Kodak Hires Legal Adviser Amid Talk of Bankruptcy

[Kym]

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/kodak-hires-lawyers-weighs-bankruptcy-filing/


By ANDREW MARTIN and MICHAEL J. DE LA MERCED

Eastman Kodak is considering filing for bankruptcy as it explores ways to lift its sagging fortunes, according to a person briefed on the matter.

Kodak said on Friday that no bankruptcy filing was imminent, but it did say that it had hired the law firm Jones Day, which has a prominent restructuring practice, to provide advice.

The news of the hiring, just a week after Kodak unexpectedly tapped its credit line, heightened worries about the viability of the company’s turnaround plan. With investors again rattled, Kodak’s stock price plunged 54 percent on Friday.

“It’s one of those cascading effects,” said Chris Whitmore, an analyst with Deutsche Bank Securities. “They are kind of cascading over the waterfall.”

The chief hope for Kodak, which has reported only one full year of profit since 2004, has been its planned sale of 1,100 digital imaging patents, which the company said accounted for about 10 percent of its total patent portfolio.

While the sale of patents was announced in July, the process is taking longer than expected, a person close to the sales process said, despite a burgeoning market for intellectual property. The phone maker Motorola Mobility, for example, was able to get a $12.5 billion takeover deal from Google in large part because of its expansive patent collection. Kodak has said that it has no timeline on the patents sale.

Kodak responded to the talk about bankruptcy on Friday afternoon after first The Wall Street Journal reported the hiring of Jones Day and then Bloomberg News said that a bankruptcy filing was among the options being considered.

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Sad :(

[kazdez]

This is sad. We have all shot with a Kodak camera during our lives, or used Kodak Film before Digital. Hope they can work out something. Hate to see such an icon disappear

Karen

[crf529]

I just started getting properly into film too......

[Bennymiata]

A real shame, as Kodak was about the first of the film makers to get into digital photography, which should have been their saviour.

I remember buying a Kodak digital camera many years ago, and I was surprised at how good it was, even though it cost around $1,300 for a P&S!!

The world is changing, and not always for the better either.

[Boo53]

Certainly is a shame.

My first 2 digital cameras were Kodak's but around the $600. But even though they obviously saw digital coming they didn't seem to plan for how quickly it would arrive.

[arthurking83]

I don't think this is 'unexpected'
A lot sooner than I thought it would happen, but definitely not an unexpected event.

While P&S is a massive and burgeoning market and film has contracted to the point of near extinction, I think Kodak's biggest problem was 'street cred' amongst P&S camera shoppers.

That is, you went looking for a camera, you choose Canon/Nikon/Pentax/Olympus .. because these guys made cameras. Kodak made the film that went into cameras, what do Kodak know about manufacturing cameras themselves? The Average Joe knows little about the reality of what constitutes a camera.. they know only of the name brands and what those name brands imply.

Kodak's compacts weren't bargain priced items by any means and they never really had a top shelf name about them either. They tended to be the middle of the road products that folks may have acquired on a whim. I'm curious as to Kodak owners brand loyalty. I once purchased a cheap Kodak P&S simply for the kids to play with. An $80 toy. Their cousins dropped it and broke it, and I replaced it with a bright pink Samsung compact simply for my daughters use. The bright pink colour was the deal clincher!
I suspect that most P&S non enthusiast owners think in those terms .. simple basic ideology that doesn't imbue brand loyalty in any way.

I think that the other product line they should have vigorously pursued was the home printing market. Decently high quality print images for a decent(ie. low) price point per print.
Their bread and butter business had dwindled too far too quickly, and they required a product line to replace it.
I think if they had channelled a lot of their considerable resources into the printing from home market at an earlier point in the digi revolution time frame .. they could be reaping the rewards now.

It's not as though they had no experience at all in the print market .. maybe they were either too slow to respond or had no offering at all.

I reckon they're too big to go completely under, but the once mighty Kodak is dead now ... in fact I think that old Kodak has been dead for about 5-10 years now.

[nightbringer]

I hope their film division still survives in one way or another ... they still make some of the best 35mm film on the market today!