[jspann]

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]

> 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?".

[bawolff]

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

Its hard not to laugh at that. At least the pivots before that point kind of made sense. I guess 2010 came along and the executives just decided to yolo.

[enaaem]

Interestingly, Fujifilm has pivoted to a like a dozen other industries successfully and it's now a full blown conglomerate.

[nixass]

Maybe they should pivot into human robots, self-driving and robo-taxis next. I heard it pays out well regardless of whether your product being sub-par or non existing at all

[notfromhere]

The chemical thing kinda worked out. Eastman Chemical is the spinout from that and they're a $9B annual business.

The folks running Kodak kind of forgot that Kodak was really a chemicals company that supported photography, not a photography company. Hence why the pivot into that was ill-fated and doomed.

[Suppafly]

It's even worse, other than blockchain, their whole history is having successes and going out of their way to hand that success to their competitors.

[busterarm]

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

Those were actually dye sublimation thermal printers and...they still sell them!

[kleinishere]

Correct. And confirmed by Kodak on their Facebook page. The “going concern” disclosure is an accounting requirement. However, the company claims to have line of sight toward addressing it.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19UdGkBYwr/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Also discussed on Reddit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AnalogCommunity/s/XTwZHnUHnc

[bux93]

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.

[bluecalm]

Or the pension fund has positions marked at given value which aren't updated to current reality (commercial real estate, private equity shares etc.) so they try to off-load it to some poor sucker before it blows up.

[HexPhantom]

Headlines love a fall-from-grace narrative