I think the coater in building 38 handles coating stuff other than film too, which would make this challenging.
If there are any former Kodak folk on the thread, correct me if I’m wrong.
They could buy just the film portion from Eastman.
That means that Alaris has a 100% markup or 50% margin on cost of film from Kodak. That's an awful nice profit and explains why Kingswood bought Alaris. It also explains why Kodak film is so expensive at retail.
I think the coater in building 38 handles coating stuff other than film too, which would make this challenging.
If there are any former Kodak folk on the thread, correct me if I’m wrong.
Sure, there is a balance to be struck between responding to every new shiny object that comes along and staying so welded to the old ways of doing things that you miss the market entirely.
Certainly, I too have seen the bright eyed bushy tailed bean counters come in and see the business entirely through the prism of financials without thinking about the value of market reputation, customer experience, employee retention and any number of other "soft" indicators that are very important.
As an aside, this started when the business schools started preaching the nonsense gospel that you didn't have to be an expert in product, customers, or industry to manage things, you just had to be a an expert manager. That meant all they taught was the one thing common to all businesses: Financials
Historically, the crown jewels of at least American business were run by people who had a passion for their business areas: Henry Ford, George Eastman, Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Watson, and more recently Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk are all examples. The we're-smarter-than-everyone bunch in the universities decided that these people were all robber barons by various names, utterly ignored their tremendous contributions to US success. They proceeded to create a class of professional managers who couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel.
Fortunately, this is starting to change. When businesses have to change at the speed of information, you have to be a domain expert to lead them. I think the pointy headed bunch in the schools are starting to get this.
Full disclosure, I have a Masters in a STEM field and the course work for a Ph.D. in a theoretical STEM area completed. So, I've seen the Academy up close for plenty of years. I thoroughly enjoyed graduate school and learned a bunch. But the folks in the business schools, law schools, and worse still, the fuzzy studies (things ending in "ology" or something "studies") never seemed to me to be learning all that much or demonstrating a lot of passion for the field. Hopefully, this too is changing.
P.S. If it were up to me, every single Bachelor's degree would have the usual 4 year requirement PLUS another 2 years of internship in the field of interest before the degree was granted. Apprenticing has a long and rewarding history in the trades and this should be carried into the university setting.
But patents don't produce film. People and physical infrastructure do.
When someone says something like this, I always have to picture a gigantic excavator that picks up the Kodak film coating line including the bedrock several dozens of feet down below floor level and cart it over to another continent.
Noooooooooo!
I think the coater in building 38 handles coating stuff other than film too, which would make this challenging.
If there are any former Kodak folk on the thread, correct me if I’m wrong.
That is like saying that Eastman Kodak has an x% markup on all the triacetate, polyester, silver, chemicals, etc, etc.
The cost of the film from Eastman Kodak is only a portion - and a fairly small portion at that - of getting film from a small manufacturer in Rochester, New York to wholesalers and other market participants around the world.
In addition: A patent is published knowledge and the rights to exploit it end after 20 years. What's more important is the unplished knowledge and the inherent "knowledge" of people running a process on a production line, which in a large part isn't even considered as such let alone documented. If you shut down and send the people home, that's it.
I know practically zilch about the demise of Eastman Kodak Co as I always knew it. All I really knew is that the computer and digital came along and everything went to hades practically overnight with Y2K, 9/11, and all the rest of the tumult in those few short years. Apparently from what I know, a company called Alaris, which is nothing but a a private equity firm of bean counting Robert McNamara's came along and cherry picked a building still producing something they could harness for an entry for a shareholder's quarterly bulletin. It's not evil or greedy. It's just business. I get it. Then the 2008 crash was like a stake in the heart. There will come a time, sooner than later, I'm afraid, that this Alaris firm will hire a new young bright McNamara and Kodak film will join the dinosaurs overnight. These people play hardball. Every day we live may be our last, and that's a fact.
DIdn't Eastman expand their film facilities recently and hire a bunch of people?
Looking at several news stories, some run with the same 'Kodak not confident it can continue' while others, within the last 12 hours, quote Kodak as saying they are confident they can meet debt obligations.
It's the age-old publish-and-be-damned attitude, accelerated by AI.
That means that Alaris has a 100% markup or 50% margin on cost of film from Kodak. That's an awful nice profit and explains why Kingswood bought Alaris. It also explains why Kodak film is so expensive at retail.
The thing is, there might be a reason the GAAP accounting rules are strict in this sense. The question is how big the risk is that EK won't be able to use the anticipated $300m in cash. It's apparently not zero. Does that mean it's "significant", "big", or "not meaningful"? IDK.However, the KRIP reversion is not solely within Kodak’s control and therefore is not deemed ‘probable’ under U.S. GAAP accounting rules
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