Princess Business Progress

There was a Princess 30M moored in St Raphael when I was there last week, it was a very fine vessel and seemed to exude class. Quite a difference to the new Princess 32 I went on as a kid - I was in awe of that too though at the time!
 
Cote d Azur concessionaire is in La Napoule .
They been doing a brisk trade in the sub 80 ft area .
Allways a few being PDI ed and “dealer fitted “with extras .
There’s just one note —— the demographics of ALL the new owners at hand over / come to a have a shuffty etc , while the dealer fits stuff are ——-

How can I put this “ of a certain age “

If you were to blurt out “ they are old folks boats “ - well I could see literally where you are coming from .
I am not saying they are btw - just an observation, Think Honda cars :)

Where as a Pred sixty something or bigger ora new Hat fifty something , moored next door ( SS .Fr too has concessionaire ) tends to have a younger family man age bracket with kids .

How ever the French love Prinys I suspect they have adopted the Co as some kind of honorary Fr Co :) to sit at the top there quality pyramid?
And there’s a skewed number of retired / sold up French with interests in the C d A .

SS are bought by none Fr .
 
Precisely! The vast majority of seven figure boats are bought by older folks for no other reason than they're the ones with seven figures to spend! :D
 
rafiki_ said:
With apologies to Time Inc, this article from Forbes is worth a quick read.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/heathe...ts-surges-back-into-the-black/2/#d01d3d24d500
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Private equity fund buys Princess from a very smart seller; bought at too high price; private equity fund now under new management to a degree; press release a bit slapdash ("profits were maintained" followed a few lines later by "powered out of the red"; go figure). There is obviously a decent recovery story here and so management/owners will be talking the Princess story up, naturally and good luck to them, in preparation for a sale of the business. With a bit of luck they might get most of their money back, which is way better than it looked 3 years ago when the thing was burning a million a month and using accounting policy tweaks to flatter reported profits. Stay tuned.
 
ari said:
Precisely! The vast majority of seven figure boats are bought by older folks for no other reason than they're the ones with seven figures to spend! :D
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Is that true/hunch/do you have data? Fairline used to sell most new 78s to people in 40s iirc (inc me, for 2% of them). It has always been a younger person's brand, mind you :D
 
I was 48 when I bought the s65 so on reflection are right.

I suppose it depends on where you draw the line of old!

My point was you have to be old enough to have earned it and have surplus cash after houses etc. That prob does start about mid 40s with a second wave maybe mid 60s when people retire, access pension, poss buy smaller house etc

There are a lot of people making a lot of money doing all sorts so maybe my comment risked the stereo type we discuss on here re boat shows that they won’t let me on he stand as they think I can’t afford it!
 
jfm said:
Private equity fund buys Princess from a very smart seller; bought at too high price; private equity fund now under new management to a degree; press release a bit slapdash ("profits were maintained" followed a few lines later by "powered out of the red"; go figure). There is obviously a decent recovery story here and so management/owners will be talking the Princess story up, naturally and good luck to them, in preparation for a sale of the business. With a bit of luck they might get most of their money back, which is way better than it looked 3 years ago when the thing was burning a million a month and using accounting policy tweaks to flatter reported profits. Stay tuned.
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Interesting comments. However, it does appear that the health of the business is improving. I was sceptical about Sherrif’s appointment, but so far he appears to be doing the right things. Absolutely agree that product improvement is the way to success rather than discounting.
 
rafiki_ said:
Interesting comments. However, it does appear that the health of the business is improving. I was sceptical about Sherrif’s appointment, but so far he appears to be doing the right things. Absolutely agree that product improvement is the way to success rather than discounting.
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Confused by your "However". I'm also saying the business has improved a lot. Not difficult compared with where the business was of course.
We have discussed CEO on here before. Well before Mellier's appointment, about a year in fact, I wrote on here that I couldn't believe the shareholders had not yet replaced Chris Gates with a new CEO. They finally did it and things improved. Mellier was a stop gap and they got Sherrif as a permanent CEO. No particular comment from me on that but he seems to be continuing the business's improvement. The critical change, done rather slowly, was to replace Chris Gates as the CEO.
 
jfm said:
Confused by your "However". I'm also saying the business has improved a lot. Not difficult compared with where the business was of course.
We have discussed CEO on here before. Well before Mellier's appointment, about a year in fact, I wrote on here that I couldn't believe the shareholders had not yet replaced Chris Gates with a new CEO. They finally did it and things improved. Mellier was a stop gap and they got Sherrif as a permanent CEO. No particular comment from me on that but he seems to be continuing the business's improvement. The critical change, done rather slowly, was to replace Chris Gates as the CEO.
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JFM, nothing in my "however", sorry to confuse. I can't comment on Gates, as I don't know him, but have done business with Sheriff. Nice guy, but didn't see him pulling up any trees, however (sorry, that word again) it looks like the business is turning around, so he must be doing several things right.
 
I'm pleased that Princess appear to have turned a corner and are back in profit. We really wouldn't want to see them go to the wall. It's interesting that the new CEO suggests that surplus capacity, discounting and not investing in new models is commercial suicide (my words) as this was what led to the demise of old Fairline. Would be interesting to understand how much the weak £ has helped these recoveries. I know that engines and parts are now dearer to import but these components don't make up as much of the overall cost of a new boat as people might think.
 
petem said:
I'm pleased that Princess appear to have turned a corner and are back in profit. We really wouldn't want to see them go to the wall. It's interesting that the new CEO suggests that surplus capacity, discounting and not investing in new models is commercial suicide (my words) as this was what led to the demise of old Fairline. Would be interesting to understand how much the weak £ has helped these recoveries. I know that engines and parts are now dearer to import but these components don't make up as much of the overall cost of a new boat as people might think.
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You say that but
(a) investing in new models isn't a new policy at Princess; they were doing it big time for the last 10 years when fairline weren't, and
(b) "demise" isn't something that happened to fairline but not princess. Over the last 10 years vastly more money has been burnt at princess than at fairline in thr company's operations, and princess's shareholders have lost vastly more money than fairline's. Thr bankruptcy event at fairline is a mere technicality against those two economic realities and it happened at fairline and not princess only because of different shareholder choices about injecting more money to a cash burning business. See the woods not the trees petem, when evaluating a business.

You're absolutely right that FX is the biggest event here but princess management won't dare say that given that the shareholder must be thinking of selling one of these days. :encouragement:
 
Does anyone else hear think that Princess' recovery is not really about Sherriff's master plan but more about a general recovery in the market since the financial crash? No insult intended to Sherriff but its a lot easier to make your master plan work when you join a company at the bottom of the market and ride the wave of improving market conditions. Yes Princess now makes some fine boats and appears to be selling them at acceptable margins but you could say that about a few other European boat builders who are selling boats and making margins as well now. A rising tide lifts all boats, as they say. Actually the real test for Sherriff's master plan will be the next downturn whenever that might come. Then we'll see whether his strategy of no discounting, focussing on quality and spending 3-4% on R & D holds water. And as for the Revolution35, until that is turned into a range of viable production boats, it is no more than a bit of willy waving PR
 
petem said:
Understood, thanks. Does anyone know if the 'no discounting' message has got through to the dealers? Could I get a discount on a PrFairSS tomorrow (academic question before anyone asks)?
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Dunno about PrinFairSeeker but you can certainly still get big discounts on Italian boats. One characteristic of the boat market is that not only do you have manufacturers competing with each other but you have dealers for the same manufacturer competing with each other too. If I wanted say a new Ferretti for the Med, I could choose to buy it from probably 4 or 5 different dealers including the UK dealer so there is competition between them. All dealers get a discount and it is up to the dealer how much of that discount he gives away to get a sale and no manufacturer can control that. In fact, AFAIK under EU law it would be illegal for them to try. What in effect Princess are saying in this press release is not that they have stopped their dealers discounting but they have stopped giving their dealers additional discounts over and above their usual discounts to promote sales and thus Princess have preserved their own margins, not necessarily the margins of their dealers
 
jfm said:
press release a bit slapdash
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Deleted User said:
What in effect Princess are saying in this press release
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LOL, talk about Freudian slips! :D
I perfectly understand why it came across to you folks as a press release, but what Rafiki linked is actually supposed to be an article written by a freelance journalist.
Someone who introduces herself (I just HAD to check her website, out of curiosity!) as specialized in "business, travel and lifestyle features".
Now, to summarize my impression on the whole write-up as politely as possible, I wish her to be much better at writing about travel and lifestyle... :rolleyes:
 
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MapisM said:
LOL, talk about Freudian slips! :D
I perfectly understand why it came across to you folks as a press release, but what Rafiki linked is actually supposed to be an article written by a freelance journalist.
Someone who introduces herself (I just HAD to check her website, out of curiosity!) as specialized in "business, travel and lifestyle features".
Now, to summarize my impression on the whole write-up as politely as possible, I wish her to be much better at writing about travel and lifestyle... :rolleyes:
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About on par with the rest of Forbes’ content lately, you know you’re in for a treat when they misspell McLaren in the first paragraph.
 
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