Member Info for whalehq

Yes reads well to me, inline & potential for upgrades. Though if it sustained revenues/ earnings at these levels for the next 10 years I'd be delighted on the current multiple.

I'd guess (finger in air) it would be 25% more expensive to build them now. Last I saw steel was 50% more expensive and everything else seems to be up 10%to 30%. Global ship building obviously suffered the same lockdowns as other industries over the last couple of years creating a backlog.

Though perhaps companies are still less willing to reserve ships at the moment given the covid-19 backdrop, meaning demand isn't quite where it was.

*throw :)

Nice to see it tipped in the times today:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/share-tip-trend-is-turning-in-favour-of-primark-owner-abf-0fnxzp5k9

I don't have access but can imagine that the main thrust is around primarks value proposition and its appeal to households who will have their budgets further squeezed over the next few months. I agree and think it is good value on both a multi year historic and forecast earnings perspective. Through in an appealing dividend and prospective store growth and I think it's one to tuck away for a few years.

RE: net debt. Yes you're right I misread thanks. Interesting net debt is given at the end of May.

I haven't seen the article but perhaps not the strongest of rebuttals from Joules today. Net debt up c.£10m since the last update, unsure if this their typical debt profile for this time of year, none the less KPMG debt advisory brought on to assist.

I happened to find myself in a Greggs a couple of weeks ago and was impressed with pricing of the coffee and just how busy it was. It was a Saturday morning so possibly peak trading.
Whilst downing my coffee I had a quick look through the fundementals and stuck it on my watch list.

I'm partial to a value play and hold some ABF shares for example. I particularly like the fact that both companies shy away from traditional advertising leaning heavily on word of mouth, social media etc Also they plan to increase locations by a significant amount over the next few years looks highly promising. I ask myself can my c26k population town handle another greggs and I think it certainly can but that's more ambitious than they intend with a target of 1 store to every 20k people.

Looking at the latest update and the general state of things margin pressure will likely be a factor for the remainder of this year but the fact they own their supply chain gives me confidence that they will weather the storm much better than their competition.

The new CEO also ticks a lot of boxes for me having been around the company throughout the last few years of dramatic growth and obviously being instrumental in that. It looks a pretty robust handover to me.

I don't think it is necessarily cheap today but I like the business, its future prospects and think earnings a reasonably sustainable at these levels so I've taken a fairly decent position.

Yesteday I saw a good question to ask yourself when buying into any new company; what do I see that others are missing?

It's a challenging one, going straight for your hubris and grabbing it by the jugular, but for me it comes down to growth Greggs could achieve in my home town where I can see at least 1 location that it would do dramatically better from. That, although it is a very small sample size, reinforces the management targets for store growth. Near term I think it is well set up to capture a market who want a cheap coffee and food on the go. Yes inflation is going to be terrible this winter but employers are aware of this and are intervening with one of non-discretionary payments to deal with the super inflation we're seeing in energy for example also the government are bolstering the pockets of low earners so I'm beginning to think the winter won't be as bad as I feared only a month ago.

Finally a clientel that isn't necessarily lured in with TV adverts or expensive ad campaigns will surely be more sticky than in other businesses particularly those where heavy expenditure on influencers, google ads etc lures people in to purchase on impulse. I think there is a genuine affinity for the greggs brand and that it occupies a portion of their regular's minds in much the same way as MCD. I know it is starting to with me as I've earmarked it as the cheapest place I know for a half decent coffee.

cue a massive sell-off tomorrow.

Not sure BB. I'll have a better look when I get a chance best I can see at first glance is that they expect to pay 2024 £150m bond from available cash at maturity. Have a look at the latest presentation good info there

Just a note that the latest guidance taken £312, 85% and £40m ebitda yields £16m profit. They did talk about it in the presentation and attributed the decline to a different landscape than pre covid also that some central overheads were not appropriately apportioned between cruise and tour. The rejig will reduce pbt in cruise but increase it in tour from what I can tell. Effectively landing in the same position.

In terms of the investment case it still stands as far as I'm concerned. If river cruises clean their collective faces, a half decent profit in Ocean cruises and the early 40p analyst concensus looks easily achievable.

*Correction to my last post they've confirmed on track for £40m ebitda per ship next year.

I agree that the CEO had to go and that it is good news at this juncture although he possibly should have gone earlier in the year. Joules really should be matching the best in class operationally e.g. Next etc the last couple of years could have been stewarded much better e.g DC issues. That's the standard of financial control and forward planning they should be seeking.

The investment case remains however, a small base sought after brand where the founder still owns a significant shareholding. Perhaps he could take the CEO role in the interim.

Yes I listened to it all while attempting to work on other things. Plenty of interesting insights and excellent pointed questions which gave a good look under the bonnet. It was interesting to hear that the reformatting of tour means that they can exceed previous levels of profitability with a reduced load factor. I also liked that they reduced net debt by £30m.

I agree with the sentiment give by a poster below relating to travel cleaning it's own face. My base expectation this year is insurance maintains a holding pattern, cruise posts reasonable profits say 25-30m pbt and tour gets to breakeven or a small loss. Though I truly expect all of those scenarios will be well beaten. If it does that £1b wouldn't be a foolish valuation perhaps a bit less if you take out the non asset backed debt.

Using the 316 assumpsion for the first half and once you take out 35 days of non cruising the average is around 75.4 for the full year. a further 2.4% of down days have also been guided now taking cruise to 73% for the full year. This could be attributable to: 1. a contagion effect e.g. cruisers being put off by the rejection from the carribean ports 2. generic refunds from issues that didn't make the news. e.g. I believe there was an issue with the Siemens equipment for a couple of days from memory earlier in the year and one of the ships was moored waiting for engineers to fix 3. potentially war etc 4. alternatively it could be cautious guidance and the actual load factor is the 75.4% and hopefully nothing more than a blip.

Carribean restrictions have eased over the last week with the cdc downgrading many destinations to moderate level 2 risk along with cruising in general so hopefully that risk is moderating.

Another point is that they confirmed yesterday that they are on track to meet £40m ebitda per ship this year and provided load factor curves. in short 73% for the fy is still above pre pandemic booking levels. This after the carribean shock. I don't think anyone would question your sanity if you assume the load factor will revert to the 85/86% guided a couple of months ago in the coming months.
Fuel hedged and ticket prices going up covering the majority of inflationary costs. I've bought more and will revisit in June.

ITV's market cap is 10x the size of Sagas. With your logic Apple is cheaper than Saga

I agree Banbury, current trading guidance may be ropey because of the carribean c.10m lost sales, and c.4m operating costs also the central cruise costs.
Also fuel will be an issue, along with tour being at a standstill due to omnicron.
However I do think that it should be able to post a better than base case ebitda for cruise by the end of the financial year e.g 80 to 90m. If they can maintain 85% loadings and sell above £314 per ticket even taking additional fuel costs into account. Lots of ifs though.

Nice inline with 2020 update. The order book clipped up a bit since the last update.
I'm happy with that and a hopefully stable dividend.

FWIW I've just been watching Kevin Heart's surprisingly good new thriller/ comedy on Netflix and have seen a few Burberry items in it. Interesting to see, I wonder if they have some sort of product placement agreement with them?
I've also noticed the classic pattern on a few other mainstream TV shows over the last couple of weeks indicating a ticking up of popularity.
I'd buy something myself but my first car was half the price of one of their coats so I don't think I'm necessarily their target market.

I am a little surprised. I think the last time the market cap was where it is now was approx 1 year ago. We've come through a lot of permutations since then, chiefly vaccine roll out, availability, real world effectiveness, uptake, numerous now never mentioned  variants etc etc. Is the current outlook as worrying as it was back then? I really don't think so. Certainly not if you're vaccinated, boosted or under 30.

There are a few risks, obviously, with this company but heavy insider ownership, high capacity forward bookings (both cruise & river cruises) confirmed in the last update and via Banbury/ looking at the website), plenty of positive reviews along with a seemingly robust insurance business gives me confidence to tuck this away for the foreseeable. I'll have another look at it in the Jan update and will buy more fund permitting.

I can only envision that it is covid related. Worst case scenario Europe and ROW locks down and Saga are back to domestic sailing or worse.
The argument against this is: what will this picture will look like in 3 to 5 months time when we're edging into spring, boosters have been administered, herd immunity is manifesting itself in the youth, saga reports on bookings and reluctant travellers are back onboard or booking. I've also read some reports that cruising has so far proved to be an order of magnitude safer than average general society in the USA for example.
Personally I've taken advantage of the weakness by averaging up and increasing my relatively sizeable holding by 25%.

My initial investment case was based primarily on the recovery trade but having delved into saga more I think it has a place as a long term hold in my portfolio. There is a particular segment of a wealthy and growing UK demographic that I believe saga cruises to an extent uniquely caters for. Those who are perhaps older and slower moving and need plenty of assistance etc. It also has a strong single traveller offering e.g. arranging various opportunities for them to meet up, travel and dine together. These factors yield sticky customers in my opinion. Plus they only have two relatively small and very new ships to fill.

It's also useful to see that management incentives are dialling up as this to me indicates that more visibility exists and that there is some reversion to business as usual. It would have been impossible to set mamy of those targets this time last year for example.

TCM I have no doubt that you'll be decked out from head to toe in Burton in 2months- maybe with a tasty pair of Dorothy Perkin Sunglasses.

I think this is a noise which will get much louder in the coming months. It's envitable that online businesses will need to be taxed more than they have been to equalise gov income.