NCL STOCK DROPS...AGAIN...DESPITE 87% OCCUPANCY RATE

Wishing, hoping, following one stock, anticipating demand, waiting for several years for something or other to happen..sorry..that's dead money...let the seagulls carry it off...my dough works so hard it bleeds...I still get regular divs and capital gains from stuff that didn't need to sell junk bonds or borrow $$ offshore or dilute itself to survive.

In regard to CCL stock, I'm anticipating a long, slow but steady rise in the pps over the next couple of years. It's going to take a long time to significantly reduce the Covid debt they and all of the other lines took on, but the company and stock will recover eventually. Surprisingly, CCL's pps has increased sharply recently, but I wouldn't expect that to continue. It's already up nearly 50% since I began accumulating.

The good news is that passenger load is about 90% now, and cruise fares are significantly higher compared to last year, as well as the second half of 2021. As an example, I was booking oceanview and balcony cruises at fares that amounted to between $25 and $35 per day after the restart through Q3 2022. For 2023 and beyond, I'm seeing that the lowest fares for comparable cabins are at least double if not triple what I was paying previously.

Higher occupancy coupled with significantly higher fares, fewer outstanding future cruise credits, retiring and/or re-allocating older ships, and the lower operating costs of new ships all point to a healthier company over the next few years. Paying down debt will continue to have a significant impact to the bottom line, but the company's prospects are certainly looking much better than they looked 6-8 months ago.

Just my opinion. I follow one stock board (CCL - Carnival Corp) and have noticed that USUALLY - the three major cruise lines tend to follow the general market direction - overall. Not true everyday, but most. Also, the three major cruise lines tend to follow each other. Lay their charts out, and there are many similarities. If one of the three announce bad news, they all seem to take a hit.

Over the past two years, a LOT of debt was accumulated which will impact earnings for quite a while. Yankee47 - you are correct - capacity is picking up nicely in the cruise industry, but major Wall Street firms want to see positive quarterly earnings. The capacity factors will in time bring profits, pay off debt, get the dividends back, and return to pre-COVID price levels - but we are talking years before we see the pre-COVID share prices again.

In the meantime, we cruisers are buying shares when we can. Some buy for the low pps, some buy for the on-board credit, some buy for both (my particular reason for buying). It is a nice feeling being a shareholder. I was on a recent cruise, saw one of my ships, and thought -- YES !! I own one of the bolts that hold this ship together.

Too big to sink....errr...fail...I could list a half doz ICONIC companies we all grew up with that thought that...and they're not around anymore...and, you can't blame unions either, since those thousands of employees are foreign nationals. Of course, I'm not counting the assortment of mid/upper mgmt and mahogany row types basking in the sun, keeping their contracts and golden chutes nice and neat...

I saw a few interesting articles in the past few days, one of them a week or so ago mentioned that of the major cruise lines that NCL was listed as having the highest chance of default. Then yesterday I saw an article that said they were trying to sell a whole bunch of junk bonds to finance some cash upcoming cash deadline. Looks like maybe their buoyancy is being questioned.

I don't know how they're going to get all that much more out of John Q Public, seeing as most of the "brilliant financial minds" in this world are trying hard to convince us we're heading into a recession. People will start to tighten their belts even more, and last time I checked cruises were not listed in the category of necessities (except for us of course).

I've been suspicious of FDR's judgement and leadership over the last few years. His rhetoric and bluster about moving ships out of the country for foreign embarkations during the pandemic left me with the impression of being a bully. He may have convinced (i.e. conned) a few people that it was possible, but those of us who know something about supply chains and logistics knew it was a crock. To me it was a blatant attempt to intimidate the CDC, which I think most of us knew wasn't going to happen. Recently he installed his son (FDR Jr.) as president of Oceania. Now I admit I don't know anything about FDR Jr's capabilities. For all I know he may be the best cruise line executive since Bob Dickinson. It's just the optics look bad, especially at this time.