Kodak has no plans to cease, go out of business, or file for bankruptcy (opens in new tab)

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..."

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?

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".

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.

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.

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.

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 is a chemical company these days with modest profits. They need to double down on that. Cameras are not in their wheelhouse.

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.

> 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?

Can I ask what camera you use?

I really don’t know what they were going for approving it on an air purifier.

* 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.

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.

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.

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.

And btw, what's the new remjet-less film? I'm not up to date lately...

> 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?