.

How many shares does RRR now hold Helpful?

How do you justify Bell selling JMS shares without any direct RNS?

Why do you make no comment on that?