Kodak files for bankruptcy

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/kodak-files-for-bankruptcy-2012-01-19?link=MW_pulse

by leak • 15 years ago

164 70 15 years ago

nixy• 15 years ago

This is a very sad, but also dignified way for a company to face the fact that their business model is based on technology that has passed. Now, the recording industry...

VonLipwig• 15 years ago

Sad thing is that Kodak invented the digital camera. At the time the sales of the film for their Kodak camera's were doing so well they decided to shelve the project instead of jeopardize those sales. (That is how I understand it anyway)

20 years or so later everyone has a digital camera and all Kodak has are some patents.

arnoldwh• 15 years ago

Another major issue is that they were late to the party with their digital cameras. Once all smartphones had decent cameras, the niche they carved in easy to use snapshooter cameras became displaced while those companies that focused on digital SLRs boomed.

A smaller SLR segment boomed as the costs of distribution fell due to the internet, rewarding content creators while phone cameras becoming just as good and a lot easier to use for the typical snapshooter.

It almost reads like a case study in "Innovator's Dilemma."

rat87• 15 years ago

Then maybe it was the right decision(for the company at least).

Delmania• 15 years ago

I live in Rochester, and have had the chance to speak with several people who worked for Kodak (and some still do) about this issue. The company has obscene profit margins from film, I've heard quotes of around 20% and higher, and there was a belief that film would always be around. However, many people within the company knew film had a limited lifespan and that with the advent of personal computers, it was only a matter of time before digital took over. They also knew there was no way Kodak was going to be able to make the same profit margins on digital as it did on film. With that in mind, it made it a hard sell to get leadership to really focus on the long term..

asmithmd15• 15 years ago

"The company has obscene profit margins from film, I've heard quotes of around 20%"

If you are talking gross margin that sounds closer to a marginally profitable product than "obscene."

doublextremevil• 15 years ago

Kodak joins a lot of older companies that just cant keep up with the changing world. Take RIM for example who said to the original iPhone “There is no way that phone can do what they showed off on stage.” It is sad but bound to become more commonplace. Blockbuster and Circuit City also come to mind as companies that used to dominate, but are now long gone.

ck2• 15 years ago

A lot of companies even larger than Kodak have emerged from bankruptcy though.

It's just a sign that old management methods have failed and time to change.

The problem is once something becomes a commodity, it's hard to make profit from there. I am going to be very curious to see what happens to the iphone brand in a decade. Once it would have been impossible to imagine the "walkman" brand to fade away.

flyt• 15 years ago

yes but 'Walkman' or 'iPhone' aren't the only products made by their respective companies, and they keep trying new stuff.

Kodak is dead because they rode the analog film horse into the ground and never realized they needed to diversify and leverage their brand into something new and better for the next 50 years.

potatolicious• 15 years ago

But they did, they just did it all wrong.

Kodak hasn't been a film-company for years, and in fact they still lead the industry in many ways. For example, look at the market for high-end medium format digital sensors, Kodak is still at the top of that heap. Of course, the market for $20K digital backs is... pretty small.

Kodak's strategy in the digital age was try to become a technology broker, and let others tackle transforming this tech into actual end product - but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that your licensees and customers will eventually vertically integrate and push you out entirely. Canon built their own sensors, Sony got into the sensors game and pushed Kodak completely out of the consumer sensor realm, and between those two Kodak's doom was all but sealed.

Instead, their consumer-level efforts focused on stupid, low-margin, technologically simple wares like inkjet printers and digital photo frames, all lowest-common-denominator product categories where Kodak didn't have a significant technological edge against its competitors.

Kodak invented the digital camera, but they completely dropped the ball. They needed to ship their own cameras.

sabret00the• 15 years ago

<i>> A lot of companies even larger than Kodak have emerged from bankruptcy though.</i>

I'm curious as to which?

medius• 15 years ago

This is not unexpected, but a very sad "Kodak moment." I can't help but think about Innovator's Dilemma when I think about Kodak. Didn't they decide not to pursue digital camera so that they don't cannibalize their film business?

dsplittgerber• 15 years ago

Great article from The Economist on what mistakes Kodak made and what led them to bankruptcy compared to Fujifilm: http://www.economist.com/node/21542796

gchpaco5• 15 years ago

There's been a lot of wink-wink nudge-nudge over the years to the effect that Fujifilm was subsidized by the Japanese government; to what extent this was the favorable tax deals Kodak also got and to what extent it was real was and is hard to assess, but it is certainly the case that Fuji was not burdened by the antitrust pressure that led Kodak to divest itself of its camera-making arm in the middle of the 20th century. There's a lot of claims to the effect that Fuji piggybacked on the pioneering Kodak research work, and this is very difficult to refute, but if they did they at least equaled Kodak in quality. When people talk about "cheaper film" it was, but not that much cheaper and at least the equal in quality, sometimes better; I found Fuji's consumer films to be far preferable to that turd Kodak called Gold 400.

No one in the industry was really prepared for the nose dive film sales took; essentially only die-hards like me still buy it. Film was and is to some degree still capable of more resolution, more dynamic range, better color fidelity and less prone to weird errors in the way that a Bayer sensor does (almost every Bayer ever sold to consumers had a detail destroying filter attached to it because the alternative is horrific Moire effects), but the speed of editing digital caused it to take off like a rocket. I suppose the lesson to be learned there is that Kodak spent a century making the very best film it possibly could (for the professional lines, anyway) when it turns out the market is perfectly happy with a 4 MP digital with a mediocre lens and chromatic abberation out the arse if it cuts the feedback loop down from days to seconds.

I have mixed feelings about Kodak in general--they had a tendency to make bizarre decisions that led the few film enthusiasts remaining to believe that it was simply a matter of time before everything got the shaft and they would have to switch to something else anyway. They also made a lot of really bad digital cameras, which was strange considering the superb reputation their press lenses and the Retina had back in the day. Fujifilm never divested itself of its cameramaking arm and continues to make some of the best lenses in the business to this day, and I think that has been a very important strength for them.

masklinn2• 15 years ago

> but the speed of editing digital caused

I'd also expect the storage convenience to have had an impact, you can store dozens to hundreds of pictures in a memory card the size of a nail (a pretty huge nail for CF cards, but most of the market will be consumers shooting on SD anyway) and you can offload them into a computer or a bigger storage system at the end of the day, instead of having to lug around cases of film.

There's also the ability to quickly remove "failed" or extra shoots on the spot without wasting a valuable spot in the card, where film... a photo taken is a spot taken, no going back.

> I suppose the lesson to be learned there is that Kodak spent a century making the very best film it possibly could (for the professional lines, anyway) when it turns out the market is perfectly happy with a 4 MP digital with a mediocre lens and chromatic abberation out the arse if it cuts the feedback loop down from days to seconds.

I'm not sure your argument is much helped by you comparing professional film with consumer point-and-shoot from 5 years ago.

bane2• 15 years ago

"Kodak spent a century making the very best film it possibly could (for the professional lines, anyway) when it turns out the market is perfectly happy with a 4 MP digital with a mediocre lens and chromatic abberation out the arse if it cuts the feedback loop down from days to seconds."

Which is exactly the same phenomenon that occurred with music. The industry kept moving to better and better formats, only to be confounded that people didn't mind lower quality lossy compressed mp3s with swishy sounding hi-hats.

joshu2• 15 years ago

(As an aside, can you talk more about the Bayer detail-destroying filter? I love this stuff.)

domwood• 15 years ago

This is kinda sad, I sorta hope they pull through. Companies like Kodak have really struggled to remain relevant, and it's not really their fault.. yeah, they made a decision 20 years ago, but for it to bite them on the arse 20 years later is just not nice. It's like fooling around with someone on a Saturday night, forgetting about it and then finding out you've got a kid 20 years later.

mbesto• 15 years ago

RIMM to follow.

MarkMc• 15 years ago

Technological change made Kodak obsolete - there's not much management could do about that. But what really annoys me is how badly Kodak management handled it.

Rather than simply winding down the business and paying cash to shareholders, they ploughed money into developing digital printers and digital cameras; a market with thin margins and where they had very little competitive advantage. It's almost like management couldn't bear the thought of going out of business so they ended up doing something worse - losing more money and THEN going out of business.

I think Microsoft has made a similar mistake. Rather than sitting on it's little nest-egg of Windows and Office and miking the cash until it runs dry, it feels compelled to waste money in areas with no competitive advantage. Bing, Windows Mobile and XBox have all provided a worse return on investment than US treasury bills.

beaumartinez• 15 years ago

I'll agree with Bing and WinMo, but Xbox? Are you serious? There's one in every teenager's household. It might have cost them a loss to get there, but, if anything, it's an investment for the future—people need to buy games (and accessories, hello Kinect) for their Xboxen.

dolbz• 15 years ago

Not to mention they hold a large amount of the market at a critical period for lock-in to their ecosystem. If they can make xbox live provide enough compelling features that you lose when switching platforms then they'll keep the current users for a long time.

flomo2• 15 years ago

Perhaps because the product is primarily used by teenagers, brand recognition and long-term loyalty historically hasn't mattered much in the video console industry. For example, the several billion dollars MS sunk into XBox 1 means nothing to the next crop of 14 year olds, who weren't even alive at the time.

Plus, MS has been unable to leverage XBox users into buying Zunes or Windows Phones. I suspect MS's XBox investment will ultimately amount to very little in the long term.

shin_lao• 15 years ago

A CEO isn't a banker. A CEO is here to make sure the business lives long and well, so basically he has to trace new paths. Most of the time, it fails.

If Microsoft sat in his little "nest-egg" of basic interpreters there would be no Office and no Windows.

meric• 15 years ago

Kodak was practically the first company that foresaw the arrival of digital cameras, and even built prototypes of them. They just had no idea of how quickly the market place can change. Kodak's switch to digital cameras was planned way before digital cameras were in the market. It was just done too late too slowly.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_was_the_digital_camera_invent...

The first digital cameras for the consumer-level market that worked with a home computer via a serial cable were the Apple QuickTake 100 camera (February 17 , 1994), the Kodak DC40 camera (March 28, 1995), the Casio QV-11 (with LCD monitor, late 1995), and Sony's Cyber-Shot Digital Still Camera (1996).

It's like you are flying a plane and you know there is a mountain ahead of you, and you'll eventually need to climb, so you begin to adjust the plane ready for a climb. Suddenly a cliff appears in front of you and you crash into it.

joezydeco• 15 years ago

The Apple QuickTake 100 and 150 were also Kodak designs.

checoivan• 15 years ago

Ironic that Kodak started the technological change that made it obsolete. They invented the digital camera sensor.

Seems like Kodak tried investing the right area but executed very poorly. Cameras are a great business, just look at how well Nikon or Canon are doing. Cinema digital camera market is just rising by RED and recently Canon. Why a company that started and was leading camera sensor technology, OLED displays, with tons of know how of imaging technology ended up turning into selling cheap point and shoots is beyond me.

justincormack2• 15 years ago

They started as a consumer comany, indeed they invented consumer photography with the box brownie. So moving away from that was hard.

mathattack• 15 years ago

Amazing it took this long. I can't remember the last time I used regular film or a modal camera. I suspect when Grandma and Grandpa got digital and started sharing on Facebook, they were done.

It's a shame because like their neighbor Xerox they were technologically advanced. They were big in digital pre-2000 and slammed on the brakes when they hit short term losses.

Chalk it up as another case of large firms struggling to innovate. Makes Apple seem all the more impressive.

asmithmd15• 15 years ago

It is ironic that Citibank now ultimately will be calling the shots at Kodak because of the $950M "Debtor in Possession" line of credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debtor-in-possession_financing

When Citibank was bankrupt the Secretary of the US Treasury gave Citibank $45B for preferred stock - basically no strings attached. Shareholders of Citibank kept their equity. The Citibank management that had run it into the ground and stayed in place will now be the ultimate decision makers at Kodak.

Why isn't anyone talking about breaking up these "too big to fail" banks? When they get in trouble again now they will be able to point to saving Kodak as another reason they should be bailed out. If you saw this situation in a third world country: National government loans to bank, bank loans to industry; you would see this a croneyism and not be likely to invest or build a business in that country.

wladimir• 15 years ago

It is top-down resource allocation, plain and simple. Very interesting for a country that calls itself a "free market capitalism". I guess that is true to the point that those at the top are free to invest the money as they like (and even "take risks" with it).

jonknee3• 15 years ago

You should also note that the US Treasury ended up making $12B on that deal after repayments.

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2010/12/07/treasury-near-10-b...

asmithmd15• 15 years ago

So you have no problem with the Secretary of the Treasury being the VC in chief for the US, deciding what companies are worthy of investment?

jpdoctor• 15 years ago

> You should also note that the US Treasury ended up making $12B on that deal after repayments.

Never rely on reporters from CNN to do arithmetic. This is the daily TARP update:

http://www.treasury.gov/initiatives/financial-stability/brie...

From http://www.treasury.gov/initiatives/financial-stability/brie...

Edit: And for the record, that is from the US Treasury, who you know is going to put it in the best possible light(ie, least loss of $$).

mdda• 15 years ago

The US Government did a horrible job of negotiating the refinancing of the banks. If they were smarter, they would have hired a tough distressed-debt guy and got a deal that was doable, but made it clear to the bank management that they were no longer in the driving seat.

Even if they hadn't driven a hard economic bargain, the government could still have imposed salary/bonus restraint. The argument that the banks had is that everyone would leave : The reality is that in a hyper-regulated business, the government/FINRA could just politely suggest that people either stayed in their current jobs (to comply with their regulatory duties, etc) or leave the industry...

pvarangot• 15 years ago

For all of you speculating about what business decisions took Kodak to the current situation let me give you my perspective as someone who still buys their film products. I'm also sort of experienced in shooting digital.

I personally believe Kodak screwed film.

I mean, their new emulsions are superb, and they can run around Ilford and Fuji in circles in everything except maybe slides, where Kodak is still better but ridiculously expensive. They screwed film because they where the only ones in a position to take film into the next technological level, but kept managing that division as if it was 1980 and everybody was still printing at the lab or at their own darkroom. They should have focused more on people who still develop at the lab but scan film themselves.

The only feature they introduced that helped self-scanning was stronger carriers. They also claim dyes that ease color management in some of their color negative films but I call that bullshit. Color management in color negative film is a PITA unless you own a Kodak minilab. They had the opportunity to give everyone better color management technology by making targets that are affordable, making easy to use software or even making their own film scanner. They didn't, even thou there were strong rumors about it happening, and even while they still sell their stupid 4x6 print scanners.

Basically now scanning color negative films for most photographers is sort of a painfully inaccurate manual process. Slides are easier but also cost more and have less dynamic range than digital and similar color rendition and accuracy. Black and white can be managed by even amateur photographers but Kodak could still make it a whole lot easier.

I really would like for at least their film division to manage to go out of bankruptcy, since I have only recently began shooting Ektar and love Portra... But if they really go out of business I think I'll sell my MF film gear and start saving for a full frame 35mm DSLR or maybe a Pentax 645d.

gchpaco5• 15 years ago

Kodak emulsions are fantastic, I will agree with you there. I happen to actually quite like NPH and NPS (or whatever the hell they're called now) and can put in a solid recommendation for Reala, which is available in 120. I'm much more familiar with the Ilford side of the stable, where I generally prefer to go with FP4+ (still IMHO the best all-round B&W and runs rings around Plus-X) and Delta 400. I find I disagree with the TMax emulsions too much to be happy using them, but I'm assuming here that you do, because almost nobody really loves Plus-X... in that case I might recommend Fuji's ACROS as a near TMax 100 substitute. I don't get along with it for the same reasons I don't get along with TMX but it is very good at what it does.

nailer• 15 years ago

Isn't a Chapter 11 technically protection from bankruptcy?

asmithmd15• 15 years ago

It is protection from creditors. A judge will decide which bills they can pay to stay in business and what assets they can sell and under what terms.

Common stock is probably worthless and secured creditors will get some percentage of their loan back. The hope is the company can re-organize when relieved of debts they can't pay and creditors will get back more money than they would if they forced the company to close and auction off the assets.

thankfully Wikipedia is back: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapter_11,_Title_11,_United_St...

dredmorbius• 15 years ago

The loser in bankruptcy is the bank. The etymology of the term comes from "banca rotta" (Italian), meaning to literally break the bench (table) from which an early bank operated.

Technically, bankruptcy is a discharge of debts and financial obligations. If there are funds available, there may be a fractional payment of the nominal value of a debt (what you hear as "pennies on the dollar" in the financial press).

What's also literally happening is that money wealth is being destroyed, insofar as the debts of of debtor are considered assets to the creditor, and that the creditor can make loans on the strength of those assets.

The bank (or other creditor) has to wipe out the loan or lien. Literally, the value of these is reduced or zeroed out.

Debt forgiveness has an ancient tradition. It's part of some of the earliest legal codes (debt sabbaticals would occur every seventh year), and is included in the Catholic version of the Lord's Prayer, though protestants generally exchange "trespasses" for "debts".

imajes• 15 years ago

Point of order, Kodak didn't exactly file for what people traditionally associate with 'bankruptcy'. Chapter 11 is an entirely different beast. In the future, it's best to mention that.

redsymbol• 15 years ago

Kodak has starting to function more like a patent troll in recent years, as it seemed to lose its ability to create profits the old-fashioned way. It's gone from a truly all-around amazing company, to an increasingly parasitic force in the world.

Very sad to watch.

sreyemhtes• 15 years ago

Kodak must be remembered for being one of the first popularizers of technology. Kodak did not invent photography, but it made it accessible to the public, putting it in the hands of the middle class and amateurs instead of just professionals. They were the Apple of the 1890s. If you want to look for a photograph of their legacy, don't look for any famous photos, but for the snapshots members of your family were taking of you while you were growing up.

caffeine5150• 15 years ago

I know of a high level marketing consultant who, in the mid-late 90's was presenting to Kodak management. The presenter before him gave a 'rah rah' speech listing all of Kodak's core competencies. Prior to starting his presentation, the consultant offered some frank words for his audience. He said that all of those core competencies were fine, but that if Kodak wasn't fully focused on digital within the next few years, they would be in deep trouble. Management didn't like hearing that and invited him to leave the conference despite it being a multi-day engagement. That's the nature of large organizations - they tend to insulate themselves from painful truths and challenges by discounting or ignoring them.

Kodak files for bankruptcy

Related Stories