top | item 44875270

Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]

311 points| mastry | 6 months ago |cnn.com

Related: Kodak has no plans to cease, go out of business, or file for bankruptcy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44901330

229 comments

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guerrilla|6 months ago

Hey uhh have you guys seen this?

"Media reports that Kodak is ceasing operations, going out of business, or filing for bankruptcy are inaccurate and reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of a recent technical disclosure the Company made to the SEC in its recently filed second quarter earnings report. These articles are misleading and missing critical context, and we'd like to set the record straight."

https://www.kodak.com/en/company/blog-post/statement-regardi...

kkaske|6 months ago

I feel like journalism used to be considered a higher calling. Getting things right was very important. Maybe I’m misremembering, or maybe the internet has just drowned real journalism in a sea of clickbait headlines.

jspann|6 months ago

Maybe I'm reading the headlines wrong, but it doesn't seem like a lot of people read the actual press release and earnings report from the August 11th, 2025[1]:

1) The "Going Concern Assessment" that they put out was a regulatory requirement because they didn't have full control of the sale of parts of the pension. They say in the release that they're going to have the sale finalized on December 15th, with details on August 15th

2) They not only mention opening a new business segment, but built a lab AND got FDA approval for that segment (Advanced Materials & Chemicals)

3) The sale of the pension is going to have so much of a surplus they're going to pay down parts of the long debt that they have.

I'd love to be corrected if I'm misreading this, but the reports of Kodak's death seem greatly exaggerated

[1]: https://investor.kodak.com/news-releases/news-release-detail...

cloudbonsai|6 months ago

> I'd love to be corrected if I'm misreading this, but the reports of Kodak's death seem greatly exaggerated

The basic background here is that Kodak has been pivotting at least for last 40 years.

- 1980s: Kodak tried to become a Chemical magnate. This strategy was abandoned in 1990s.

- 1990s: Kodak tried to become a Digital Imaging company. While it saw a brief success, Kodak lost the competition.

- 2000s: Kodak tried to become an Inkjet Printer company, which was doomed and eventually pushed it into bankruptcy.

- 2010s: Kodak tried to become a Blockchain company, issuing KodakCoin. It was a flop.

- 2020s: Kodak tried to become a Pharmaceutical company amid Covid-19 pandemic.

As of today, Kodak is focusing on its chemical business (such as manifacturing KODALUX, a fabric coating material) and borrowed $477M (at 12% p.a.) in order to expand that business line.

That loan is due in 2026. Kodak is basically saying "I have no idea how to repay that money. In fact, I only have $155M in cash. Maybe it's time to talk with the creditors?".

bux93|6 months ago

The regulatory requirement is there for a reason. Whenever you see a statement like that it means that the accountant they hired is covering their ass so they don't get sued if the company DOES go bankrupt.

Even though the company is paying them, the accountant is saying "whelp, doesn't look like a sure thing to me!"

Their pension fund has assets outstripping its liabilities and they can essentially wind up the fund. Great! Except if the fund's assets suddenly drop in value (e.g. when interest rates go up, and their bonds mark to market value drops, or if the stock market crashes) or if the price of those annuities to be bought goes up (e.g. when interest rates go down, and you need to reserve more money now for payments later). Interest rates dropping is perhaps not inconceivable, with a president tweeting every week about firing the chairman of the Fed if rates aren't dropped? A stock market crash, however short term, is also not inconceivable, especially with so much of the index concentrated in a few tech stocks.

A "going concern" statement like this is worth more that the company's press release disagreeing with it.

HexPhantom|6 months ago

Headlines love a fall-from-grace narrative

xenotux|6 months ago

Not many people remember, but it wasn't that long ago that Kodak was "pivoting to crypto": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KodakCoin

At that point, it was pretty clear that they're on borrowed time. I'm surprised they had enough runway / credit to make it to 2025.

cowsandmilk|6 months ago

I would hardly describe a brand licensing agreement as a pivot of the company.

A true pivot of Kodak was moving from just doing chemicals for film to doing chemicals for the pharmaceutical industry. That actually involved employees changing what they do, changing factory equipment, etc.

cm2187|6 months ago

My first digital camera was a Kodak camera in 2001. Not saying that crypto was the right decision, but digital cameras definitely were. It seems they were self-conscious, but incapable of executing.

BLKNSLVR|6 months ago

Given that bitcoin just hit another all time high, I'm not sure how apt your analysis is.

Having said that, more of the cryptocurrency industry is scams than not - but then that also wouldn't necessarily exclude them from profitability...

mont_tag|6 months ago

Crypto did pretty well during that timeframe. Likely, they didn't pivot hard enough to offset losses to the core business.

lenkite|6 months ago

Why didn't Kodak pivot to making smartphones ? As soon as the iPhone reveal happened, any sane executive would have realized that this is what they would need to do.

specproc|6 months ago

Interesting to compare the tech companies of last century with those of this era.

Kodak employed a whole town, and many more people besides. We're now waiting on a one-person unicorn.

The number of people benefiting from an enterprise has shrunk considerably, with the benefits accruing more tightly within an already wealthy class.

throw0101a|6 months ago

> Interesting to compare the tech companies of last century with those of this era.

The 'tech companies' (equivalent) of the past tended to deal with physical goods, and so needed physical means of scaling to become as large as they did.

More recent tech companies are often software goods and services, where physical means of scaling may not be as important (though see perhaps with Moore and Dennard). Though those which deal with physical stuff do seem to have higher counts; see below.

> The number of people benefiting from an enterprise has shrunk considerably, with the benefits accruing more tightly within an already wealthy class.

Not sure if this is completely accurate. Kodak topped out at 145,000 employees in 1988:

* https://rbj.net/2017/09/13/kodaks-decades-of-decline/

Apple has 164,000; Microsoft has 228,000; Amazon has 1,610,000.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_employers

HexPhantom|6 months ago

Companies like Kodak, IBM, and GE weren't just employers - they were ecosystems. Entire towns thrived around them.

amelius|6 months ago

I sympathize but it could also be that the benefits are now distributed across entire supply chains?

squigz|6 months ago

I don't deny wealth disparity is very much a thing, but this doesn't seem the point to make it. How many people does Google employ? Amazon? Apple? Probably as much or more than a small town.

camdroidw|6 months ago

Another way to put it: people with lopsided unwholesome lifestyle but genius minds trying to get rich but not realising that money alone isn't what makes life, life.

tomr75|6 months ago

flip-side is one person can add a billion dollars of value

yieldcrv|6 months ago

People talk about physical goods and differences in scaling needs, one thing that bothers or excites me is noticing what the market tolerates.

Many companies employed (and still employ) orders of magnitude more people than necessary just to be taken seriously. The executive team and board is stacked and diluting ownership just to get in rooms for more support and investors.

This was arguably never necessary, and in many markets people still believe they need to stack the deck and print employment numbers for any incorporated idea they have. The market reality changes far faster than the culture and I love seeing evolution of markets where individuals test a theoretical reality and do it.

I'm glad that people noticed and tried to keep ownership with parallel voting classes, and smaller personnel. I think there are some negatives and that exchanges can go back to enforcing listing guidelines which factor in ownership structure. But even amongst private companies and family offices, I think its interesting when people approach wealth acquisition in ways that match the liquidity of the markets more than the culture, for example, most billionaires stop trading or trying anything because they are afraid of losing money. While the liqiudity from the central bank and market reforms has gotten so much higher over just the last 10 years, that it was only a matter of time before someone tried to trade up to a $60bn portfolio size in the public markets (Bill Hwang). Its still only a matter of time before someone does it successfully and takes it to far larger amounts. Elon Musk sold nearly $40bn of Tesla shares in his court forced acquisition of Twitter, and that's just one stock ticker. Just a matter of time before someone leverages the liquidity in a more diverse portfolio of momentum stocks and has hundreds of billions without any personnel around them. I'm excited to see this capability.

Being able to convert assets to another asset at this speed and scale is something state actors and even Mansa Musa could never do. And the goal isn't done until everything can be valued within milliseconds and its value transferred to another owner, fractionally, with derivatives for future delivery on top.

Liquidity is the game. Just move to the next idea if liquidity isn't there as companies like Kodak from days of old are not necessary.

mark-r|6 months ago

To be honest, I thought they were already completely gone. The article mentions them filing for bankruptcy in 2012.

They were pretty much doomed from the start. They had built their business by taking a cut from every picture you took, from the rolls of film to the developing to the printing. There was absolutely nothing in the digital camera realm that could duplicate that; their revenue dropped like a rock. If they had sold every single digital camera ever bought, it wouldn't have made up for it.

The contrast between Kodak and Fujifilm is fascinating. Fujifilm survived by pivoting to manufacturing critical components for LCD panels, which were exploding in popularity at the time. https://web.archive.org/web/20250704224940/https://petapixel...

dougdonohoe|6 months ago

"Doomed from the start" for a 133 year old company seems a bit hyperbolic. They have lasted 13 decades and counting. How many other company started in the 1890s are still around today?

_fat_santa|6 months ago

I think where Kodak really missed in recent years is not jumping on the instant camera trend. Fujifilm has their Instax line and there's Polaroid with their "OG" cameras. It would have been easy for Kodak to become a leader in this space just with their brand cache.

ghaff|6 months ago

Fujifilm also applied some of their expertise in emulsions to medical applications.

But they were a much smaller company and AFAIK are a pretty niche business today. (X-series cameras are nice but I can imagine that sales amount to a huge number.)

jeffwask|6 months ago

Yeah, they famously missed the boat on Digital Cameras when they held one of the earliest patents but decided to not produce and sell them due to the impact to the film side of the business but like you say even if they hadn't made that error, digital cameras were replaced in 10-15 years by smart phones anyway so it would have only been a temporary reprieve.

guerrilla|6 months ago

Yeah, how cool would it be if Kodak made monitors and TVs. That'd be an amazing brand. Aw man, now I'm sad that didn't happen.

ddoolin|6 months ago

My grandpa (father's father) grew up in Rochester and that was the first time I visited New York for a family reunion, way back in the early aughts. Kodak was the major employer in town then; he and practically everyone he knew either worked there, had dealings with them in some form, or knew many others who did. When we went, I had the pleasure of touring the place and hearing plenty of stories from my gramps and our family. Good times.

HexPhantom|6 months ago

A reminder that companies like Kodak weren't just brands

martinpw|6 months ago

Back in the day when photographic plates were used to capture images from astronomical telescopes, occasionally the excitement of a new discovery was followed by the disappointment of realizing that it was just a blemish in the emulsion, also known as an "Eastman Kodak Object".

HexPhantom|6 months ago

Kind of poetic, though, that Kodak's legacy reached all the way into space

dotancohen|6 months ago

Is that EKO, instead of an KBO or NKO?

mastry|6 months ago

> Kodak aims to conjure up cash by ceasing payments for its retirement pension plan.

I assume this means payments to retirees. It's a good reminder that (if you can help it) you should not rely 100% on any external source (including the government) for your retirement income.

throw0101a|6 months ago

> I assume this means payments to retirees.

You assume wrong. From November 2024:

> According to the company, the plan’s liabilities to qualifying participants would be satisfied through a combination of lump sum distributions and an annuity purchased from an insurance company to cover existing obligations. Kodak, like many corporate pension plans, is in a funding surplus; it has significantly more assets than liabilities owed to plan beneficiaries and participants.

* https://www.ai-cio.com/news/kodak-considers-terminating-over...

> Kodak retirees would receive an annuity from an insurance company. Current employees, as well as former employees who haven’t yet reached retirement, would be given an option to either receive a lump sum of their balance, or an annuity once they retire. Plan participants wouldn’t see a change in the value of the benefits that have been promised to them, executives said.

> Kodak expects to put a new retirement plan in place for current employees if it terminates the pension. The company hasn’t yet determined whether it would provide a defined-benefit or defined-contribution plan, such as a 401(k). The company would need to have a new plan designed and in place within about a year, executives said.

* https://www.wsj.com/articles/kodak-prepares-to-terminate-u-s...

The money in the pension fund, at least up to an amount needed to satisfy current liabilities, is the property of employees and Kodak has no right to it. It is the surplus that was taken back by Kodak last year, and future payments are the ones that are ceasing. Per WSJ above another retirement plan system will be setup for current employees.

Scene_Cast2|6 months ago

That's pretty sad. I find their color film resolves better than Ilford's B&W stuff (I know it's apples to oranges, but if I'm shooting B&W, I kind of want the detail...). Their film is also generally easier to find than Provia or Velvia, for medium format at least.

moomin|6 months ago

It’s sad to see. As I understand it, digital photography forced camera companies to decide if they were principally about film or about photos and imaging. The competition in the image space was brutal, which phones winning the mass market by a huge margin. Those that quietly moved into recondite but valuable areas of technical specialisation did much better, but they’re not camera companies anymore.

kjellsbells|6 months ago

Kodak's failure to capitalize on their invention of the digital camera is so often cited as the cause of their downfall that it has taken on the air of truth. Whether it really was the cause of their demise or not, I'm not so sure. Suppose theyd come out with a line of digital cameras. Would that have saved them? That seems unlikely.

Looking around at similar companies, Nikon and Zeiss became specialist lens makers, for (eg) medical devices, specialist optics like binoculars, and yes, phones. Fuji got into medical imaging, x rays etc. Its almost like they all realized they were in the image business but in different ways.

One peer I find especially interesting is Corning as they were a similar one-trick pony (glass) in upstate New York. But Corning survived, and Kodak didnt. Gorilla glass for phones, fiber optics, etc are a million miles away from pyrex and labware. Why were Corning able to pivot and thrive, and not Kodak?

intrasight|6 months ago

Kodak could rightfully lay claim to having been the first tech platform company. With the Brownie camera - released in 1900.

My father worked there for 33 years. I did an internship in 1984. My boss took me on a tour of one of the buildings at our site - where all disc cameras were manufactured. When I did my internship, the single site where I worked employed 14,000 people. Our start and end times were staggered in five minute increments to manage traffic.

lucasyvas|6 months ago

They should re-market as an anti-AI documentation company that uses analogue capture techniques. Use film!

mikewarot|6 months ago

There are lots of hidden dependencies in the world, who knows what depends on the reliable production of polymer/emulsion products.

It could be that we stop being able to make chips, or printers, or something else because of this as a second or third order effect.

jjk166|6 months ago

Presumably they wouldn't torch the equipment and shoot the engineers when shutting down. If some business unit within Kodak is producing something the world needs, then there will be money to restart that particular production back up again, either as a spun off entity or as new production by a different firm.

Losing a technological capability requires it to go decades without being practiced - long enough that those with the key knowledge die off. This can and has happened under the right circumstances, but probably wouldn't from a company going out of business.

siavosh|6 months ago

I remember when they tried to make a crypto currency a few years ago I knew it was well past a shadow of its former self.

mensetmanusman|6 months ago

The MBAs that outsourced camera production to APEC are long retired.

decimalenough|6 months ago

What they actually fumbled was the transition to digital. Keeping analog film/camera assembly in the US would only have led to Kodak running out of money even sooner.

zoeysmithe|6 months ago

The inventors of capitalism are long dead. Lets not pretend its "mba's" or "corpos" that are the problem here. This is how capitalism works. If people dont like it then they should consider alternatives.

beardyw|6 months ago

Even my DSLR is gathering dust.

iancmceachern|6 months ago

They literally invented the digital camera

hu3|6 months ago

Well Nokia had a touch screen smartphone 4 years before iPhone.

First movers advantage only gets you so far.

kfor|6 months ago

As well as many of the key innovations for OLEDs (patents they later sold to LG)

SamuelAdams|6 months ago

> Kodak aims to conjure up cash by ceasing payments for its retirement pension plan

I have always wondered, what happens to a pension plan when the company files for bankruptcy? What happens if the lump sum payment is not enough for retirees? Are they financially screwed until they die?

gonzo41|6 months ago

This is why the systems like what Australia has, with mandatory superannuation (401k accounts but better) is great. It makes the company pay the retirement plan amount for each worker, each pay. Then if the worker quits, they take their benefit with them. It's a 4 Trillion dollar industry in our country.

pkaye|6 months ago

Probably the PBGC partially covers the retirees through employer premiums payments and tax payer funds.

https://www.pbgc.gov/

jethkl|6 months ago

> Are they financially screwed

I’ll share an anecdote I witnessed in my extended family–it was horrible. When US Air went bankrupt, employees with decades of service, expecting high five-figure to low six-figure annual income, learned they would get roughly $0.20 on the dollar. For many who were entering retirement, the impact was life-changing, and the stress and disruption it caused could well be argued as life-shortening.

PBGC did take over, but that did not solve the problem.

I believe the root cause was mismanagement of the pension, with the bankruptcy merely exposing this. But I wouldn’t be surprised if, at every opportunity during the bankruptcy process, changes were made that eroded the program’s health.

https://www.thestreet.com/investing/stocks/us-airways-pilots...

usr1106|6 months ago

Visited one of the biggest computer, electronics, and household appliance shop in the country (in Europe) last week. Was surprised that they actually had chemical films on the shelf. Not a big variety, and only limited numbers. Only one brand: Kodak.

Myself I shot slides from 1977 to 2001. Was not a big fan of Kodakchrome colors, preferred Fujichrome. And they were also cheaper, relevant for a student budget. After working with one of the first camera phones I have not bought any roll of film, even if in hindsight 100 KB VGA pictures were somewhat limiting... Now I mostly avoid taking photos because I won't have enough time in my life to keep them organized and watch them...

HexPhantom|6 months ago

Hard to watch a company that once defined photography now circling the drain... especially one that literally invented the digital camera, then buried it to protect film sales

TomMasz|6 months ago

It was Rochester's largest employer for so long. Now it's become a bit of local trivia, much like Xerox. Both of them struggled to deal with changing markets.

exasperaited|6 months ago

Pharmaceuticals manufacturing is an obvious way to sustain a business that has a "halo" product that is a product of chemistry. If you think you still need to sell film to even be Kodak, then having boringly profitable chemical work keeps a lot of your processes, certifications and facilities ticking over, I guess. Fujifilm do much the same thing with cosmetics.

smm11|6 months ago

We need an American Samsung-like company. Kodak could have been it.

Then again, Sears could have made Amazon a pets-dot-com flash in the pan.

Sohcahtoa82|6 months ago

I will never understand it. The Sears catalog was an American staple for years. If they had gone online, they could have been what Amazon is today 20 years ago, and Amazon would have just been an online bookstore.

It was such an obvious thing to do and they didn't do it.

tombert|6 months ago

Wait, Kodak is still around?

I'm not trying to be a dick or shitpost, but I genuinely thought they collapsed after I heard nothing about KodakCoin after the initial announcement.

YZF|6 months ago

They went bankrupt in 2012 but came out of their banruptcy. This is the second time they're collapsing. Not really related to their coin I don't think.

ThaDood|6 months ago

I use a lot of Kodak 35MM! They are still kicking around. They are kind of hard to find in my neck of the woods, so I mostly stick with Fuji anymore.

cannes1|6 months ago

I’m curious if this is tied to U.S. intelligence having to cut back on spending. They’ve been tight with Kodak over the years.

heldrida|6 months ago

Kodak film is legendary. There's nothing like watching a movie shot on Kodak Film. Hopefully, they can find a solution.

williamscales|6 months ago

Dang, this would suck. I really like Kodak film, like Portra 400 and Ektar 100.

Writing’s been on the wall for quite a while though. I’m not surprised.

drakenot|6 months ago

> Presteign did not care for the artists, musicians, and fops Olivia kept about her, but he was pleased to see a scattering of society notables this morning.

> There was a Sears-Roebuck, a Gillet, young Sidney Kodak who would one day be Kodak of Kodak, a Houbigant, Buick of Buick, and R. H. Macy XVI, head of the powerful Saks-Gimbel clan.

- The Stars My Destination

bsenftner|6 months ago

Biggest brand failure in my memory. "Kodak Moments" could have been used forever.

smm11|6 months ago

They could have ruled the world V298768.

genman|6 months ago

The most important aspect is to save/conserve the equipment and knowledge so it would be possible for somebody else to take over. Something like this happened with Polaroid - a group of enthusiasts got Polaroid equipment and managed to partially restore the development of Polaroid integral instant film (the one where everything is packed into single package). Unfortunately the much more beautiful and photo like "peel apart" instant film was already scraped by both Polaroid and Fuji. I would even consider this a cultural vandalism, similar to destroying important cultural artifacts.

impish9208|6 months ago

Pitbull (Mr. Worldwide) will be sad to hear this. Picture that with a Kodak.

FireBeyond|6 months ago

And for us a little older, Paul Simon. After all, Kodachrome gives us those nice bright colors, and the greens of summers.

fennecbutt|6 months ago

No it didn't, lmao. Modern hellscape nightmare of false news, parroting misinformation and general apathy to actually checking facts.

Kodak has even had to release a statement in response to this nonsense.

Anyway, buy Kodak film, maybe they'll bring some of the older ones back after they've cleared debts.

zzzeek|6 months ago

[deleted]

siva7|6 months ago

I'm confused. Isn't kodak a printer company?

YZF|6 months ago

they also make printers. (or at least used to)