As a result, these conditions raise substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern as of the issuance date of the Company’s second quarter financials.
As Walter Bagehot said
"Every banker knows that if he has to prove that he is worthy of credit, however good may be his arguments, in fact his credit is gone..."
> "these conditions raise substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern"
When the story got attention yesterday I recognized that phrase as the standard boilerplate language securities lawyers warn public companies to include in filings anytime it looks possible that they might not be able to fully meet all their obligations on time. It's a CYA to prevent (or reduce the cost of) investor lawsuits if things go badly. It's not uncommon to see this phrase sometimes pop-up even in filings of companies who are pretty obviously going to be fine, so it doesn't mean much because it covers a huge range of conditions.
I'm sure it's already appeared in Kokak's filings in recent years. The only surprising thing is that some media outlet decided to headline it as click-bait and it worked well enough a lot of people not familiar with the phrase and its lack of significance saw it. Nice of Kodak to at least issue a press release but unfortunate the click-bait got that much attention. It must have been a slow news day.
Even a cursory glance at Kodak's financials shows enough revenue that creditors certainly aren't going to force the company into liquidation in the foreseeable future. Instead, the company will renegotiate and/or refinance the obligations - which is what usually happens in these situations. When there's significant revenue from ongoing operations, even if it's somewhat unprofitable, it's usually in everyone's interest to keep the company operating in the hope it can be turned around. In fact, scary sounding statements like that are sometimes intentionally issued by the company as part of the debt renegotiation process (although it doesn't appear that's the case here as things aren't that serious). Basically, the implied threat from the company to creditors is "renegotiate debt terms or you may get much less or nothing."
To be fair, "[substantial] doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern", at least for audited statements, is accounting jargon with a limited and technical definition. Notably, it doesn't take into account debt restructuring or other negotiations with debtors -- which is what TFA states may happen; notably with pension obligations.
That kind of statement is made to warn the investors and potential investors about the contents of the financial statement to which it is attached. The statement will include amounts representing the 'value' of the firm's assets according to the accounting rules for valuing assets. Current earnings being the most important number that investors and potential investors look for in the financial statements, the 'rules' for reporting those asset 'values' are designed to get the current earnings to come out 'right' for firms that are operating more or less normally. In other words, the asset 'values' and the 'earnings' numbers are hypothetical, being based on the hypotheses that either the assets will be of use to the company or that the company will keep operating long enough to write off the mis-valued assets over many years without that amortization of the value ever having a catastrophic impact on earnings. Bottom line on that disclosure is that Kodak's accountants or auditors made them say it and that's because accounting standards make them make them say it, and that's all that it means.
When I look at the company's follow up assertion characterizing the required disclosure as not direful, the first thing I notice is what is not there: they do not deny that the firm is likely to be acquired.
If you read financial reports frequently you'd know this is standard language included in reports of many companies people wouldn't think are in any real trouble.
Short-sellers sometimes publish real or made-up negativity about a stock so as to push the price down.
Then they can close out their positions at a profit regardless of whether the underlying business is any good. In fact, it's kind of better to pick a poor business for this since it's less likely the stock will spike organically for some reason.
That's gambling. The right way to invest is to see if you trust the company to make a profit long term, not buying into speculation. It can go right and you make a buck, or it can go spectacularly wrong. Just like with gambling.
I've worked in an industry served by Kodak for 20 years, and it's been that way at least that long. I always knew it was pure speculation and BS, because we never sought out another vendor to replace them, "just in case". Their customers know they aren't going anywhere.
It's legally required to report a going concern when you are publicly traded. This is funny because it's a bit of the reverse, but I bet their accountants deemed publishing this as a requirement.
In this world where business's make bold faced lies,I'm not even sure I fully believe this. It could be a half truth like "we aren't going bankrupt... But we're gonna look at being acquired by private equity in the next few months".
But this is a film/camera company so I guess I have no skin in this game anyway. Just giving a bit of scrutiny based on other experiences like this.
Kodak at one time was a powerhouse of applied chemistry, curating a huge library of chemical compounds. I know this because a particular early biotech company rented out the processes (in their own labs) they were developing so that Kodak could test some of these chemicals for particular forms of biological activity. That's how the biotech managed to have cash flow before they were allowed to let any material whatsoever out of the lab, let alone near humans.
(I also worked for Kodak for a brief time supporting a "dark line" where they packaged photosensitive products. A kick in the ass, great fun, very disciplined, and writing code which ran machinery in a black box!)
I wonder what the actual strategies are that Kodak can use to turn around their business? I think currently their revenue streams are:
* Commercial printing and imaging. They are one of the main suppliers for equipment and consumables for large-scale offset printing used in books, magazines, and stuff.
* Advanced materials and chemicals. They even have an FDA-registered pharmaceutical manufacturing facility.
* Film and industrial film production.
* Brand licensing and partnerships.
I think that while film has a bit of a comeback due to its nostalgia factor, it's always going to be relegated to a handful of niche applications. Meanwhile, I don't see Kodak getting back into consumer photography, much as I love photography, since it's a low margin and increasingly niche business. Also, they sold off their medical imaging division in 2007.
>I wonder what the actual strategies are that Kodak can use to turn around their business?
The retro scene has never been larger and shows no signs of stopping. Bring back all the popular film and charge a premium for it so I can stop scouring eBay. Print a billion dollars by next week. Start printing vinyl records too, another billion. Pivot into the modern retro-futurism company. People are tired of "tech".
I'd love to see a company specialize in taking older technology, and only improving on it by incorporating modern materials science to make more reliable and higher build quality versions
Right? It seems like such a no brainer. Someone is going to bring back old boxy cars and make a fortune. Imagine they re-issued the E30 and didn't muck it up too hard? Or any number of popular old cheap models.
The real pisser is that Kodak was ahead of the curve on digital photography before they decided on five year thinking instead of fifteen year thinking.
They paid for a modified version of Mosaic that could handle high resolution images. I want to say 4 megapixel before anyone else even had digital cameras. They were going to have you send in your images and then order a CDROM via a website with the ones you wanted to keep. Because storage was terrible at the time. I don’t remember if prints were an option, but I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t.
I'm not convinced it was really their strategy on digital that killed them. I mean it's clear their film camera business was a "razor blades" model in support of their film business - then they tried to approach digital the same way, trying to figure out what razor blades they could sell us.
But it was largely working - Kodak were the market leaders[*] in digital cameras right up until the smartphone came out. The market for non-SLR/mirrorless cameras is down >98% from there. They could have owned 100% of that segment and they'd still be a nostalgia marque today.
Digital all but killed the film segment, and then smartphones all but killed their digital segment. They were winning in dead markets.
* In the US, according to some contemporary BusinessWeek article that wikipedia's sourced. But I'm willing to accept that it's within a margin of error of successful in that segment.
I imagine that their revenue isn't as much a concern as their debt. A lot of companies in this position have decent revenue for a smaller company, and would be fine if they could cut costs (but they can't, because they have massive debts to service). I haven't looked at their balance sheet, though, so who knows.
A cursory search suggests the global horse saddle market is worth $4.5 billion. Kodak's annual revenue being $1 billion, having a monopoly on the horse saddle market would be huge for them.
But even with it being a small market, if they're valued correctly and they've got a monopoly on the market that sounds like a great and sustainable position to be in.
Fuji supposedly still produce colour film, but production seems intermittent. Harman, the company behind Ilford, is getting into colour film and recently released their second gen. Orwo still makes colour film. Lucky in China is supposedly going to start?
But yes - Kodak and Fuji's colour films are considerably better than the others.
Most film shooters I meet these days are young people that were not alive when film was commonly used by the public, so I don’t think it’s nostalgia. I suspect film is becoming more popular again as embracing a fully analog process allows you to disconnect from computers.
I just hope that any brand licensing doesn't lead to garbage products that only detract from the brand.
Kodac still has enough of a brand recognition that it could still be a leading option for digital video/photo equipment. They are pretty much the only option standing for film, which is somewhat scary in a few ways. It makes me apprehensive when technology becomes completely unavailable. What gets lost to humanity when this happens.
Fujifilm was able to make a massive comeback with a big pivot towards chemical. They're the best at making anything film-related, including a lot of stuff the pharma industry needs.
The camera division is extremely profitable due to the Instax golden goose: great marketing, stellar margins both on the cameras and the consumables.
Somewhat surprisingly, they’ve also successfully diversified into high-end skincare, applying their chemical expertise to moisturizer forumulations and whatnot.
Yes, exactly. Apparently the chemistry for film emulsion is very similar to what’s needed for skin applications. I think a lot of companies would not be so forward-thinking, so I give them a lot of credit here.
Unfortunately for Kodak, its foray into digital assets coincided with the onset of crypto winter—the cyclical slump in crypto markets that tends to follow periods of speculative frenzy. The price of bitcoin slid from a record high of more than $20,000 in late 2017 to less than $4,000 in December 2018.
In October 2018, KODAKOne launched a beta version of its licensing portal, which reportedly generated $1 million in licensing claims in its first two months.But the portal never exited beta mode, nor was KODAKCoin ever integrated with the platform.
Would love to see Kodak do a hail mary on a camera that looks as thin/clean as an iPhone, gives you same or better camera quality, BUT has the absolute best UX around getting your photos transferred, printed, archived (as I upload stuff from the camera, send me permanent backup dvds for an added fee) etc.
Could also offer little software upgrades in the form of filter packs, plugins/add-ons, etc. I can use it to take normal photos, do 4k-8k video, stream direct from the camera, etc. Make it the most versatile camera known to man, all at an affordable price of like ~$299.
Call it the Kodak Moment to piggyback on the existing tagline and you've at the very least got a successful flash in the pan hipster product.
How many people want a device that's the same form factor of a phone and has all of the same photo features of that phone? Why not just use the phone that most people already carry around? It doesn't seem like there would be many people who want their pictures mailed to them on DVD that don't already know how to download pictures from their phone.
I don't doubt that, but most consumers are not professional photographers. They want results that look professional.
A digital camera is a no-brainer combined with a printing station where the phone just docks. They already have a version of this, but if they control hardware they could make it really solid—no compatibility issues, no headaches, just exactly what you want: an easy way to capture high-quality memories that don't get lost in the void of your camera roll.
Phones already do a lot of processing of images to make them look better than what a digital camera would capture out of the box, and Kodak already makes such a dock, it's called the Kodak dock: https://www.kodak.com/en/consumer/product/printing-scanning/...
A little cheaper than an Epson EcoTank printer, for sure (about ⅔ the price), and likely much better prints. But it’s a single-purpose machine, not something that can print off _anything_ in colour on Letter/A4 sized paper.
A digital camera might be straightforward but the magic is in the lenses. You could make the most fabulous CMOS sensor known to man but if you put it behind a 3mm-thick, hugely aspheric plastic lens like a phone uses then you might as well not have bothered.
No chance. The number of patents involved means that only established cellphone manufacturers could ever dream of such a thing. If it involves a portable camera or screen that connects to the internet, it is totally locked down.
The standalone camera market outside of SLRs is too small to make significant impact on Kodak's bottom line. There's also substantial hardware manufacturing investment that they can't afford to make. Maybe they partner with a manufacturer and license the name with a lot of software control, but at the end of the day, the hardware (and software) costs are going to shave off any substantial profit. High risk, low reward.
Kodak is a chemical company these days with modest profits. They need to double down on that. Cameras are not in their wheelhouse.
I was looking at CIPA stats[0] yesterday. This appears to be a Japanese trade association, so it covers a lot of the biggest names in photography - but not Kodak.
But the numbers surprised me much beyond what I thought I already knew. Interchangeable-lens cameras are down from 10.something million units in 2008, to 6.something million units in 2024. But fixed-lens (eg compact, point & shoot, etc) went from 106 million to 1.8 million over the same period.
Nokia survived the smartphone better than (non-interchangeable) cameras did.
I know you meant more "Interchangable Lens Camera" with what you were describing.
SLRs are almost dead. Canon has promised a few more lenses (or had), but all their efforts now are in mirrorless. Sony doesn't have a non-mirrorless offering. And I believe Nikon is the same as Canon.
with film I would have needed a medium format camera and tripod, today it is an easy handheld shot you can do spontaneously with a travel lens that goes from 28-200mm. I can go to a soccer or basketball game and shoot bursts, come back with 3000 photos and catch things like two guys tries to head the ball at the same time
I shoot on digital and film. Film photography has been "niche" for nearly 2 decades at this point. Comparing it to digital photography is like pointing out "smart watches can do so much more than mechanical watches" - that's not the point.
There's an overlap between the mystique of analog technologies, the ritual and limitations of physical processes, and status. Status in affording the time to learn about this niche, the money for hardware and film, the space for development (sometimes), signalling a different mentality towards content (in theory). Plus, for me, the end-to-end analogue feels like a retort to this phase of digital disinformation/AI-everything.
Any Joe can buy an expensive mirrorless with a good travel lens, shoot 3000 photos at a game, and come away with some good ones. Monkey on a typewriter and all that.
This primate spends plenty of time in the digital darkroom, more than I spend at the actual events whether I am looking at the best 10% or 1%. I color grade everything and almost always make local adjustments -- I find color graded flower photos are hugely crowd pleasing and for sports a lot of student athletes have the beauty of youth but also really bad acne not just on their face but on their legs and for every event I develop a LUT which handles issues like that not too mention everything from neon-colored sports gear and green foliage that can be too saturated if not entirely out-of-gamut while still keeping the jersey colors recognizable.
My last 3 years of photography really started when I got a "free" inkjet printer and realized it would dry out if I didn't use it regularly and challenged myself to make a print every day and realized it couldn't just be anime girls from danbooru so that program was hungry for images and dragged me kicking and screaming into photography
and as much as people like to bitch about the ink mafia, the performance of digital inkjet printing for the price is off the chart, my materials cost for 13x19 prints is well under $2 a page.
I shoot more film today than digital. I like the process more. The shots cost real $, so I'm more thoughtful about what I capture. The cameras[1] are mechanical art and feel good to use. I look forward to the delayed satisfaction due to off-site processing. The results might not be "pixel perfect" but photography rarely is... I prefer the slightly less perfect aesthetic - the grain, the slight miss on color, etc.
But, I also shoot Polaroid, so I might just be a hipster who lacks self-awareness. ;)
1 - Olympus 35DC, Olympus 35RD, and Canon Demi EE-17 for film. Olympus E-M5 and Pen E-P5 for mirrorless. Polaroid Go for instant.
I don't spend anytime post-processing or editing apart from occasional cropping. Film gives me a better baseline for that than digital does, at least for what I want and I just prefer the process. Digital encourages a workflow thats a lot more attached to post and being back at my computer rather than just out taking photos.
To be fair, film photography has itself always been, "Monkey with a trust fund on a typewriter." Even with those that are actually technically adept, the skill/luck balance is far less venerable than with actual artists like painters and sculptors and CG wranglers.
> To be fair, film photography has itself always been, "Monkey with a trust fund on a typewriter."
As a GenXer who lived through the transition, and worked a photo-processing job for a couple of years, I disagree. There were plenty of people taking meaningful—though perhaps not artistic—photos with point and shoot and even disposable cameras.
Regular people taking photos of birthdays, weddings, funerals, baptisms, vacations, retirements, etc. I processed and colour corrected tens of thousands of photos and the majority of them had people smiling, laughing, crying, etc, and were put in photobooks: some to never to be seen again, or perhaps looked when someone died when memories for a photo slideshow were desired.
Not many digital cameras today can approach the quality of medium format 6x7, and no digital cameras in existence can hope to approach the resolution and quality of large format film photography.
A medium-format Hasselblad or Fuji camera can get pretty close. I mean, my Hasselblad 503cx and Fuji 690 are my favorite cameras, and if I could justify spending the money, a digital back for the Blad would be pretty tempting. And for my 4x5s, it really depends a lot on the particulars of film and lenses. That's quite variable. And it's an entirely different way of working.
If you're interested, hunt around for an EOS-1 or 1N - it's a 35mm film camera with pretty fast autofocus that can use contemporary Canon EF-mount lenses. (Canon still sells the cameras and lenses, although they're being phased out in favor of RF). Load Portra 400 and shoot in good light, and you might be surprised.
> Got a lot of great photos this time because I put to use what I learned shooting basketball.
I suppose you mean "action photos"? Any (informal, quick and dirty) tips? Especially for photos to be taken with phones or cheap cameras? Or is it hopeless?
I still shoot primarily on DSLR. I don't know how a modern mirrorless compares, but for me shutter lag is the big killer when it comes to action shots.
I grew up shooting 35mm film and my first digital cameras were a shock with their significant shutter lag. To some extent I can "learn" the lag for a given camera and compensate somewhat for things that move regularly. For irregular motion (like sports) shutter lag is maddening.
Re: hopeless - I supposed you could use multi-shot burst on laggy cameras and pull the trigger early.
Modern digital cameras have a mode where they are constantly taking pictures in a small rolling buffer and when you press the "shutter" button it simply keeps the last n seconds of images. It is an amazing feature for action photography and is how a LOT of amazing shots have been captured.
With 6k and higher res video the line between video and photography is blurring and with RAW codecs you can just capture scenes in video and pic out what frames you like.
For me one realization was that a good portrait is a good sports photo. It is better still to show some action or make a photo that tells a story but you can sell pictures to the parents of a student athlete if you make their child look like a superstar.
The best purchase I made for indoor sports photography was DxO photolab which has a denoiser that means photos shot at ISO 6400 look perfect and can even make decent shots at 50000+ ISO
With basketball and a lot of sports there is the problem that if you follow the ball you get a lot of shots of people’s rear ends because that is how the geometry works so you have to fight that and look for the opportunities where things open up and you get a good ‘portrait’ and if you do that the action and story shots will happen. Headers in soccer are a special case, you realize people in sports are trained to do things a certain way so you know if the ball gets kicked high towards certain players they will try a header so you shoot a burst. For baseball you camp at a spot where you can see home plate and third base so you can show what is at stake, get the runner making a score, etc.
I started out with a Sony alpha 7ii which was deeply discounted, when it broke and I wanted to stay in the game I got a 7iv and sent out the 7ii out for repair, now I have a monster backpack and often go out with two cameras
But since the lid blew off in Gaza we have a clear bag policy at my Uni so I take just one camera to games. For indoor sports my weapon of choice is this lens
I think it's a dream if you know your aim at the onset is to get 2-5 good shots out of it, so you know you're going to quickly go through and delete almost every photo. Just scan the whole thing and see if there are any that are great.
If you're undisciplined and only delete the obviously bad ones, and end up with 1800 photos that you think you'll look through at some point, well then you have a pile of junk you're never going to look at again.
I do events for the Finger Lakes Runners Club which I look at like "Space Mountain", you paid admission so you should get at least one good pic, at this event there were a total of 1000 volunteers and runners and I think I got about 600
mainly camped at the finish line. I went to a double-header basketball game of men and women Aug 31 and finally got around to developing it last week and got maybe 400 images that I processed with DxO, that is part of a program of building up a stock of images so I can always be posting them to social media. All of those are "good enough" but yeah the best 40 or best 4 of those are better. If I was selling pictures to the local paper I'd be selling 1 to 3 per game. My secret weapon for going through huge numbers of photos is an XBOX controller and
so I can push a couch up near the computer and sit back and grade photos quickly. I hear some pros shoot 10,000 images at soccer games. I regularly spend more time processing images from an event than I spend at the event.
I suffer from this when taking photographs of my daughter. I suppose every parent does. And the end result IS that I end up with a pile of photos I'll never look at again.
"I should delete 99% of these photos I took from her birthday. But she looks so cute in this one! Oh, and this one! Which is a minor variation of the other one. But I could never delete it."
I'm much more inclined to delete redundant photos of nature, landscapes, etc, but then again -- since they are static -- I also tend to take fewer of those to begin with!
I used to set goals for myself during my train commutes, to try and delete 100 pictures during my half-hour ride, but I didn't keep it up long enough to really make a dent.
Oof. The initial media report might actually have caused material (financial) damage to Kodak.
If someone was shopping around for a Kodak product, saw that original article, they likely decided against Kodak. I personally wouldn't feel comfortable buying a product from a company close to bankruptcy - because if anything goes wrong, no warranty, replacement parts, etc..
If your living depends on the camera, you're probably not buying Kodak anyway, since in that case you're buying more into a system, which Kodak doesn't have.
If you're an amateur, it's likely that it will outlive its warranty anyway, so it doesn't make much of a difference. Also, since there's no "system", grabbing a different one isn't that expensive financially.
So the pension fund thing. My accrued pension value took a significant haircut when my own former company went out of business. In this case, they can take $0.5B out and still "meet all their obligations" without a haircut? So their pension fund was significantly overfunded and all their retirees still get all that was promised to them?
AIUI, the money they are taking out is 'surplus'. All current obligations will be handed off to either an insurance company / annuity or lump sum. Future retirement funds will probably be in personal 401(k)s.
In this case Kodak has a plan for avoiding the situation, but it almost entirely depends on market conditions and the current holder of the pension obligations. They have the cash, but it's tied up contractually and they're working to release the contract so they can use the cash to pay down some debt.
Incidentally pharmaceutical manufacturing and some of the other industries they're in are still very good industries to be in. So they could still pull through.
I’m not understanding the use case, here. Aren’t there plenty of no-name disposable Chinese cameras like this?
For me, it’s capabilities beyond a cellphone camera, in a package not much bigger. One of the biggest frustrations is taking a photo of something and the phone’s limited optical resolution makes that item nothing more than a tiny spec in a large 48 megapixel image. Yes, even the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s 5× zoom is horrifically inadequate for a good 40% of the photos and videos I take.
That’s why I rock a Nikon Coolpix A1000 - it does 4K video, has a 35× optical zoom, and all sorts of other goodies in a package that can collapse down into a block that’s not much thicker than a paperback book, and even smaller (H&W) than my iPhone. It’s small enough to fit into my satchel as an EDC for use at a moment’s notice, and not something that requires special dispensation every time I want to drag it along.
Consumers want flexibility in a portable package. There is no way I’d be able to drop another type of superzoom like the Nikon P1000 into my satchel, despite the much more attractive 125× optical zoom. It’s just too chonky as a whip-it-out-in-a-heartbeat EDC.
There are plenty of areas Kodak could make a difference if they cared to.
Fuji's instant Polaroid-like camera is a novelty and we still use it. Getting an immediate physical print is entertaining for people of all ages these days.
The security camera business is crowded but mostly with low image quality garbage.
For that matter webcams are also often garbage. A quality camera with optical zoom and good ISP and low light performance could do really well, especially with so much remote work.
The market for high speed cameras is still under-served. As is the market for high quality microscope cameras.
There are lots of opportunities out there if you aren't only focused on products that can sell a billion units.
Matt Levine - that's impossibly high standards... but here's an attempt:
If a business shuts down, the assets on its book have to be written down to what you could get in a quick sale, their liquidation value, minus the costs of closing shop. And of course, once you’re closed, there’s no more income.
The standard assumption for bookkeeping is that the business will keep operating. This is the "going concern" assumption, and it lets you value the assets as part of the ongoing business. Switching from "going concern" to liquidation accounting drops the book value, maybe a lot.
If there's debt coming due in the near future that the business can't repay, the survival of the business is in question. An accountant would then have to issue a "going concern" warning. That is, however, not a prediction of doom.
Looks like they have some debt coming due, but expect to get a cash boost from terminating their pension plan (after meeting all their obligations). So the company plans to continue their business, and is confident that they will.
But that is technically predicated on certain conditions (being able to roll over some debt, getting that cash as anticipated) that's not entirely under Kodak's control, and so there is that going concern warning: we think it'll be fine, but we still have to tell you.
Apparently that was misunderstood as a prediction of bankruptcy or intention to close shop.
When I learnt that Kodak deleted that Xinjiang photo, I stopped buying their products. Fine to not post initially, but publishing then deleting and apologizing shows weak corporate backbone.
An interesting thought experiment for me is I wonder when we read a statement like this from someone like Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, etc. in the future? The world changes around companies, and no empire lasts forever. Ask IBM. Ask the Dutch East India Company. Kodak didn’t adapt to a filmless world, what are FAANG companies not adapting to now?
Probably not within our lifetimes. IBM is still around. We can see from companies like Sears that it can take a long time for a company to completely disappear. They lasted what around 125 years right? Would be interesting to see how long NVIDIA lasts. Out of the companies you mentioned, if we look really long term they are the most replaceable, ie. on a long enough time horizon the Chinese could completely replicate/leapfrog what they do, they could become completely commoditized like sound cards were, or someone comes along that makes them irrelevant. Google/Microsoft have long term lock in that will keep them at the very least a trailing edge player just due to all the lock in and the bureaucracy of switching that entails.
Can FASB please get rid of the term "going concern" and replace it with something more understandable? It has caused a lot of confusion for many companies and there's no need for it whatsoever. They can completely replace the term with something else like "Continuing Operations". It's really fucking easy, I don't know why they insist on that backwards terminology except maybe they enjoy the confusion it creates.
> As of the date of issuance of these financial statements, Kodak has debt coming due within twelve months and does not have committed financing or available liquidity to meet such debt obligations if they were to become due in accordance with their current terms. These conditions raise substantial doubt about Kodak’s ability to continue as a going concern.
I'm not sure using more modern language would have cleared up any confusion here. "These conditions raise substantial doubt about Kodak’s ability to continue operations" is no less scary.
The "confusion" (according to Kodak) arises from the fact that the accountants did not consider (or considered and then discounted) the fact that Kodak apparently intends to put in place financing to help it repay or roll over its debts before they fall due. I'm not an accountant but I'm sure there are many rules around what they can and cannot consider before including such a statement.
Clearly, reporting that Kodak is about to go bankrupt simply based on that statement is jumping the gun. But I'm not sure there is anything particularly wrong with the statement itself. It seems to me like a credit crunch or even a spike in interest rates could derail Kodak's refinancing plans and what would happen then?
> The "confusion" (according to Kodak) arises from the fact that the accountants did not consider (or considered and then discounted) the fact that Kodak apparently intends to put in place financing to help it repay or roll over its debts before they fall due. I'm not an accountant but I'm sure there are many rules around what they can and cannot consider before including such a statement.
Well, from the statement itself, such financing would need to be committed, which likely they haven't done. This might be strategic, if it allows them to wind down their pension obligations and harvest the surplus investments.
Qualified opinion. Definition: An auditor's report that indicates the financial statements are presented fairly, in all material respects, except for the effects of a specific departure from generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) or a limitation in the scope of the audit.
This is like telling software people to stop using words like "bug" or "patch". It would be silly. Those terms are firmly ensconced in the vocabulary of the people who use them and everyone who needs to know what they mean do know what they mean.
It's not "really easy". This is a technical term used the world over to convey a very specific meaning. Bankruptcy laws define and use the term. Contracts define and use the term, etc, etc.
Jargon arises out of need and is carried on because it becomes embedded in the scaffolding of a discipline. It's not about feeling special as part of the in group or something like that.
People love their ingroup terminology and quirks. Like that a power cable connecting the RV is a shoreline (eyeroll) and that ships are female (double eyeroll).
Good for Kodak for responding quickly AND being transparent about the numbers involved.
FWIW, discussions about Kodak's decline have been going on for years. This thread is from 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12111597
This is from Kodak's Q2 Financial report:
As a result, these conditions raise substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern as of the issuance date of the Company’s second quarter financials.
https://www.kodak.com/en/company/press-release/q2-2025-finan...
As Walter Bagehot said "Every banker knows that if he has to prove that he is worthy of credit, however good may be his arguments, in fact his credit is gone..."
> "these conditions raise substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern"
When the story got attention yesterday I recognized that phrase as the standard boilerplate language securities lawyers warn public companies to include in filings anytime it looks possible that they might not be able to fully meet all their obligations on time. It's a CYA to prevent (or reduce the cost of) investor lawsuits if things go badly. It's not uncommon to see this phrase sometimes pop-up even in filings of companies who are pretty obviously going to be fine, so it doesn't mean much because it covers a huge range of conditions.
I'm sure it's already appeared in Kokak's filings in recent years. The only surprising thing is that some media outlet decided to headline it as click-bait and it worked well enough a lot of people not familiar with the phrase and its lack of significance saw it. Nice of Kodak to at least issue a press release but unfortunate the click-bait got that much attention. It must have been a slow news day.
Even a cursory glance at Kodak's financials shows enough revenue that creditors certainly aren't going to force the company into liquidation in the foreseeable future. Instead, the company will renegotiate and/or refinance the obligations - which is what usually happens in these situations. When there's significant revenue from ongoing operations, even if it's somewhat unprofitable, it's usually in everyone's interest to keep the company operating in the hope it can be turned around. In fact, scary sounding statements like that are sometimes intentionally issued by the company as part of the debt renegotiation process (although it doesn't appear that's the case here as things aren't that serious). Basically, the implied threat from the company to creditors is "renegotiate debt terms or you may get much less or nothing."
It last appeared in a Kodak filing in 2019 https://www.sec.gov/edgar/search/#/q=%2522these%2520conditio...
Oddly it didn't appear prior to the 2012 Chapter 11.
To be fair, "[substantial] doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern", at least for audited statements, is accounting jargon with a limited and technical definition. Notably, it doesn't take into account debt restructuring or other negotiations with debtors -- which is what TFA states may happen; notably with pension obligations.
https://pcaobus.org/oversight/standards/auditing-standards/d...
*sorry, I meant "creditors".
That kind of statement is made to warn the investors and potential investors about the contents of the financial statement to which it is attached. The statement will include amounts representing the 'value' of the firm's assets according to the accounting rules for valuing assets. Current earnings being the most important number that investors and potential investors look for in the financial statements, the 'rules' for reporting those asset 'values' are designed to get the current earnings to come out 'right' for firms that are operating more or less normally. In other words, the asset 'values' and the 'earnings' numbers are hypothetical, being based on the hypotheses that either the assets will be of use to the company or that the company will keep operating long enough to write off the mis-valued assets over many years without that amortization of the value ever having a catastrophic impact on earnings. Bottom line on that disclosure is that Kodak's accountants or auditors made them say it and that's because accounting standards make them make them say it, and that's all that it means.
When I look at the company's follow up assertion characterizing the required disclosure as not direful, the first thing I notice is what is not there: they do not deny that the firm is likely to be acquired.
If you read financial reports frequently you'd know this is standard language included in reports of many companies people wouldn't think are in any real trouble.
What is the most stable company that has used this language?
https://www.sec.gov/edgar/search/#/q=%2522these%2520conditio...
So... A report that is legally required to be accurate, vs a press release. Interesting.
If nothing gets restructured, they almost certainly will be insolvent, but plans for restructuring are well along the way.
no plans to vs. may not be able to are qualitatively different statements.
I have no insider information, but with all of this I’m thinking BUY BUY BUY!!!
Why else would people be trying to hurt their stock other than to make an opportunity for someone to swoop in and make a killing?
Short-sellers sometimes publish real or made-up negativity about a stock so as to push the price down.
Then they can close out their positions at a profit regardless of whether the underlying business is any good. In fact, it's kind of better to pick a poor business for this since it's less likely the stock will spike organically for some reason.
That's gambling. The right way to invest is to see if you trust the company to make a profit long term, not buying into speculation. It can go right and you make a buck, or it can go spectacularly wrong. Just like with gambling.
I've worked in an industry served by Kodak for 20 years, and it's been that way at least that long. I always knew it was pure speculation and BS, because we never sought out another vendor to replace them, "just in case". Their customers know they aren't going anywhere.
It's legally required to report a going concern when you are publicly traded. This is funny because it's a bit of the reverse, but I bet their accountants deemed publishing this as a requirement.
In today's post-truth alt-facts world, will this actually do anything to convince otherwise?
In this world where business's make bold faced lies,I'm not even sure I fully believe this. It could be a half truth like "we aren't going bankrupt... But we're gonna look at being acquired by private equity in the next few months".
But this is a film/camera company so I guess I have no skin in this game anyway. Just giving a bit of scrutiny based on other experiences like this.
Kodak at one time was a powerhouse of applied chemistry, curating a huge library of chemical compounds. I know this because a particular early biotech company rented out the processes (in their own labs) they were developing so that Kodak could test some of these chemicals for particular forms of biological activity. That's how the biotech managed to have cash flow before they were allowed to let any material whatsoever out of the lab, let alone near humans.
(I also worked for Kodak for a brief time supporting a "dark line" where they packaged photosensitive products. A kick in the ass, great fun, very disciplined, and writing code which ran machinery in a black box!)
We will see. The Kodak stock is still 22.5% down over the past 5 days.
I wonder what the actual strategies are that Kodak can use to turn around their business? I think currently their revenue streams are:
* Commercial printing and imaging. They are one of the main suppliers for equipment and consumables for large-scale offset printing used in books, magazines, and stuff.
* Advanced materials and chemicals. They even have an FDA-registered pharmaceutical manufacturing facility.
* Film and industrial film production.
* Brand licensing and partnerships.
I think that while film has a bit of a comeback due to its nostalgia factor, it's always going to be relegated to a handful of niche applications. Meanwhile, I don't see Kodak getting back into consumer photography, much as I love photography, since it's a low margin and increasingly niche business. Also, they sold off their medical imaging division in 2007.
I miss those Kodak CCDs.
>I wonder what the actual strategies are that Kodak can use to turn around their business?
The retro scene has never been larger and shows no signs of stopping. Bring back all the popular film and charge a premium for it so I can stop scouring eBay. Print a billion dollars by next week. Start printing vinyl records too, another billion. Pivot into the modern retro-futurism company. People are tired of "tech".
I'd love to see a company specialize in taking older technology, and only improving on it by incorporating modern materials science to make more reliable and higher build quality versions
Right? It seems like such a no brainer. Someone is going to bring back old boxy cars and make a fortune. Imagine they re-issued the E30 and didn't muck it up too hard? Or any number of popular old cheap models.
So you're thinking something like https://www.analogue.co/?
The real pisser is that Kodak was ahead of the curve on digital photography before they decided on five year thinking instead of fifteen year thinking.
They paid for a modified version of Mosaic that could handle high resolution images. I want to say 4 megapixel before anyone else even had digital cameras. They were going to have you send in your images and then order a CDROM via a website with the ones you wanted to keep. Because storage was terrible at the time. I don’t remember if prints were an option, but I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t.
I'm not convinced it was really their strategy on digital that killed them. I mean it's clear their film camera business was a "razor blades" model in support of their film business - then they tried to approach digital the same way, trying to figure out what razor blades they could sell us.
But it was largely working - Kodak were the market leaders[*] in digital cameras right up until the smartphone came out. The market for non-SLR/mirrorless cameras is down >98% from there. They could have owned 100% of that segment and they'd still be a nostalgia marque today.
Digital all but killed the film segment, and then smartphones all but killed their digital segment. They were winning in dead markets.
* In the US, according to some contemporary BusinessWeek article that wikipedia's sourced. But I'm willing to accept that it's within a margin of error of successful in that segment.
I imagine that their revenue isn't as much a concern as their debt. A lot of companies in this position have decent revenue for a smaller company, and would be fine if they could cut costs (but they can't, because they have massive debts to service). I haven't looked at their balance sheet, though, so who knows.
AFAIK kodak have a virtual monopoly on colour film production today.
Unfortunately, this is akin to having a monopoly on the horse saddle market.
A cursory search suggests the global horse saddle market is worth $4.5 billion. Kodak's annual revenue being $1 billion, having a monopoly on the horse saddle market would be huge for them.
But even with it being a small market, if they're valued correctly and they've got a monopoly on the market that sounds like a great and sustainable position to be in.
Demand for film has been rising over the past 5-10 years. Being the last major player in the color film market isn't a bad position to be in.
Fuji supposedly still produce colour film, but production seems intermittent. Harman, the company behind Ilford, is getting into colour film and recently released their second gen. Orwo still makes colour film. Lucky in China is supposedly going to start?
But yes - Kodak and Fuji's colour films are considerably better than the others.
Most film shooters I meet these days are young people that were not alive when film was commonly used by the public, so I don’t think it’s nostalgia. I suspect film is becoming more popular again as embracing a fully analog process allows you to disconnect from computers.
I just hope that any brand licensing doesn't lead to garbage products that only detract from the brand.
Kodac still has enough of a brand recognition that it could still be a leading option for digital video/photo equipment. They are pretty much the only option standing for film, which is somewhat scary in a few ways. It makes me apprehensive when technology becomes completely unavailable. What gets lost to humanity when this happens.
Fujifilm was able to make a massive comeback with a big pivot towards chemical. They're the best at making anything film-related, including a lot of stuff the pharma industry needs. The camera division is extremely profitable due to the Instax golden goose: great marketing, stellar margins both on the cameras and the consumables.
Kodak already spun off its chemical company.
They seem to be doing pretty well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastman_Chemical_Company
Somewhat surprisingly, they’ve also successfully diversified into high-end skincare, applying their chemical expertise to moisturizer forumulations and whatnot.
Film chemistry involves a lot of emulsions does it not?
Yes, exactly. Apparently the chemistry for film emulsion is very similar to what’s needed for skin applications. I think a lot of companies would not be so forward-thinking, so I give them a lot of credit here.
Fujifilm's digital cameras are also doing great these days in a somewhat surprising comeback.
Perhaps not so surprising: Fuji was producing excellent film cameras and lenses in the 1980s and 1990s, whereas Kodak was not.
Any one of those revenue streams could be functional as its own business operating with its own goals and direction, why are they having a hard time?
Just remembered them coming out with a crypto coin back in 2018 and the first link was to an Investopedia story from yesterday:
https://www.investopedia.com/a-flash-in-the-pan-the-strange-...
Unfortunately for Kodak, its foray into digital assets coincided with the onset of crypto winter—the cyclical slump in crypto markets that tends to follow periods of speculative frenzy. The price of bitcoin slid from a record high of more than $20,000 in late 2017 to less than $4,000 in December 2018.
In October 2018, KODAKOne launched a beta version of its licensing portal, which reportedly generated $1 million in licensing claims in its first two months.But the portal never exited beta mode, nor was KODAKCoin ever integrated with the platform.
Would love to see Kodak do a hail mary on a camera that looks as thin/clean as an iPhone, gives you same or better camera quality, BUT has the absolute best UX around getting your photos transferred, printed, archived (as I upload stuff from the camera, send me permanent backup dvds for an added fee) etc.
Could also offer little software upgrades in the form of filter packs, plugins/add-ons, etc. I can use it to take normal photos, do 4k-8k video, stream direct from the camera, etc. Make it the most versatile camera known to man, all at an affordable price of like ~$299.
Call it the Kodak Moment to piggyback on the existing tagline and you've at the very least got a successful flash in the pan hipster product.
Who is the target market for this?
How many people want a device that's the same form factor of a phone and has all of the same photo features of that phone? Why not just use the phone that most people already carry around? It doesn't seem like there would be many people who want their pictures mailed to them on DVD that don't already know how to download pictures from their phone.
Kodak make exceptional film that no one else makes, or can make. There is no replacement for Portra. Anyone can make a soulless digital camera.
I don't doubt that, but most consumers are not professional photographers. They want results that look professional.
A digital camera is a no-brainer combined with a printing station where the phone just docks. They already have a version of this, but if they control hardware they could make it really solid—no compatibility issues, no headaches, just exactly what you want: an easy way to capture high-quality memories that don't get lost in the void of your camera roll.
Phones already do a lot of processing of images to make them look better than what a digital camera would capture out of the box, and Kodak already makes such a dock, it's called the Kodak dock: https://www.kodak.com/en/consumer/product/printing-scanning/...
$200CAD. Ouch.
A little cheaper than an Epson EcoTank printer, for sure (about ⅔ the price), and likely much better prints. But it’s a single-purpose machine, not something that can print off _anything_ in colour on Letter/A4 sized paper.
> A digital camera is a no-brainer
A digital camera might be straightforward but the magic is in the lenses. You could make the most fabulous CMOS sensor known to man but if you put it behind a 3mm-thick, hugely aspheric plastic lens like a phone uses then you might as well not have bothered.
No chance. The number of patents involved means that only established cellphone manufacturers could ever dream of such a thing. If it involves a portable camera or screen that connects to the internet, it is totally locked down.
The standalone camera market outside of SLRs is too small to make significant impact on Kodak's bottom line. There's also substantial hardware manufacturing investment that they can't afford to make. Maybe they partner with a manufacturer and license the name with a lot of software control, but at the end of the day, the hardware (and software) costs are going to shave off any substantial profit. High risk, low reward.
Kodak is a chemical company these days with modest profits. They need to double down on that. Cameras are not in their wheelhouse.
I was looking at CIPA stats[0] yesterday. This appears to be a Japanese trade association, so it covers a lot of the biggest names in photography - but not Kodak.
But the numbers surprised me much beyond what I thought I already knew. Interchangeable-lens cameras are down from 10.something million units in 2008, to 6.something million units in 2024. But fixed-lens (eg compact, point & shoot, etc) went from 106 million to 1.8 million over the same period.
Nokia survived the smartphone better than (non-interchangeable) cameras did.
[0] https://www.cipa.jp/e/stats/dc.html
I know you meant more "Interchangable Lens Camera" with what you were describing.
SLRs are almost dead. Canon has promised a few more lenses (or had), but all their efforts now are in mirrorless. Sony doesn't have a non-mirrorless offering. And I believe Nikon is the same as Canon.
The film business is increasingly niche.
I can’t get over how much better performing 35mm full frame mirrorless cameras are than the old film cameras. To get a shot like this
https://mastodon.social/@UP8/114401857009398302
with film I would have needed a medium format camera and tripod, today it is an easy handheld shot you can do spontaneously with a travel lens that goes from 28-200mm. I can go to a soccer or basketball game and shoot bursts, come back with 3000 photos and catch things like two guys tries to head the ball at the same time
https://mastodon.social/@UP8/113240678816336189
… and I can afford to do it!
I shoot on digital and film. Film photography has been "niche" for nearly 2 decades at this point. Comparing it to digital photography is like pointing out "smart watches can do so much more than mechanical watches" - that's not the point.
There's an overlap between the mystique of analog technologies, the ritual and limitations of physical processes, and status. Status in affording the time to learn about this niche, the money for hardware and film, the space for development (sometimes), signalling a different mentality towards content (in theory). Plus, for me, the end-to-end analogue feels like a retort to this phase of digital disinformation/AI-everything.
Any Joe can buy an expensive mirrorless with a good travel lens, shoot 3000 photos at a game, and come away with some good ones. Monkey on a typewriter and all that.
This primate spends plenty of time in the digital darkroom, more than I spend at the actual events whether I am looking at the best 10% or 1%. I color grade everything and almost always make local adjustments -- I find color graded flower photos are hugely crowd pleasing and for sports a lot of student athletes have the beauty of youth but also really bad acne not just on their face but on their legs and for every event I develop a LUT which handles issues like that not too mention everything from neon-colored sports gear and green foliage that can be too saturated if not entirely out-of-gamut while still keeping the jersey colors recognizable.
My last 3 years of photography really started when I got a "free" inkjet printer and realized it would dry out if I didn't use it regularly and challenged myself to make a print every day and realized it couldn't just be anime girls from danbooru so that program was hungry for images and dragged me kicking and screaming into photography
https://www.behance.net/gallery/232344867/Life-is-Better-Wit...
and as much as people like to bitch about the ink mafia, the performance of digital inkjet printing for the price is off the chart, my materials cost for 13x19 prints is well under $2 a page.
All of this.
I shoot more film today than digital. I like the process more. The shots cost real $, so I'm more thoughtful about what I capture. The cameras[1] are mechanical art and feel good to use. I look forward to the delayed satisfaction due to off-site processing. The results might not be "pixel perfect" but photography rarely is... I prefer the slightly less perfect aesthetic - the grain, the slight miss on color, etc.
But, I also shoot Polaroid, so I might just be a hipster who lacks self-awareness. ;)
1 - Olympus 35DC, Olympus 35RD, and Canon Demi EE-17 for film. Olympus E-M5 and Pen E-P5 for mirrorless. Polaroid Go for instant.
I don't spend anytime post-processing or editing apart from occasional cropping. Film gives me a better baseline for that than digital does, at least for what I want and I just prefer the process. Digital encourages a workflow thats a lot more attached to post and being back at my computer rather than just out taking photos.
To be fair, film photography has itself always been, "Monkey with a trust fund on a typewriter." Even with those that are actually technically adept, the skill/luck balance is far less venerable than with actual artists like painters and sculptors and CG wranglers.
> To be fair, film photography has itself always been, "Monkey with a trust fund on a typewriter."
As a GenXer who lived through the transition, and worked a photo-processing job for a couple of years, I disagree. There were plenty of people taking meaningful—though perhaps not artistic—photos with point and shoot and even disposable cameras.
Regular people taking photos of birthdays, weddings, funerals, baptisms, vacations, retirements, etc. I processed and colour corrected tens of thousands of photos and the majority of them had people smiling, laughing, crying, etc, and were put in photobooks: some to never to be seen again, or perhaps looked when someone died when memories for a photo slideshow were desired.
Not many digital cameras today can approach the quality of medium format 6x7, and no digital cameras in existence can hope to approach the resolution and quality of large format film photography.
A medium-format Hasselblad or Fuji camera can get pretty close. I mean, my Hasselblad 503cx and Fuji 690 are my favorite cameras, and if I could justify spending the money, a digital back for the Blad would be pretty tempting. And for my 4x5s, it really depends a lot on the particulars of film and lenses. That's quite variable. And it's an entirely different way of working.
If you're interested, hunt around for an EOS-1 or 1N - it's a 35mm film camera with pretty fast autofocus that can use contemporary Canon EF-mount lenses. (Canon still sells the cameras and lenses, although they're being phased out in favor of RF). Load Portra 400 and shoot in good light, and you might be surprised.
> 35mm full frame mirrorless camera
Can I ask what camera you use?
Hi Paul! Are you a fujifilm guy?
Hey Paul, this comment sparked my curiosity:
> Got a lot of great photos this time because I put to use what I learned shooting basketball.
I suppose you mean "action photos"? Any (informal, quick and dirty) tips? Especially for photos to be taken with phones or cheap cameras? Or is it hopeless?
I still shoot primarily on DSLR. I don't know how a modern mirrorless compares, but for me shutter lag is the big killer when it comes to action shots.
I grew up shooting 35mm film and my first digital cameras were a shock with their significant shutter lag. To some extent I can "learn" the lag for a given camera and compensate somewhat for things that move regularly. For irregular motion (like sports) shutter lag is maddening.
Re: hopeless - I supposed you could use multi-shot burst on laggy cameras and pull the trigger early.
Modern digital cameras have a mode where they are constantly taking pictures in a small rolling buffer and when you press the "shutter" button it simply keeps the last n seconds of images. It is an amazing feature for action photography and is how a LOT of amazing shots have been captured.
With 6k and higher res video the line between video and photography is blurring and with RAW codecs you can just capture scenes in video and pic out what frames you like.
For me one realization was that a good portrait is a good sports photo. It is better still to show some action or make a photo that tells a story but you can sell pictures to the parents of a student athlete if you make their child look like a superstar.
The best purchase I made for indoor sports photography was DxO photolab which has a denoiser that means photos shot at ISO 6400 look perfect and can even make decent shots at 50000+ ISO
https://mastodon.social/@UP8/114961647210448472
With basketball and a lot of sports there is the problem that if you follow the ball you get a lot of shots of people’s rear ends because that is how the geometry works so you have to fight that and look for the opportunities where things open up and you get a good ‘portrait’ and if you do that the action and story shots will happen. Headers in soccer are a special case, you realize people in sports are trained to do things a certain way so you know if the ball gets kicked high towards certain players they will try a header so you shoot a burst. For baseball you camp at a spot where you can see home plate and third base so you can show what is at stake, get the runner making a score, etc.
https://mastodon.social/@UP8/114849463914827733
I started out with a Sony alpha 7ii which was deeply discounted, when it broke and I wanted to stay in the game I got a 7iv and sent out the 7ii out for repair, now I have a monster backpack and often go out with two cameras
https://mastodon.social/@UP8/114866409940645564
But since the lid blew off in Gaza we have a clear bag policy at my Uni so I take just one camera to games. For indoor sports my weapon of choice is this lens
https://electronics.sony.com/imaging/lenses/all-e-mount/p/se...
but my favorite lens for walking about and outdoor events where I can get close is
https://tamron-americas.com/product/28-200mm-f-2-8-5-6-di-ii...
which I use for things like
https://www.yogile.com/trackapalooza-2025#12s
because the optical quality is great for a lens so versatile.
3000 photos. One mans dream is another’s nightmare.
I think it's a dream if you know your aim at the onset is to get 2-5 good shots out of it, so you know you're going to quickly go through and delete almost every photo. Just scan the whole thing and see if there are any that are great.
If you're undisciplined and only delete the obviously bad ones, and end up with 1800 photos that you think you'll look through at some point, well then you have a pile of junk you're never going to look at again.
I do events for the Finger Lakes Runners Club which I look at like "Space Mountain", you paid admission so you should get at least one good pic, at this event there were a total of 1000 volunteers and runners and I think I got about 600
https://www.behance.net/gallery/232159469/Skunk-Cabbage-Run-...
mainly camped at the finish line. I went to a double-header basketball game of men and women Aug 31 and finally got around to developing it last week and got maybe 400 images that I processed with DxO, that is part of a program of building up a stock of images so I can always be posting them to social media. All of those are "good enough" but yeah the best 40 or best 4 of those are better. If I was selling pictures to the local paper I'd be selling 1 to 3 per game. My secret weapon for going through huge numbers of photos is an XBOX controller and
https://keysticks.net/
so I can push a couch up near the computer and sit back and grade photos quickly. I hear some pros shoot 10,000 images at soccer games. I regularly spend more time processing images from an event than I spend at the event.
> and end up with 1800 photos
I suffer from this when taking photographs of my daughter. I suppose every parent does. And the end result IS that I end up with a pile of photos I'll never look at again.
"I should delete 99% of these photos I took from her birthday. But she looks so cute in this one! Oh, and this one! Which is a minor variation of the other one. But I could never delete it."
I'm much more inclined to delete redundant photos of nature, landscapes, etc, but then again -- since they are static -- I also tend to take fewer of those to begin with!
Fully agree, as a parent.
I used to set goals for myself during my train commutes, to try and delete 100 pictures during my half-hour ride, but I didn't keep it up long enough to really make a dent.
Sounds like a nightmare. My cameras gives me 10 exposures. I think about them carefully.
Oof. The initial media report might actually have caused material (financial) damage to Kodak.
If someone was shopping around for a Kodak product, saw that original article, they likely decided against Kodak. I personally wouldn't feel comfortable buying a product from a company close to bankruptcy - because if anything goes wrong, no warranty, replacement parts, etc..
The problem is the brand dilution that’s already happened has already turned some people off from the brand.
I really don’t know what they were going for approving it on an air purifier.
It's a camera, not a car
Cameras can get really expensive, and kodak isn’t the only option. So it is very likely that the situation GP wrote would happen
That can still be an expensive costing hundreds to thousands of dollars once you add additional lenses etc.
Even hundreds of dollars for a camera is not “throw away money” for a lot of people..
I for one have been known to keep some cameras longer than some cars.
I think it depends on what you do with them.
If your living depends on the camera, you're probably not buying Kodak anyway, since in that case you're buying more into a system, which Kodak doesn't have.
If you're an amateur, it's likely that it will outlive its warranty anyway, so it doesn't make much of a difference. Also, since there's no "system", grabbing a different one isn't that expensive financially.
So the pension fund thing. My accrued pension value took a significant haircut when my own former company went out of business. In this case, they can take $0.5B out and still "meet all their obligations" without a haircut? So their pension fund was significantly overfunded and all their retirees still get all that was promised to them?
See my comment from two days ago in previous thread:
* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44876283
AIUI, the money they are taking out is 'surplus'. All current obligations will be handed off to either an insurance company / annuity or lump sum. Future retirement funds will probably be in personal 401(k)s.
Correct
I worked for a company with going concern adverse disclosure like Kodak has when I was in college. They no longer exist.
They don’t predict the future, but they are a very serious indicator that should not be ignored
Yeah I worked for Sears. "Going concern" notice went out pretty much with the minimum legal notice period ahead of bankruptcy.
In this case Kodak has a plan for avoiding the situation, but it almost entirely depends on market conditions and the current holder of the pension obligations. They have the cash, but it's tied up contractually and they're working to release the contract so they can use the cash to pay down some debt.
Incidentally pharmaceutical manufacturing and some of the other industries they're in are still very good industries to be in. So they could still pull through.
They could pull through and I think in all likelihood the business would be purchased and not go under if they didn't.
But the company remains in a precarious position.
Anyone reading at Kodak, please consider making a camera that has:
1. 35mm-equivalent basic plastic lens, 6 megapixel sensor with big pixels, autofocus, center-weighted metering.
2. No screen to see photos. Only a tiny LCD for basic settings like remaining pictures and remaining battery power.
3. Pictures saved to replaceable built-in SD card, downloadable to computers via USB-C to USB-C connector.
4. Long battery life (one whole day of shooting). Powered by rechargeable AA batteries.
5. Splash proof.
6. Photo sensor that adds grain to blown highlights and lost shadows.
7. Less than $100.
8. Bonus: Open source firmware.
Basically a competitor to the Camp Snap, but better.
Thank you!
I’m not understanding the use case, here. Aren’t there plenty of no-name disposable Chinese cameras like this?
For me, it’s capabilities beyond a cellphone camera, in a package not much bigger. One of the biggest frustrations is taking a photo of something and the phone’s limited optical resolution makes that item nothing more than a tiny spec in a large 48 megapixel image. Yes, even the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s 5× zoom is horrifically inadequate for a good 40% of the photos and videos I take.
That’s why I rock a Nikon Coolpix A1000 - it does 4K video, has a 35× optical zoom, and all sorts of other goodies in a package that can collapse down into a block that’s not much thicker than a paperback book, and even smaller (H&W) than my iPhone. It’s small enough to fit into my satchel as an EDC for use at a moment’s notice, and not something that requires special dispensation every time I want to drag it along.
Consumers want flexibility in a portable package. There is no way I’d be able to drop another type of superzoom like the Nikon P1000 into my satchel, despite the much more attractive 125× optical zoom. It’s just too chonky as a whip-it-out-in-a-heartbeat EDC.
This ^
They've been a marginal concern for years now, though there still seems to be plenty of revenue to work with:
http://valustox.com/KODK
Maybe someone had a huge Short position
Someone like media executives amplifying the news in a negative light.
It does reek of market manipulation.
Edit: the short volume on 2025-08-12 was ten times that of 2025-08-11: https://fintel.io/ssv/us/kodk
So that happened the same day the news articles went public, when the SEC filing was published already on the 11th.
Someone might be looking to buy the company.
Market manipulation can also be used to cover an existing short position. More likely to be an act of desperation as well.
One of the 'misleading media reports' for context: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/14/kodak-going-concern-gen-z-fi...
Or the entire HN thread about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44875270
There are plenty of areas Kodak could make a difference if they cared to.
Fuji's instant Polaroid-like camera is a novelty and we still use it. Getting an immediate physical print is entertaining for people of all ages these days.
The security camera business is crowded but mostly with low image quality garbage.
For that matter webcams are also often garbage. A quality camera with optical zoom and good ISP and low light performance could do really well, especially with so much remote work.
The market for high speed cameras is still under-served. As is the market for high quality microscope cameras.
There are lots of opportunities out there if you aren't only focused on products that can sell a billion units.
Maybe someone who knows could explain why the “going concern” warning is there and how it might be misleading? How would Matt Levine explain this?
Matt Levine - that's impossibly high standards... but here's an attempt:
If a business shuts down, the assets on its book have to be written down to what you could get in a quick sale, their liquidation value, minus the costs of closing shop. And of course, once you’re closed, there’s no more income.
The standard assumption for bookkeeping is that the business will keep operating. This is the "going concern" assumption, and it lets you value the assets as part of the ongoing business. Switching from "going concern" to liquidation accounting drops the book value, maybe a lot.
If there's debt coming due in the near future that the business can't repay, the survival of the business is in question. An accountant would then have to issue a "going concern" warning. That is, however, not a prediction of doom.
Here's Kodak's Q10 form, with the "going concern" note on page 8: https://investor.kodak.com/static-files/17a780a0-cd47-4128-8...
Looks like they have some debt coming due, but expect to get a cash boost from terminating their pension plan (after meeting all their obligations). So the company plans to continue their business, and is confident that they will.
But that is technically predicated on certain conditions (being able to roll over some debt, getting that cash as anticipated) that's not entirely under Kodak's control, and so there is that going concern warning: we think it'll be fine, but we still have to tell you.
Apparently that was misunderstood as a prediction of bankruptcy or intention to close shop.
Thanks!
When I learnt that Kodak deleted that Xinjiang photo, I stopped buying their products. Fine to not post initially, but publishing then deleting and apologizing shows weak corporate backbone.
Previously discussed on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28024539
They've been killing it with new products lately. Specifically the new film stock without Remjet and Lucky C200.
Lucky C200 uses the old Kodak factory/es but they are an independent Chinese company, isn't it? Same as Fotoimpex/ADOX bought Ilford equipment...
And btw, what's the new remjet-less film? I'm not up to date lately...
It's the new version of Vision 3.
https://mimundoensuper-8.blogspot.com/2025/06/kodak-removes-...
Reports of its death were wildly exaggerated?
A company reporting an "ongoing concern" isn't dead yet.
https://github.com/codr7/hacktical-c/blob/1406322cde3c46aab8...
Any chance Kodak is still doing work for the US Military?
They make good lenses; the lenses in my glasses are theirs.
Long life to Kodak! You are an inspiration!
Flash! Developing story. Film at eleven.
love this. hearty fuck you to whoever wrote the misleading article
Related:
Kodak says it might have to cease operations
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44875270
This reads as the same announcements that shady crypto exchanges were posting right before running away with the funds and closing down.
I don't wish that for Kodac but I mean their first bullet point specifically says "repay or extend". Doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
where do they get cash from?
An interesting thought experiment for me is I wonder when we read a statement like this from someone like Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, etc. in the future? The world changes around companies, and no empire lasts forever. Ask IBM. Ask the Dutch East India Company. Kodak didn’t adapt to a filmless world, what are FAANG companies not adapting to now?
Probably not within our lifetimes. IBM is still around. We can see from companies like Sears that it can take a long time for a company to completely disappear. They lasted what around 125 years right? Would be interesting to see how long NVIDIA lasts. Out of the companies you mentioned, if we look really long term they are the most replaceable, ie. on a long enough time horizon the Chinese could completely replicate/leapfrog what they do, they could become completely commoditized like sound cards were, or someone comes along that makes them irrelevant. Google/Microsoft have long term lock in that will keep them at the very least a trailing edge player just due to all the lock in and the bureaucracy of switching that entails.
Maybe they can make a comeback using AI and work with Open AI to enhance Open AI's upcoming camera built into their device.
There's a lot that can be done using AI to enhance the UX of taking and photos themselves!
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Kodak deserves to just die. https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/kodaks-nazi-connec...
Everyone from back then is dead. Ship of Theseus something.
Can FASB please get rid of the term "going concern" and replace it with something more understandable? It has caused a lot of confusion for many companies and there's no need for it whatsoever. They can completely replace the term with something else like "Continuing Operations". It's really fucking easy, I don't know why they insist on that backwards terminology except maybe they enjoy the confusion it creates.
I think this is the quote in question:
> As of the date of issuance of these financial statements, Kodak has debt coming due within twelve months and does not have committed financing or available liquidity to meet such debt obligations if they were to become due in accordance with their current terms. These conditions raise substantial doubt about Kodak’s ability to continue as a going concern.
I'm not sure using more modern language would have cleared up any confusion here. "These conditions raise substantial doubt about Kodak’s ability to continue operations" is no less scary.
The "confusion" (according to Kodak) arises from the fact that the accountants did not consider (or considered and then discounted) the fact that Kodak apparently intends to put in place financing to help it repay or roll over its debts before they fall due. I'm not an accountant but I'm sure there are many rules around what they can and cannot consider before including such a statement.
Clearly, reporting that Kodak is about to go bankrupt simply based on that statement is jumping the gun. But I'm not sure there is anything particularly wrong with the statement itself. It seems to me like a credit crunch or even a spike in interest rates could derail Kodak's refinancing plans and what would happen then?
> The "confusion" (according to Kodak) arises from the fact that the accountants did not consider (or considered and then discounted) the fact that Kodak apparently intends to put in place financing to help it repay or roll over its debts before they fall due. I'm not an accountant but I'm sure there are many rules around what they can and cannot consider before including such a statement.
Well, from the statement itself, such financing would need to be committed, which likely they haven't done. This might be strategic, if it allows them to wind down their pension obligations and harvest the surplus investments.
Qualified opinion. Definition: An auditor's report that indicates the financial statements are presented fairly, in all material respects, except for the effects of a specific departure from generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) or a limitation in the scope of the audit.
This is like telling software people to stop using words like "bug" or "patch". It would be silly. Those terms are firmly ensconced in the vocabulary of the people who use them and everyone who needs to know what they mean do know what they mean.
It's not "really easy". This is a technical term used the world over to convey a very specific meaning. Bankruptcy laws define and use the term. Contracts define and use the term, etc, etc.
Jargon arises out of need and is carried on because it becomes embedded in the scaffolding of a discipline. It's not about feeling special as part of the in group or something like that.
People love their ingroup terminology and quirks. Like that a power cable connecting the RV is a shoreline (eyeroll) and that ships are female (double eyeroll).
Many languages use gendered nouns today including German and Spanish; the few remaining in English are a holdover from centuries past. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_in_English
What's wrong with a standardized vernacular or domain-specific language?
This particular one gives the opposite meaning to anyone unfamiliar with the term