Kodak Brand Check-up: The Camera It Invented and Shelved
In December 1975, a Kodak engineer displayed the first picture from a digital camera he had built. In January 2012, Kodak filed for Chapter 11. The name now sits on a commercial print and chemicals company whose shares closed at $3.53 on February 27, 2024. We look at what the record shows about how Kodak handled the shift it helped start.
Key takeaways
- Kodak engineer Steven Sasson built a working digital camera in 1975, but the company stayed focused on its core film and paper business.
- Kodak’s old shares traded as high as $94.75 in the first quarter of 1997 and were cancelled when the company emerged from Chapter 11 in September 2013.
- A proposed $765 million government loan took the new shares from $2.62 to a $33.20 close in two days in July 2020, before the agency put the loan on hold.
- Kodak now earns most of its revenue from commercial print, and revenue for the first nine months of 2023 fell to $842 million from $900 million.
Download the full Kodak Brand Check-up (PDF): vital signs, timeline, diagnosis, treatment and sources.
The camera Kodak built in 1975
In December 1975, Kodak engineer Steven Sasson took and displayed the first picture from a digital camera he had built. He has said it was about the size of a toaster and weighed about eight pounds. It recorded 10,000 pixels. His patent was granted in December 1978.
The invention did not fit the business. Kodak decided to stay focused on its core business of film and paper, WTOP reported. A 2015 New York Times account, quoted by Snopes, says Sasson was told the company could sell the camera but would not, because it would eat away at film sales. Snopes rates the popular claim that Kodak hid the invention as a mixture of true and false. Kodak kept working on digital, and in 1991 it announced a professional digital camera system priced at about $20,000.
A peak built on film
Kodak’s shares traded as high as $94.75 in the first quarter of 1997. That year it reported $14.5 billion in sales and ended the year with 97,500 employees. Its global workforce had peaked at 145,300 in 1988.
The pressure was already visible. On March 21, 1997, the shares fell 9 1/4 points after Kodak warned that January and February sales were below expectations. It had lost customers to Fuji and was cutting prices. In 1997 it also announced plans to eliminate 10,000 jobs.
From the Dow to Chapter 11
Kodak was removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 2004 and stopped selling Kodachrome film in 2009, after 74 years. The shift from film cut its sales almost in half from 2005 to 2010. On January 19, 2012, Kodak filed for Chapter 11, listing debts of $6.75 billion and assets of $5.1 billion.
It sold and licensed its digital imaging patents for about $525 million and spun off its Personalized Imaging and Document Imaging businesses to the pension plan of its U.K. subsidiary. On September 3, 2013, Kodak emerged from Chapter 11 as, in CEO Antonio Perez’s words, “a technology company serving imaging for business markets.” The old shares were cancelled.
Two share spikes that did not change the business
The new Kodak has seen its shares jump on news far from its customers. On January 9, 2018, they rose 117% to $6.80 after the company announced KodakCoin, a cryptocurrency for an image rights platform called KodakOne.
On July 28, 2020, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) announced a letter of interest for a $765 million loan to launch Kodak Pharmaceuticals. The shares closed at $2.62 on July 27 and $33.20 on July 29, after trading as high as $60 that day. On August 7, the DFC said: “Recent allegations of wrongdoing raise serious concerns. We will not proceed any further unless these allegations are cleared.” The shares closed at $10.73 on August 10.
Where Kodak stands now
Kodak now calls itself “a global manufacturer focused on commercial print and advanced materials and chemicals”. It had about 4,200 employees at the start of 2023. Revenue rose 5% to $1.205 billion in 2022. Traditional and digital printing brought in $711 million and $227 million of that, and licensing the Kodak name to other companies brought in $17 million. In the first nine months of 2023, revenue fell to $842 million from $900 million a year earlier.
The shares closed at $3.53 on February 27, 2024, about 89% below the July 2020 spike close. A marketing audit of Kodak today would find a name people know from cameras and film, attached to a business that earns most of its revenue from commercial print.
What growing companies can learn
Kodak saw digital photography early. The record points to a harder problem: film still paid the bills, and the new product threatened film sales. If a new product could eat into your best seller, give it its own team, its own targets and its own budget. And do not read a share-price spike as a sign of brand health. Two large share spikes since 2013 came from announcements outside Kodak’s core business, and neither changed the business underneath.
This check-up uses public information available on February 27, 2024. It is brand and marketing analysis, not investment advice.
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