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.

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.

>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".

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.

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 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.

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.

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?