Kodak is working on a Chapter 11 bankruptcy (three threads merged)

buzzardkid said:
Excuse me, I'm totally ignorant when it comes to chapter eleven filings etc, being EU-based and totally uneconomical myself... 😀

What does this mean? Out of business altogether? Going, going, gone? End of film?


More info very welcome, I'm ready to stock up on Tri-X 🙂
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It means the debtholders take over the company. Stockholders own the company unless management cannot pay the interest on the debt it owes. Then debtholders assume control of the company and its assets. Contracts with unions also become voided.

Kodak has about $1.5 Billion in debt and its debt averages at a 10% interest rate.

Chapter 11 is not immediately death for a company, and some companies fully come back to life after Chapter 11. Often some of the debt is traded for equity ownership (they become stockholders.) Chapter 7 is total liquidation.

The good news for film is that it is still Kodak's only profitable division. Areas which are profitable are not shut down, so it could be sold or spun off.
 
What I find interesting from a business prospective is Kodak was fully aware of the coming digital revolution since 1980, but still couldn't adapt to survive.

Often companies are caught off guard by changes in technology: for example, Smith-Corona was the largest manufacturers of typewriters.

In business school we did this case study about Kodak where they started trying to adapt to digital technology in 1980. The case study actually concluded that they took their eye off the film ball too soon and allowed Fuji to rapidly gain market share in the 1980s.

Despite a 20 year warning period, Kodak couldn't make the necessary adjustments to compete. I've been trying to analyze why (not discussed in the case study). My thoughts:

1. The product cycle was much shorter: Kodak could develop a film and sell it for 10 years without modification, whereas a new digital camera came out every 6 months.

2. Their digital cameras, like their film cameras before, were boring, awkward, and boxy.

I'm sure there are many others.
 
cosmonaut said:
I read a lot about Kodak but what about Ilford? What kind of financial shape are they in and I wonder will they pick up any of Kodak's formulas?
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Why would they bother? HP5 and Tri-X are equally good films in different ways, and if there's no Tri-X, what else are people going to buy? Why split your own market? Besides, there's as much art (and indeed alchemy) as science in film making. Its not just a matter of formulae.

Not that I believe Kodak is going to implode in a cloud of dust. There are still quite a few people there who are the best in their fields. Just not the marketing people that the board has chosen to run the company since they passed over the last candidate who actually understood the business, Carl Kohrt.

Personally, l'll worry about the sky falling when it actually happens. Not before.

Cheers,

R.
 
Roger Hicks said:
Why would they bother? HP5 and Tri-X are equally good films in different ways, and if there's no Tri-X, what else are people going to buy? Why split your own market? Besides, there's as much art (and indeed alchemy) as science in film making. Its not just a matter of formulae.

Not that I believe Kodak is going to implode in a cloud of dust. There are still quite a few people there who are the best in their fields. Just not the marketing people that the board has chosen to run the company since they passed over the last candidate who actually understood the business, Carl Kohrt.

Personally, l'll worry about the sky falling when it actually happens. Not before.

Cheers,

R.
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....... +1
 
If Kodak ditches the current Board of imbeciles starting with Perez I see a good chance that Kodak will survive with Antonio Perez I don't.

Btw. Kodak not only saw the change to digital photography they invented the stuff the first megapixel Kodak camera was in 1976. As great as their products are they pretty much alway choose the worst possible CEOs and marketing people

Dominik
 
If kodak does or doesn't survive is of little interest in reality because what we ultimately care about is film and it's survival!

Seeing another massive corporation repeatedly shoot itself in the foot on it's way to oblivion is just an alternative to reality TV ... though possibly a tad more intersting because of our personal involvement!
 
Roger Hicks said:
Why would they bother? HP5 and Tri-X are equally good films in different ways, and if there's no Tri-X, what else are people going to buy? Why split your own market?
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I think it would make sense for Ilford to pick up Tri-X. HP5 is not the only alternative. Buyers would also consider Fuji 400, Arista, etc. Notice that when there's a thought of Kodak going under, the response is always, "Oh, no, not Tri-X!" No one worries about Plus-X, T-Max, Ektachrome (well, maybe Ektachrome), etc. Always Tri-X. It would be foolish not to capture that market. Rather, the thing to worry about is whether Tri-X would still be Tri-X once production has been shut down and equipment and personnel moved to England or Croatia. Making film is as much an art as it is a science. Something may be lost in the move.
 
buzzardkid said:
Whoops.

Guess I'm not going to stock up on Tri-X, which is nearly EUR 80 for 100ft with Macodirect in Berlin.

My other favorite Rollei Retro 400S for 100ft is close to EUR 40 😱

Question arises: is Tri-X really twice as good and expensive to produce? Don't answer that, it's apples and oranges compared I guess...

But still. No Tri-X for this puppy.
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The frustration you feel is why companies outsource. While we all love goods to be produced in our home countries and love unions, we all complain when something costs more as a result and often go for the cheaper alternative when available.

Kodak has to pay generous benefits to thousands of retired union workers. Agfa doesnt have that burden after filing for bankruptcy in 2005, hence they have les costs and can sell film for cheaper
 
well I won't be affected if tri-x bites the dust, but I'll have to switch developers if xtol goes away . Oh well things change.
 
newsgrunt said:
Indeed Fred. Best case scenario would be a white knight comes in and buys the film division and keeps that chugging along as a lean film making machine. But who would have the $ to do this ?
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not only that, but film sales are in decline, especially the dominant industrial output of motion picture tim.

It's tough to sell an asset where the consumptive value is unknown and cold very well be zero.

For example, Kodak film might only be viable if they can sell 60 million metres of film per year (just a number I throw out). If aggregate sales are less, then the whole production and distribution system folds completely. Smaller runs may simply not be enough to pay off the share and credit holders; the land under the facilities may be worth more than a productive system 10% the size catering to a much smaller, niche market.

It's brutally hard to shrink what is a very large-scale industrial manufacturing system. There may simply not be enough demand for film worldwide, especially now that lam,oct no mass produced tim cameras are being manufactured as well. Pretty soon, many of the finely machined core components of mechanical cameras may not be reproducible as the skills and engineers who made them have faded in obsolescence.

no new cameras in sufficient quantities = no film. Even Ilford will fail.
 
Since film sales are only a few percent of what they used to be, this should be no surprise. Kodak will either reorganize, perhaps splitting off the film and photo chemical business as another entity or entities that are profitable at smaller smaller volumes, or they will dissolve, selling the film/chemical business to a smaller company that would buy the patents/recipes for the films.
 
Rob-F said:
I think it would make sense for Ilford to pick up Tri-X. HP5 is not the only alternative. Buyers would also consider Fuji 400, Arista, etc. Notice that when there's a thought of Kodak going under, the response is always, "Oh, no, not Tri-X!" No one worries about Plus-X, T-Max, Ektachrome (well, maybe Ektachrome), etc. Always Tri-X. It would be foolish not to capture that market. Rather, the thing to worry about is whether Tri-X would still be Tri-X once production has been shut down and equipment and personnel moved to England or Croatia. Making film is as much an art as it is a science. Something may be lost in the move.
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This is an impossible hypothesis. It is like saying that Ford would buy Corvette division when GM entered Chap.11
 
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