> "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.

https://pcaobus.org/oversight/standards/auditing-standards/d...

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.

So... A report that is legally required to be accurate, vs a press release. Interesting.

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.

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.

We will see. The Kodak stock is still 22.5% down over the past 5 days.

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.

Fujifilm's digital cameras are also doing great these days in a somewhat surprising comeback.

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

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.

Unfortunately, this is akin to having a monopoly on the horse saddle market.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sounds like a nightmare. My cameras gives me 10 exposures. I think about them carefully.

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.

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.

Market manipulation can also be used to cover an existing short position. More likely to be an act of desperation as well.

Thanks!

It's the new version of Vision 3.

https://mimundoensuper-8.blogspot.com/2025/06/kodak-removes-...

> 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.

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?