Member Info for MrMagic

Yep, no polishing this one I'm afraid. As I said earlier, this is only going South.

Announcing cancellations has absolutely nothing to do with transparency, that's probably the lamest attempt I've seen at trying a positive spin on bad news. You cancel tons of cruises, you HAVE to inform everyone simple as.

Nothing is going to change with the cruise industry any time soon imo. The City Boys will keep reeling in the mug PIs on the pretext of the SP bouncing on any silly bit of news they can grasp at. Hints at a vaccines arriving, the odd ship braving the waters to see if they can make a successful voyage without any COVID problems etc etc. By and large however this situation will be with us right through 2021 imho and by then the cruise lines will have lost $billions more.

We are now about to enter yearly Flu season. People should not underestimate the chaos that this will bring. You will have millions of people coughing and spluttering and they won't know if it's Flu or COVID and there probably won't be enough testing done to be able to find out. Lots of people will self isolate thinking it might be Covid, the vulnerable will stay isolated throughout most likely, hospital beds will start filling up again with cases of Flu and Pneumonia, it will be chaos imo. Cruise lines have to react when someone presents with COVID like symptoms whether it's COVID or not. If they set sail during Flu season then it's just going to be endless bouts of people with colds or Flu and every time one presents they will be isolated in their cabins until they can get tested to see if it is COVID or not. I suspect we are in for a rough 6 months. Either way, the big issues that are showstoppers for many regular cruises still remain and have to be resolved before the majority of them will get back on-board.

I totally agree with TalkingSense here when he suspects that Carnival might well consider ditching one or more entire cruise lines in order to survive. Desperate times unfortunately and a vaccine is not going to fix it all imo.

Yep same old. BOD, for me personally, just seem to treat shareholders with utter disdain.

Selling down key holdings like the Jupiter shares without RNSing it is imo simply discourteous and appalling.

A history of such discourteousness has now been established

Bell sold down 1.5m JMS shares last year without directly RNSing it
He conducted loans and transactions with Amulet Diamonds without RNSing it
He loaned £1.1m to Steelmin without RNSing it
He didn't RNS Steelmin going into Administration despite RRR having a 22% stake here

It's simply appalling imo

How can anyone possibly know what other loans and transactions have been conducted behind closed doors at this point or what holdings have been pawned off ? You'd be investing blind.

The problem with no RNS is that you have no statement from the company as to why the holdings have been pawned off and what the proceeds are to be used for. So I personally have to assume it's to keep paying for his preposterous salary and for admin and expenses.

Once those shares are gone, they are gone.

This is simply uninvestable for me. BOD have to be replaced. It's no way to carry on imo.

DYOR

From today's RNS:

"Currently, the company is unable to predict when the entire fleet will return to normal operations, and as a result, unable to provide an earnings forecast. The pause in guest operations continues to have a material negative impact on all aspects of the company's business, including the company’s liquidity, financial position and results of operations. The company expects a net loss on both a U.S. GAAP and adjusted basis for the quarter and year ending November 30, 2020.

The company's monthly average cash burn rate for the third quarter 2020 was $770 million"

Ouch ! $770 million cash burn for the quarter ! Average monthly burn rate for the second half of the year was $650 million !! That's a stonking amount burned for a year.

Total customer deposits balance at August 31, 2020, was $2.4 billion and much of that seems to be Future Cruise Credits (FCCs). Struggling to see the rampers' case here. This is surely only going South.

It seems that this board is simply full of stock promoters who don't know the first thing about cruising itself and thus have no ability to counter the posts of those with extensive knowledge. Cruising isn't going anywhere any time soon imo. A few token ships have set sail in some kind of desperate attempt to show the world that ships can sail again but few genuine cruisers are remotely fooled by the gesture imo. Those who cruise often know that the threat of a Diamond Princess "Death Ship" prison camp scenario still exists. They won't cruise until and unless that threat is removed. Vaccines won't remove that threat. Mask wearing won't remove that threat. Social distancing won't remove that threat and a 100 tons of hand gel won't remove that threat either. It can only be removed by some kind of agreement between the cruise lines and the world health authorities/organisations. Until that happens cruising is dead in the water.

Earlier statements that cruise bookings are "through the roof" are puerile. Most of the bookings are just Future Cruise credits imo from cancelled cruises together with a proportion of people who are forward booking cruises on a "just in case" basis, that being just in case cruising somehow does get back to normal. Those latter bookings are by people who currently see the large discounts and who are therefore speculating that if things get back to normal in 1-2 years time they will have secured for themselves a nice cheap cruise. However, when the time comes, should that threat or possibility of a "Diamond Princess" prison camp scenario still exist, most imo will not be going, they will simply cancel. Thus the booking lists at present are a completely unreliable measure.

Were any foreign interest looking at wading in to buy this out you can bet your bottom dollar they will cherry pick the lucrative bits and leave the dross and either way wait till the company is on its knees in order to pick it up for a pittance.

Alyhels - "your idea of "old people" is wrong its the complete cruise audience which is getting younger all of the time"

This is a fallacy and a huge mistake the cruising industry made during the last financial meltdown in 2008-2010, did they learn nothing? What happens in a financial crisis is that all the youngsters feel the pinch, they reign back on spending, have large mortgages to pay down, many lose their jobs and so on. Meanwhile the older generation who are retired and whose pension payments are coming in regularly regardless are left saying "recession? what recession?". Older cruisers are the industry's bread and butter and always have been. You alienate that demographic at your peril. I remember at least one of Carnival's ships becoming very hard to fill cabins because the older generation just didn't like the way Carnival were dumbing down the experience and trying to pander to a younger "party" audience who would spend more $$$$ on-board. The financial crisis hit and suddenly lots of that target audience disappeared leaving the loyal older cruisers who were largely dissatisfied with the direction things had been going. Most still are imo.

Now with COVID there are 100s of 1000s if not millions of jobs being lost. We are about to experience the largest recession since war times and the public is thus far still ignorant of it or in denial. The youngsters are not going to be cruising. The older people will be keen to cruise, they have the money to do it, but they won't step on board whilst the threat of a Diamond Princess situation persists. They will imo happily take the risk of getting COVID no problems, but they will not accept the proposition of shelling out £1000s just to be locked in their cabins for 2 weeks and not being able to visit ports.

Why would a "vaccine be ideal"? Do you envisage that thousands of old people are desperate to jump on a cruise ship but won't because they fear catching COVID? I honestly do not think that is the case. They've never worried about Norovirus, or Flu or any other bugs they might catch imo. What they fear is that there WILL be cases of COVID on-board and that as a result everyone will be quarantined and locked up in their cabins for the duration like sheep in a cattle truck.
A vaccine won't change that. The cruise lines MUST announce in writing that they will not quarantine all passengers and that they will only quarantine those with COVID. Until they do that the stalemate remains imo.

So given they said the value was AUD $4m and that the Jupiter SP was 0.27 on the day and had been around 0.27 for the previous 3-4 do you believe the holding is now substantially reduced since the start of the year?

@carvegber

There's a certain naivety in your words there imo concerning how the Pharma industry operates. They can't afford for Covid to die out or be downgraded as they want and intend to flog us vaccines perpetually imo and if they can use scaremongering media campaigns to help push through legislation that actually mandates vaccinations then they have the goose that lays the golden egg. $trillions are involved here imo. It would equate to the perfect business model. You supply a product and the customer legally HAS to buy the product. Who could imagine such a thing could ever be possible ?!

If you think through the things that need to be in place for such a business model it all becomes clear imo:

1. We would have to be told that getting COVID doesn't give you future immunity or that it just doesn't last or that natural immunity in some way is just no good (which imo would be a total lie)

2. We would have to be told that the virus is constantly mutating and so it doesn't matter if you've had COVID before, you could still get it again so there's no end to it

3. We would have to be told that the risks of getting COVID and the risks of being hospitalised and/or dying from it are way way higher than they really are. Flu vaccines are sold on a similar Project Fear basis every year.

Now go do your research and see where we currently stand with those 3 things.

Nuff said imo

Covid isn't going away.

@zumore

On what basis would you consider the size of the JMS holding to be price sensitive information?

If it were, would that not mean it was against AIM rules to trade them without informing the markets?

Any chance you will be telling people how many JMS shares remain here Helpful, transparency and all that?

Recent RNS stated the holding was now only worth AUD $4m which with a share price of approx. AUD 0.27 would suggest that the holding is around 14.8m rather than the 17.02m that was previously RNS'd.

Have more JMS shares been dumped on the sly? Would be useful to know. Thanks

.

Well it was a quiet week whilst it lasted and the dog was locked up in his kennel . . .

Those cruises are a year away ! A lot of ground to cover between then and now.

Danny - "Ports and destinations absolutely love cruise passengers And will want them back"

Ports yes, because they get the very lucrative berthing fees which are substantial.

The locals however, much less so esp in many beauty spots. They hate cruise ships, have hated them for some years now and have protested loudly and often about them.

Just look at Venice. Locals have been in opposition to cruise ships for a long time and their voices have been heard and responded to. Large ships can no longer dock there and pretty soon all ships will have to go and dock at new berths being developed much further out so will likely no longer sail past the Grand Canal and St Marks.

Dubrovnik similar issues. Far too many ships berthed on the same day causing massive problems in the city and for local transport. I don't think locals are overly enamoured except those who run businesses there.

Then there's the incident of the Sun Princess ship that went to Reunion Island in March whose passengers were presented with locals throwing rocks and bottles because they believed they would bring COVID to the island.
https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/health-safety/violent-protests-meet-cruise-ship-full-of-australians-and-new-zealanders-at-runion-island/news-story/bea212b73787a3691f3ed59f789134cc

Cruise lines and cruising have become a significant issue in many countries for various reasons. Too many ships and too many passengers arriving on the same day is one of the problems and is caused by greedy port authorities. Another is the significant problems associated with pollution both of the air from the funnel emissions and from things dumped in the sea. Up till now it has been difficult for the "little people", the locals, to sway the larger governments and port authorities who have been reaping in the $millions from berthing fees and the like. The advent of COVID has changed this. Now locals have very strong legitimate reasons to oppose cruise lines and they have gained support from authority figures. Take for example the ship (can't remember which) that arrived in Italy and started to disembark passengers when the local mayor immediately drove down to the port and told them to stop. Passengers and crew were refused entry for many hours as there was someone on board with COVID like symptoms.

In the end there is a very very long way to go yet before cruising ever goes back to normal

You're being silly Zumore

There's nothing remotely illegal about being on the "inside" in a company and I personally think your posting style there is ill-advised. Also note that Helpful doesn't even hold a notifiable 3% holding here afaik despite all his fluff and bluster and bravado. The larger holders have far more voting power than he does. However large holders have been dropping of late.

Daniel Sklan, former 13%+ holder dumped his shares over a year ago leaving damning comments here on LSE
Peter Gyllenhammar 13% holder dumped shares a few weeks ago
James Asquith 4.56% holder reduced his holding below 3% on 6th Aug

and so on

Not usually a good sign TBH

DYOR

Be a good chap Helpful and tell us how many JMS shares there are now remaining.

Don't be shy now

carvegyber - "Cruising will get back to normal when there is widespread vaccination and effective treatment which will mean at least 18 months as the above will need time to be proven"

I can't agree I'm afraid. For one, because the Pharma industry being what it is, will undoubtedly establish a recurring vaccination regime just as it has with Flu vaccines. Meaning that there's no end point to COVID. What we need is for COVID to fizzle out like SARS and MERS before it, but the cynic in me suggests that there is too much money involved for that to happen now. So the practical reality will be that we have to live with it for many years. On that basis the cruise lines imo have no choice but to address this fundamental issue of what happens when there is a case of COVID on-board. It will always boil down to that singular problem. Which is why the virus must eventually be downgraded to little more than bad Flu.

Papeiro - "Really interesting development in Boris' briefing just now about the ambition to have rapid saliva tests to allow the UK population to be able to get 'back to normal' "

Old news TBH. Was reported back in August. Here's the company and the product:

https://www.abbott.com/BinaxNOW-Test-NAVICA-App.html

As explained in earlier posts this won't change anything in the cruise world. In fact it will simply serve to more easily highlight who has COVID on-board. That doesn't get us away from the issue of what then happens when someone is positive. If they still have to quarantine ALL passengers to cabins for 2 weeks, and/or dump people off at some foreign port then I'd suggest many 1000s of loyal cruisers will book alternative holidays. Such a situation just isn't going to be deemed acceptable imo.

Always the same here. Always the next "new kid on the block" project which the shameless rampers try to push whilst quietly letting all the past ramped abject failures slip away. I'd consider myself pretty naïve to still fall for the "jam tomorrow" spiel of these pumpers.

Greenland project - tons of money wasted, sold off for just £1
Ivory Coast project - went nowhere
El Limon mine - practically given away and a royalty that will take countless years to recoup
Shoats Creek - dismal failure, now written off
Steelmin - dismal failure, went into Administration Feb 2019 owing £1.1m to RRR which is now lost

Kenya, DRC, Cloud Computing, Candy Sweets, Amulet Diamonds, Elephant Oil . . . . . . .

It just never changes. Just hops from one frivolous project to the next rampable carrot dangling venture.

Again just more waffle and flim flam. No-one need do any such reading.

The business had a significant dependency on electric power, therefore the cost of electricity is the most basic aspect of the business model to understand. The question "what happens if the cost of that electricity goes up?" is therefore fundamental and there should be a plan in place for the event that it does go up. Just as there should be a plan for what happens if there is a major power outage or strike.

Imagine if the London Underground did not factor in the possibility of increased electricity prices and simply had to shut down the entire system if prices went up!!!

Or the electric rail services

Or hospitals . . . .

Imagine walking into Dragon's Den and pitching your great new business which is dependent on electricity and Theo Paphitis asks "how will you cope if the price of electricity goes up?" and you say "errrrr hmmmmm we'd go out of business!"

I can see Peter Jones shaking his head already.

Why don't you tell readers here how many JMS shares RRR currently holds. I feel sure you know.