Sunseeker seem busy... (pics)

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kcrane

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Cross-channel trip aborted as every day had the dreaded strong wind warning, so reverted to Plan B, including a rather splashy crossing from Yarmouth to Poole.

The Sunseeker yard seemed very busy, with a Portofino the only 'small' boat in evidence amongst a number of large boats in build. I counted 16 workers in the first picture.

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The harbour was looking good in the sunshine, how is Poole town itself so down at heel in such wonderful surroundings?

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Back to Lymington on Friday and after a late night couldn't find the enthuisiasm to get up in time to see the RTI race fight get round the Needles (regretting that now) but did get a couple of shots of some mid-afternoon finishers.

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Sunseeker are 2 months late filing accounts, in danger of prosecution as a result, and Grant Thornton have resigned as auditors. Very unusual occurance. All according to the Mail on Sunday financial section. Don't know what all that means but I don't suppose it is a good thing.....
 
emibel98 said:
Sunseeker are 2 months late filing accounts, in danger of prosecution as a result, and Grant Thornton have resigned as auditors. Very unusual occurance. All according to the Mail on Sunday financial section. Don't know what all that means but I don't suppose it is a good thing.....
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Late filing is nothing unusual. Normally it means that the auditors have been too idle to prepare the accounts on time but resignation of the auditors is something else again. It probably means that the auditors and management are arguing about the accounts and that normally means that the auditors have prepared a set of accounts showing a thumping loss and the management are refusing to accept them. Another year of huge losses could damage Sunseeker's ability to get finance from banks and credit from suppliers, not to mention putting off potential customers. This is all IMHO so happy to be flamed if this is not the case
 
Read an interview on Boatbuilder where the Sunseeker chairman seemed pretty upbeat on everything especially on the bigger models, altough he did say sales for the 48 Portofino are going very well with over twenty models being delivered and ten more being on order.
 
PowerYachtBlog said:
Read an interview on Boatbuilder where the Sunseeker chairman seemed pretty upbeat on everything especially on the bigger models, altough he did say sales for the 48 Portofino are going very well with over twenty models being delivered and ten more being on order.
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And I am sure he meant it but playing devils advocate I am sure he would say something similar even if its was not completely correct.
 
wytco0 said:
And I am sure he meant it but playing devils advocate I am sure he would say something similar even if its was not completely correct.
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Agree. A company chairman couldn't say anything else and since Sunseeker is a private company he can say what he likes with impunity
 
Deleted User said:
Agree. A company chairman couldn't say anything else and since Sunseeker is a private company he can say what he likes with impunity
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Yes agreed.
What was surprising how Sunseeker have thinned with total production numbers counting less then 200 boats, if I am correct he said in 2010 they delivered 186 boats. That is much less then the 300 to 350 that Sunseeker used to do up until more or less 2006.
But in the end it is not surprising when your first model the 48 Portofino starts at 600,000 EUROS. Hopefuly the 2012 38 Portofino will change this.
 
PowerYachtBlog said:
Yes agreed.
What was surprising how Sunseeker have thinned with total production numbers counting less then 200 boats, if I am correct he said in 2010 they delivered 186 boats.
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Not sure thats a sign of poor performance. When the recession started, Braithwaite stated that SS were going to focus more on the bigger end of the market which he reckoned was less affected by the recession. The acid test of that strategy is not how many boats SS build but how profitable (or not) the company may be
 
Great pics K, thanks for posting. We were on the IOW on Friday/Saturday, and happened to be travelling on to Lyme Regis on the Saturday lunchtime when we saw you coming out of Lymington (we were on the ferry).

Incidentally if you ever find yourself at a loose end for dinner on the Island, I'd recommend the Hambrough in Ventnor - very nice.

Cheers
Jimmy
 
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Sunseeker appar to have a lot of WIP (work in progress), which could be damaging their cash flow. Purely speculating, but the clash with the auditors could be around how this is shown on the P&L, asset or otherwise.

A wise (but very nasty) old Accountant told me once, no business ever crashed on lack of orders, it is always cashflow.

The move upmarket might have improved margins for SS, but at the cost of cashflow. If you compare to Sealine, they are bashing out 35SC's in numbers, thereby generating cash, at a time when it is expensive to borrow. margins can be quickly devalued, when borrowing agianst risky returns.

Maybe we will see smaller, higher vol boats come back at F/P/SS?
 
I thought it was due to my new Ipad that these pictures are extremely sharp and colorfull, :)
but also on my laptop they are so nice compositions ! well done.
 
admillington said:
A lot of WIP and orders means a lot of stage payments in the case of boat building so I doubt their cash flow is a problem. No orders or WIP and 2000 staff equals cash flow problems.
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Up until the last payment the first two parts are always covering costs, on a bigger 70/80 feet plus yacht.
Another detail which many builders told me but I have no reason not to beleive them is that up until build number ten on fiberglass builds, you are still covering project costs, from design to the tooling. That is on an entirely new build, not a new model which on actual fact is a redevelopment of a previous model.
 
rafiki_ said:
A wise (but very nasty) old Accountant told me once, no business ever crashed on lack of orders, it is always cashflow.
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Yeah, as if the lack of cashflow quite often (and even more so these days) wouldn't be due to lack of orders...!?! :eek:
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rafiki_ said:
Sunseeker appar to have a lot of WIP (work in progress), which could be damaging their cash flow. Purely speculating, but the clash with the auditors could be around how this is shown on the P&L, asset or otherwise.

A wise (but very nasty) old Accountant told me once, no business ever crashed on lack of orders, it is always cashflow.

The move upmarket might have improved margins for SS, but at the cost of cashflow. If you compare to Sealine, they are bashing out 35SC's in numbers, thereby generating cash, at a time when it is expensive to borrow. margins can be quickly devalued, when borrowing agianst risky returns.

Maybe we will see smaller, higher vol boats come back at F/P/SS?
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Cash is definitely king in business especially at the moment when there's nobody around to lend it to you. I was thinking the same thing in that the row with the auditors might be about the accounting treatment of work in progress and how much profit from that work in progress can be booked to the financial year in question. Thats often a bone of contention between many businesses and their auditors
 
admillington said:
A lot of WIP and orders means a lot of stage payments in the case of boat building so I doubt their cash flow is a problem. No orders or WIP and 2000 staff equals cash flow problems.
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Depends on exactly when those stage payments are paid relative to the timing of cash outflows for materials and labour. There could be many reasons why expenditure on a build is running ahead of stage payments such as key suppliers reducing credit terms, unexpected material cost rises, advantageous terms given to customers to attract orders or simply, customers not paying promptly
 
jimmy_the_builder said:
Incidentally if you ever find yourself at a loose end for dinner on the Island, I'd recommend the Hambrough in Ventnor - very nice.
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I can second that; Robert Thompson the chef is a client of mine and having enjoyed his hospitality there a number of times I can recommend it as top notch -both the hotel and the restaurant.
 
BartW said:
I thought it was due to my new Ipad that these pictures are extremely sharp and colorfull, :)
but also on my laptop they are so nice compositions ! well done.
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Thanks Bart, though there is a degree of cheating going on as they're from a new camera and pro lenses, bought after advice from experts on photography in the Lounge.

You can use the Apple camera connection kit to get photos from a camera onto your iPad and then tidy them up in an app called Photogene, which will also upload them automatically to Flickr or Facebook (not Photobucket unfortunately).
 
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