Member Info for toneman

Even when operating well it always seemed like Saga's cruise business was barely profitable. If they offloaded the cruise business entirely they'd be back to being a very profitable company. Roughly 57p eps and arguably justifying a 400p share price on the back of that alone. How much would it cost to just bite the bullet and sell the brand new cruise ships and staff to Carnival, Norwegian or someone else, even in this dire time when those companies probably don't want extra ships/staff either?

How many examples do people here know of where consolidating shares has actually worked? Most I've held have simply dived even deeper, except for CWR but they did it as a promising growth share not a basket case. I think CWR are up 3x from their consolidation. One of my worst fell a further 90% after consolidation. They recovered a little over halfway back before I gave up on them and ditched the shares.

You can also get these shows as podcasts. Here's the full show in podcast form...hydrogen piece starts around 21 minutes in. Nice thing about the podcast shows is they've stripped out all the ad breaks.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/next-weeks-game-plan-okta-ceo-visby-medical-ceo/id147247199?i=1000494216671

ITM Motive has been suspiciously quiet since their (second) creation a few months ago in May.

Anyone unfamiliar with the reference to 'second'...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1464285913703857

Anyone else missing smithy?

"(Oslo, 14 October 2020) Nel Hydrogen Fueling, a subsidiary of Nel ASA (Nel, OSE:NEL) has received a purchase order from ZE PAK SA (ZE PAK) for H2Station™ hydrogen fueling stations which will be used to fuel passenger vehicles and buses in Poland.

"We’re excited to enter yet another country in Europe with our H2Station™ fueling solutions. We see attractive market opportunities in Poland, and are proud that ZE PAK, which is the leading energy company in Poland has chosen our fueling solutions," says Jens Egholt, Senior Director Global Sales of Nel Hydrogen Fueling.

The value of the purchase order is around EUR 3.2 million, and the stations are scheduled to be delivered in 2021."

Thanks Banburyboy. Very thorough. Thanks for taking the time to address each point. I'm sure they will be appreciated by all. All the best.

Banburyboy, I'm going to question your reading of the cash flow. They stated the (travel) cash burn projected as £6m-£8m per month for the second half of the year. They also stated that loan payments for the ships are not due to start until April 2021. I suggest that they have not included any ship loan financing (interest or capital) in their 6 month cash flow, just operational financing i.e. existing debt arrangements. Should we be unlucky and not get back to business by April then the insurance profit is likely to fall short once ship loans are included. I do acknowledge that the shortfall would likely be manageable and loans can always be refinanced on different terms.

Yes, currently rerating to 137p.

It's gonna need some positive news. Today's news - Johnson & Johnson announced overnight that it was pausing its Covid-19 vaccine trial after a participant reported an "unexplained illness".

Why buy today what you can buy cheaper tomorrow?

Good. Thanks for the link Batfasted. With hindsight I shouldn't have limited my earlier search to Astrazeneca trying to find the detailed specifics of the original claim. If I leave that out then loads of stuff comes up about speculation of vaccines in November, from all sorts of companies. Maybe there's been speculation like that all year, I don't know. Anyway, the sooner the better for everything. This isn't my only dog-share suffering with Covid.

At least when Covid is beaten and cruise holidays can return Saga will have reduced competition...

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/world/end-of-the-liner-cruise-dreams-lie-rusting-at-the-shipbreakers-7ndm3xkj6

Sounds like a fanciful conspiracy theory to me. There is news all over the place following the exact trials of AZN vaccine development. As far as I can see none of it suggests possible roll out early November. It's hard to believe our Government can suppress this great 'news' that well...after all they can't even keep their own sensitive news contained.

Unless some sort of link/evidence can back up this claim I think the rest of us would best treat it like some Facebook-generated news and other conspiracy theories.

Yes, I do agree Tiger. If I wasn't already heavily into Saga I'd be willing to punt on it at this price. But when you're down 90% on a share and the prospects for a medium term good outcome of 3-fold gain in, say, 6 months then I'm still looking at putting up 30% of my original investment and all I get is back to even. There are a lot of potential recovery plays out there with the same level of upside and I get to spread the downside risk if I go with them. Alternatively there are a lot of shares out their not even massively affected by Covid which have a decent upside and only a small downside risk.

The reason for my post was to explain what it's like for existing holders of this stock compared to those here who are sitting on an average buy in the 10-15p region. In the end, for this share to start to return to normal you need people on my side to change their opinion of this stock, and for many it will take an actual vaccine, not just the promise of one in 1 month, 3 months, or 6 months, to judge that this company isn't going to get weighed down by the substantial anchors of those cruise ships...see what I did there :-)

sharefall, sadly it's hard to post here about reasons why this is a challenging company to hold without being shouted down from the sidelines, but here goes.

If you check the annual accounts from before covid the cruise part of the business is really tough. So even getting back to normal is a challenging business for Saga. Personally I think they should have never gone into the direct cruising business, they could have offered great holiday packages for their target base instead through third parties and not taken on all the overhead risk. Anyway, they've done it now and that's what we've got to play with. So the upside reward is that they go back to normal, a good insurance business and a difficult cruise business before they start having to make payments on the ship loans. The downside risk is that Covid vaccines don't come fast enough and they can't run cruises through most of 2021. The loan costs kick in around April (I think) and the vessels still require a high-ish maintenance even without passengers. It could make 2021 a really difficult year.

Bottom line is I can't blame anybody for taking a new position punt on Saga at this price as a gamble on recovery. It's got a better than average chance of being a profitable punt over 6-12 months. For existing long-time holders (like me) it's more challenging. Throwing good money after bad is always a tough call and there are plenty more companies out there that have a better risk reward ratio than this one. Doubling down is an easy strategy to make your investment look less lossy on a percentage basis, but in the end if you treat every investment spend/top-up as a new investment would I spend it on this one...no. Until Covid is solved this one is very high risk, low reward and there are better opportunities out there.

Now, where did I put that Tin Hat...

JHolder, don't worry about it, it was pretty obvious. Everyone's got to let of steam once in a while. Hope you get some peace with your main focus. My only advice...use the filter when you've had enough of particular individuals. All the best.

AndyH101, with respect, it's not for new members like yourself to make up the rules for everyone else to follow. The rules are defined here...
https://www.lse.co.uk/terms-and-conditions.html

Thanks for the clarification Roguemale1. I'm sure everyone appreciates the distinction you've made. Cheers.

PM44, your posts are excellent and invaluable. Well respected. Thank you.

I think it's pretty reasonable to have the odd mention of companies in the same sector. Whether you treat it as a tip or not is up to you, but collectively it's worthy research to find out what your competitors and partners are up to. Each to their own of course.

Andy, you should know that it's not against the forum rules to post anything related to the same sector as CWR. If you don't like it, reporting is not the way, instead use the filter then you don't have to read posts from people you don't like.