The Price of 8x10 Color Film Out of Control

[Deleted member 88956]

Comparing Foma b&w film to Kodak color sheet film, or even their own black and white products, is irrelevant because there is such a significant difference in quality. The more sheet film does in fact get seriously expensive, the more sheer quality becomes an asset. Each shot has to count. With Foma b&w, I found myself duplicating shots because I could never really trust the sheets to be blemish free; and therefore cheaper film proved actually more expensive to use in the long run, plus a lot more hassle. If one follows the plastics industry, decreasing demand does indeed make special estar base material inherently more expensive, but certain plastics in general have gone way way up over the past couple decades.
It's called inflation, and it's not going away.

It isn't inflation, blame regulations for plastics in general getting expensive.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

Ok, if you are that smart then for you it would be easy to guess that the Kodak/Fuji beyond x2 overpricing of LF products compared to roll film products it's about pricing policy, not related to ex-factory manufacturing cost, specially since ilford/Foma sell sheet film at similar price or less than roll film.

The Kodak/Fuji overpricing for LF it's quite coarse, we are not talking about a +10% or +15% overpricing, but about a 250% overpricing compared to rolls, one has to be quite naive to belive it's about industrial costs.

Let me explain you something, if you were not aware, KPP2 is a totally ultra-crashed pension fund with ultra-urgent cash needs that is trying to sell Alaris corporation, and Alaris has exclusive commercialization rights on Eastman Kodak products.

KPP2/Alaris wants all money they can get in the short term, if this damages long term busines this is secondary for them, they want the cash now and they also want to show short term profits to allow the sell of the corporation at the highest possible price, if they have to discourage every kind of film photographer on earth in the way then this is secondary, they won't be much time on business anyway (this is for sure), so future for them is not a concern.

Me, I'm angry, because that abusive policy for the short term is to damage color LF long term survavility, that prices are discouraging not only for present practitioners, but also for young newcomers.

If they want the cash now, selling large format at high prices isn't going to get it for them. I sell film on Amazon, both roll and sheet film. Roll film moves over 10x the volume of sheet film, if they need cash, then the thing to increase the price on is roll film, not sheet film, as it just doesn't move. I explained in an earlier post that the cost of sheet film has very little to do with the cost of goods sold and a whole lot more to do with how much capital is sucked up at the distributor/retail level in carrying something that is comparatively very slow moving. The prices you are seeing are retail prices. For all you know Kodak does actually price sheet film fairly, and it's the distributor/retail space that is pricing according to how much they would otherwise be making if that money was tied up in a faster moving product.

 

[138S]

If they want the cash now, selling large format at high prices isn't going to get it for them.

At that inflated price say that they sell 1/3 of the boxes but profit per box is x5: more money now, less money in the future because they are to kill that segment.

if they need cash, then the thing to increase the price on is roll film,

They also increased 35mm prices a lot, but in roll film they have some Fuji competition and the 35mm market has a large share of young people that would drop way easier.

the cost of sheet film has very little to do with the cost of goods sold and a whole lot more to do with how much capital is sucked up at the distributor/retail level in carrying something that is comparatively very slow moving. The prices you are seeing are retail prices.

This reasoning fails as ilford and Foma are able to sell sheet film at prices (per surface) that are close to 35mm film

For all you know Kodak does actually price sheet film fairly, and it's the distributor/retail space that is pricing according to how much they would otherwise be making if that money was tied up in a faster moving product.

This does not justify a 250% price, it may explain a 10% overcost but by no means a 250% price, when producing and boxing sheet film is well cheaper than roll film. Also a 8x10 20/50 sheets box is (or was) a volume sell, cost of handling 20 individual roll sells is way higher than serving a sheet film box selling 10-20-50 rolls at the same time.

Look, as Foma sells Fomapan 8x10" at 2.38€ per sheet retail price then it's for sure that Portra 160 8x10" cost of the Base plus the packaging is well under $2 per sheet, without entering in the emulsion value that 17€ overprice ($30 each 8x10" sheet vs 120 roll price in the EU) per shot is a total abuse, but this is only my opinion, you may see it fair, this is another opinon...

...anyway I've no doubt that this high $30 per shot it's about marketing policy and nothing about industrial or distribution costs.

What it's clear to me is that this kind of policy is to kill LF color photography, many like me are to use 6x9cm roll film backs in a 4x5" view camera, lower sells for the sheets will end in LF product killing in the mid term.

US industrial tradition is about expanding customer base, mass-producing and taking advantage of scale cost reduction, but Portra sheet price is about monopoly management (single supplier of C-41 sheets), the counter of what made America great.

My guess is that KPP2 situation has a deep impact, sadly. There is a manufacturer that has a totally crashed exclusive distributor, and this harms our loved film flourishment we are trying to push forward the most we can.

 

[Anon Ymous]

If they want the cash now, selling large format at high prices isn't going to get it for them. I sell film on Amazon, both roll and sheet film. Roll film moves over 10x the volume of sheet film, if they need cash, then the thing to increase the price on is roll film, not sheet film, as it just doesn't move. I explained in an earlier post that the cost of sheet film has very little to do with the cost of goods sold and a whole lot more to do with how much capital is sucked up at the distributor/retail level in carrying something that is comparatively very slow moving. The prices you are seeing are retail prices. For all you know Kodak does actually price sheet film fairly, and it's the distributor/retail space that is pricing according to how much they would otherwise be making if that money was tied up in a faster moving product.

Hello Adrian, would you mind telling us what the percentage of 135, 120 and sheet film sales are? I'd be very interested to know.

 

[pentaxuser]

. Sometimes these kinds of managers are installed to deliberately destroy corporations from the inside, so a competitor can buy out the name brand very cheaply, then substitute a bait-and-switch line of substandard "outsourced" products as well as avoid paying domestic taxes. This kind of remark applies to publicly-traded companies.

This is interesting. So who installs them and unless a whole raft of such installed managers act in unison I wonder how one man able to sabotage a company unimpeded. I thought there were checks and balances built in.

Are publicly-trade companies those whose stocks and shares are for sale in the likes of Wall Street such as Kodak? Is it the case that those running privately owned companies are more competent than those running publicly-traded ones or simply that the levels of competency are much the same but people responsible for installing the saboteur managers have no interest in private companies?

Is there any way for an afflicted company to know it has been infiltrated before it is too late?

It's a fascinating subject

Thanks

pentaxuser

pentaxuser

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

My understanding that Kodak Alaris is owned by a British pension fund who got it when Kodak went through bankruptcy. The current owners are a bunch of pensioners who are concerned with their individual pensions I assume. Arguing they should put the public first isn't a good argument. Now, whether their pricing is right for the market, affected by ongoing cash flow problems, or whatever, I don;t know. But being angry at other people because they don;t do things the way you want seems like an exercise in futility. After all, the whole film market was turned topsy-turvy by the digital revolution. Life goes on. Just adjust to the situation and stay healthy.

 

[138S]

My understanding that Kodak Alaris is owned by a British pension fund who got it when Kodak went through bankruptcy. The current owners are a bunch of pensioners who are concerned with their individual pensions I assume.

My understanding is that KPP2 pays the superannuation of former Kodak employees. They are not in bankruptcy but technically they are there as they have a deficit of $2.7 bil.

"The sole shareholder of Kodak Alaris is the Kodak Pension Plan (‘KPP2’), a UK pension fund which acquired it for US$325 million in cash when it became clear that Eastman Kodak had no intention of honouring its pension (superannuation) obligations to current and former UK employees."

KPP2 pumped cash from Alaris to the exhaustion, and when cash dryed then they pumped all the money they could by increasing Alaris debt to the level banks allowed, placing the company in a challenging financial situation to the point they now want to sell the Eastman Kodak distibution rights near for free if the purchaser also takes the company debt.

They owned the RA-4 paper manufacturing facilities, a product that still it is sold well, but they destroyed that business and now they rebrand photopaper made by a 3rd party in Canada, IIRC.

But being angry at other people because they don;t do things the way you want seems like an exercise in futility. After all, the whole film market was turned topsy-turvy by the digital revolution. Life goes on. Just adjust to the situation and stay healthy.

EK is a critical supplier for us, manufacturing unique products. Me I'm angry because I feel they are to destroy a kind of photography. I'm a beliver in Portra and in LF Portra, for example, and I feel that this EK vs KA mess may destroy a wonderful kind photography, by placing their unique products out of reach for most of remaining LF color photographers in that bet for short term cash.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

Hello Adrian, would you mind telling us what the percentage of 135, 120 and sheet film sales are? I'd be very interested to know.

for my inventory, I sell several hundred rolls of 135 for every 100 rolls of 120, and 1000+ combined units of roll for a single box of sheet film in any format. It’s not uncommon for sheet film to sit there on my shelf for a year before it moves. In the meantime I’ve sold over 100x the cost of that box in 135/120.

people here on this forum are complaining as if sheet film is the primary volume mover, and comparing its price to the cost of goods sold as if the other formats are in the minority. If you’re a sheet film shooter, I get that, however, it’s not reality. Sheet film is not a volume mover.

@138S Black and white sheet film does move quite a bit more than color sheet film (relatively speaking), but sheet film in total is not a volume mover, so stop comparing its price to something that sells much, much, higher volume. That’s like complaining that a car part that gets sold once or twice a year should cost the same amount as a similarly sized part made out of the same materials that sells every day. Sorry. Everybody who’s worked in retail will tell you that’s not how they are priced. The slow moving parts are priced to cover the cost of the capital they take up over the time period it sits there on the shelf along with the cost of the value of that shelf if a faster moving product were there instead. Again, if you need cash now, you don’t jack the price of something way up that is going to take you a year to move. You Jack the price up of what’s going to sell today. All that being said, they know how long it’ll be before they have to make more sheet film (roughly), so the pricing very well may be a reflection of that.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

This does not justify a 250% price, it may explain a 10% overcost but by no means a 250% price, when producing and boxing sheet film is well cheaper than roll film. Also a 8x10 20/50 sheets box is (or was) a volume sell, cost of handling 20 individual roll sells is way higher than serving a sheet film box selling 10-20-50 rolls at the same time.

a volume sell is a pallet of roll film, which will sell in less than a month. In that same time period, you might sell a couple boxes of sheet film.

 

[DREW WILEY]

A better way of looking at this is the markup of sheet film which is purchased in volume as a special bulk cut for a co-op order. Such bulk orders are timed for more favorable pricing by the mfg because they won't be sitting on the inventory afterwards, nor will a retailer. Therefore, with little overhead, a lower margin of profit can be tolerated, and you get a better idea of what Kodak or Ilford expects for themselves, versus distributor and retail markup. And while one might save maybe up to $20 a box for purchasing 8x10 film or special sizes of film this way, it is still an expensive item compared to what it was not very long ago. Therefore sheet film can in fact move quite quickly if it is targeted directly to end-users with orders placed in advance. We just have to personally strategize all of these facts as best we can, depending on our usage and personal budgets. It's one reason I'm multi-format.

 

[138S]

It’s not uncommon for sheet film to sit there on my shelf for a year before it moves.

If a box can stay 1 year in the shelf then average permanence is 6 months, financial/storage cost of a sheet film box may be $10, not $170. Let's speak clearly, if that market is not interesting for you is another thing, but there is no doubt that LF overprice is not related to the retailer but exclusively to the manufacturer.


This are prices today at Fotoimpex, prices in € of one 8x10" sheet compared to a 120 roll of same surface:

Kodak 200% to 300%.

Fuji 250%

Ilford 120%

Foma 60%

If you look other retailers around you will find the same policy: it's the same manufacturer's policy everywhere.

Fotoimpex prices today, if any doubt:

 

[Adrian Bacon]

A better way of looking at this is the markup of sheet film which is purchased in volume as a special bulk cut for a co-op order. Such bulk orders are timed for more favorable pricing by the mfg because they won't be sitting on the inventory afterwards, nor will a retailer. Therefore, with little overhead, a lower margin of profit can be tolerated, and you get a better idea of what Kodak or Ilford expects for themselves, versus distributor and retail markup. And while one might save maybe up to $20 a box for purchasing 8x10 film or special sizes of film this way, it is still an expensive item compared to what it was not very long ago. Therefore sheet film can in fact move quite quickly if it is targeted directly to end-users with orders placed in advance. We just have to personally strategize all of these facts as best we can, depending on our usage and personal budgets. It's one reason I'm multi-format.

exactly. I’ve made a business decision to support large format, and as a result I’m literally sitting on many thousands of dollars of sheet film that will eventually move, but it’s going to be some time before it does. I’m doing that as charitably as I can, and covering a fair amount of the incurred overhead by also going after much higher volume product. Not all businesses will do that. They’ll demand a minimum profit margin for the fully loaded cost of that product at retail, and if it doesn’t return a profit within a quarter or two, will simply stop carrying it.

we should be thanking our lucky stars that we can even still buy 8x10 at retail at all.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

If a box can stay 1 year in the shelf then average permanence is 6 months, financial/storage cost of a sheet film box may be $10, not $170. Let's speak clearly, if that market is not interesting for you is another thing, but there is no doubt that LF overprice is not related to the retailer but exclusively to the manufacturer.


This are prices today at Fotoimpex, prices in € of one 8x10" sheet compared to a 120 roll of same surface:

Kodak 200% to 300%.

Fuji 250%

Ilford 120%

Foma 60%

If you look other retailers around you will find the same policy: it's the same manufacturer's policy everywhere.

Fotoimpex prices today, if any doubt:

View attachment 241405

$10 dollars eh? Nope. That shelf space alone is worth more than $10 if I use it to hold something the sells 100x more volume, and at a higher profit margin. You don’t know what you’re talking about.

you are not taking into account how charitable a particular business is choosing to be in supporting large format. Kodak Alaris needs the money and is therefore not being as charitable. Foma on the other hand is the generic white label mfg and sells an absolute ton of smaller formats and can therefore afford to be more charitable. Ilford is striking a balance.

 

[138S]

$10 dollars eh? Nope. That shelf space alone is worth more than $10 if I use it to hold something the sells 100x more volume, and at a higher profit margin. You don’t know what you’re talking about.

Industrial storage is under $2 per m3 a month, even in the case you have your storage in an apartment in the most expensive city a 1002 apartment has 250.000 liters so you can keep there around 1 million 8x10" boxes if you want and still be living there. Space cost under $1 and around a 2% financial cost for 6month average permanence, these are feasible calculations, while $170 overcost is totally stratospheric.

Anyway sure that B&H, Adorama, Fotoimpex, Amazon and Maco do include all costs and no charity in the ilford/foma sheet price.

you are not taking into account how charitable a particular business is choosing to be in supporting large format. Kodak Alaris needs the money and is therefore not being as charitable. Foma on the other hand is the generic white label mfg and sells an absolute ton of smaller formats and can therefore afford to be more charitable. Ilford is striking a balance.

Well, at least we discarted retailer influence and we now agree that sheet pricing is manufacturer related. Foma and ilford are not charitable with sheet film, they simply make a pricing that's more related to ex-factory cost than to squeezing customers the most they can, making business plans related to long term busines rather taking the most of cash they can today.

Do you think Alaris is to go much far at 300€ the 10 sheets box? They will destroy that Eastman Kodak business, and they will destroy LF C-41 photography. We only have a hope, perhaps when Boris Johnson takes over Alaris a reasonable long term policy will be played.. who knows ?

 

[DREW WILEY]

Well, not every place in the world has self-cooling storage caves like the Pyrenees. And if those who once lived in them depended on calculators as much as you do, they would have starved to death. I learned about business the spear and club manner, and sure as heck know about realistically factoring warehouse and distribution overhead. It adds up mighty fast.
The only reason I have a nice darkroom facility is that I bought the property over forty years ago. I wouldn't even be able to afford to rent a doghouse in this area at today's prices.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Witold - I can't get into details. But whatever your regulations are in the EU, the manufacture of plastics here in the US transpires on a massive scale, and the necessary petrochemicals or vegetable-based substitutes are abundant. I happen to live in one of the very most regulated parts of the country, yet there are six major refineries in this area.
All it takes is one or two global sources to supply film base; but it has to be a special kind of product, or actually a variety of special materials, something specific out the the thousands of different kinds of plastics in production, but which now has diminished overall demand, so sourcing itself has diminished. And pricing is indeed related to inflation - labor expense, transportation expense, energy expense, all kinds of things have gone up. A top-end gallon of acrylic paint (petrochemcial plastic-derived) might have cost ten dollars back when workers earned four dollars an hour. Now something equivalent costs around $75 dollars a gallon, and the factory laborers who made it might earn around $40 an hour. One can argue that paint can also still be obtained for under $10 a gallon, but that lesser quality was once around $2 a gallon. Everything has gone up. That's called inflation. I can remember when gasoline was 19 cents a gallon. Now it can be as high as five dollars a gallon under certain circumstances.

 

[138S]

Well, not every place in the world has self-cooling storage caves like the Pyrenees.

yeah !

This one it's not the Mammoth cave but it can keep fresh some 500,000,000 8x10 boxes, if I calculated well entrance is in the roof, so not everyone would steal the film.



But Amazon in my country serves 6L milk multipack for 4,91€



So we better we don't speak about logistic costs for a sheet film box because they are totally irrelevant in the 300€ tag.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

There's a lot of things I can;t afford. So, I don't buy it. So I don't know what the problem is with sheet film. Same thing. . If you don't like the price, don;t buy it. Buy another brand. I'd like to buy a Ferrari. But had to settle on a Lincoln. Price is determined not just on cost, storage, shelf space, etc., but what a willing buyer is willing to pay a willing seller. If the seller can;t find any willing buyers, he;ll lower the price. Trying to calculate his cost and then apply a profit margin that you like is not how the world works. How does a photographer determine price of his photos? If he can get $1000, while other photographers can only get $250 for theirs, he's going to charge you $1000. That's how free markets work. Which reminds me of the related joke about the old woman.

So this old woman goes shopping for some chop meat. She walks down the street and goes in to the first meat store and asks the butcher,
"I'd like to buy a pound of chop meat. How much is it?"

So the butcher responds, "Well we charge $4 a pound. But we're all out of it today."

So the old woman leaves, walks down to the second butcher down the street.

"I want to buy a pound of chop meat. How much is it and do you have any?

"Well, maam, we have loads of it. Just got in a fresh shipment. We charge $5 a pound."

"$5 a pound." exclaims the irate woman "The other butcher only charges $4 a pound."

"Well," says the second butcher. "When we're out of chop meat we only charge $3 a pound."

 

[Adrian Bacon]

Industrial storage is under $2 per m3 a month, even in the case you have your storage in an apartment in the most expensive city a 1002 apartment has 250.000 liters so you can keep there around 1 million 8x10" boxes if you want and still be living there. Space cost under $1 and around a 2% financial cost for 6month average permanence, these are feasible calculations, while $170 overcost is totally stratospheric.

Anyway sure that B&H, Adorama, Fotoimpex, Amazon and Maco do include all costs and no charity in the ilford/foma sheet price.






Well, at least we discarted retailer influence and we now agree that sheet pricing is manufacturer related. Foma and ilford are not charitable with sheet film, they simply make a pricing that's more related to ex-factory cost than to squeezing customers the most they can, making business plans related to long term busines rather taking the most of cash they can today.

Do you think Alaris is to go much far at 300€ the 10 sheets box? They will destroy that Eastman Kodak business, and they will destroy LF C-41 photography. We only have a hope, perhaps when Boris Johnson takes over Alaris a reasonable long term policy will be played.. who knows ?

sigh... it’s painfully obvious that you’re complaining for no other reason than you don’t think it should cost that much.

do us all a favor: go open an online storefront that carries exclusively large format sheet film, then price your product so that you can stay in business for the volume you’ll sell. You’ll discover very quickly that the price you end up charging has *nothing* to do with the cost of goods sold and *everything* to do with how much volume you move. You’ll also discover that your prices will be so high that nobody will buy from you. You’ll then make the discovery that you’ll have to start selling other products that move at much higher volumes in order to stay in business, which will then let you charitably lower the price of the sheet film so that you can even have half a chance of selling it.

slower moving product is always priced somewhat charitably, in terms of profit margin.

besides, are you shooting 8x10 for personal reasons or for business reasons? If it’s for business reasons, just pass your costs on. If your clients won’t tolerate it, then they don’t value you using 8x10, which should prompt you to change what you’re using. Business is business. Making expensive business decisions purely on personal feelings is not a great way to do things.

 

[Anon Ymous]

@Adrian Bacon Thanks for your input.

 

[138S]

besides, are you shooting 8x10 for personal reasons or for business reasons?

I'm a total amateur.

27€ per shot is way more I can pay, but please understand that I'm not angry because I can't pay that amount, I'm angry because Alaris is to destroy what remains of C-41 LF photography, destroying a cultural heritage for ever.

The customer squeezing policy Alaris plays today for LF products is for the short term, taking as much money they can but destroying customer base.

Look, Eastman Kodak is a critical suplier for all us, problem is that Alaris has exclusive ditribution rights but they are totally crashed, and instead making strategic policies for the long term they are damaging film survability from urgent cash needs.

I can say it (my opinion) with different words but not clearer, they are bad for us, all those that we have supported present film flourishment we do see how they harm it the most they can.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

I'm a total amateur.

27€ per shot is way more I can pay, but please understand that I'm not angry because I can't pay that amount, I'm angry because Alaris is to destroy what remains of C-41 LF photography, destroying a cultural heritage for ever.

The customer squeezing policy Alaris plays today for LF products is for the short term, taking as much money they can but destroying customer base.

Look, Eastman Kodak is a critical suplier for all us, problem is that Alaris has exclusive ditribution rights but they are totally crashed, and instead making strategic policies for the long term they are damaging film survability from urgent cash needs.

I can say it with different words but not clearer, they are bad for us, all those that we have supported present film flourishment we do see how they harm it the most they can.

you can say the same thing about every company who sells digital cameras. Expending time and energy on something that you cannot change or control is pointless. It’s either more than you’re willing to pay or it isn’t.

 

[Luckless]

I would be rather curious to see real industry details on handling costs, QA impact, and overall ROI for large format vs roll film...

Simply comparing film area alone is a poor indicator on what the costs 'should be'. Trouble shooting the equipment to properly fold the boxes for large format runs alone might eat through a good chunk of the overall margin if the run size difference is large enough. [If you set up and trouble shoot a machine to allow it to do a batch run that eventually fills a single pallet, and compare it to the time needed for the setup and troubleshooting involved in a batch that fill 100 pallets, or 1000 pallets, then you're stuck eating far more overall labour costs and equipment downtime with the lower volume product.]

I've not seen specifics on how their QA process runs, but it is also entirely possible that they end up eating far more product loss due to flaws on 8x10 than they would 120 film, depending on how/when a flaw triggers a reject. - A paper mill I dealt with had an issue with its larger formats on its quality control stages, as the critical QC stage happened after splitting rolls down to final width, but before the sheets were cut to final length, while being spooled onto sub-processing rolls.

Think "Giant wide roll sliced into strips, and each strip would be spooled and cut into multiple rolls" kind of thing. So one wide and extremely long master roll gets cut into say 4 long strips that are each sliced into 10 shorter rolls for easier handling. For a smaller format paper they would get sliced into 10 long strips, but each of those strips was then still cut and spooled onto the 10 short rolls.

A detection of a rejection grade flaw would kick an entire short roll out of the production cycle, but said rejection grade flaw probably doesn't span the whole width of the short roll... That means that had the master roll been broken down for the smaller format it would have knocked out 1-2/100th of the product, while if being cut for product requiring the wider short rolls kicks 1-2/40th out...

So even if we were making the end product with the same total area [ie, cutting the smaller rolls into very 'long-format' compared to the wide rolls], the wide format product was far more costly to make.

 

[Fraunhofer]

27 Euro per sheet may be steep for the amateur, but I doubt there are enough amateurs shooting 8x10 in color to keep anyone's business afloat. Note, the cost for 8x10 B&W film is in line with their roll film counterparts.

AFAIK, 8x10 color is still used professionally in archeology, conservation of fine art and architecture. In those applications, the value of the object photographed far exceeds any concerns about the per-shot film cost. One major reason for film in these applications is, that film is much easier to store long-term than digital files.​

 

[athbr]

This is interesting. So who installs them and unless a whole raft of such installed managers act in unison I wonder how one man able to sabotage a company unimpeded. I thought there were checks and balances built in.

Are publicly-trade companies those whose stocks and shares are for sale in the likes of Wall Street such as Kodak? Is it the case that those running privately owned companies are more competent than those running publicly-traded ones or simply that the levels of competency are much the same but people responsible for installing the saboteur managers have no interest in private companies?

Is there any way for an afflicted company to know it has been infiltrated before it is too late?

It's a fascinating subject

Thanks

pentaxuser

pentaxuser

Public companies are those with shares listed in a public exchange like NYSE or NASDAQ. Private companies aren't necessarily more competent but they do have more control of who their shareholders are which helps to avoid a few unsavoury things like hostile takeovers (an investor buys a majority of shares off the market) or activist investors (who buy up a position then lobby for other shareholders to vote for a decision that affects the business).

The sort of things these types of investors push for are mergers, selling off underperforming interests, management changes or dividend issuing (where the business pays off cash back to investors rather than reinvesting). Long term investors tend to dislike this as often the activist is pushing for something that will briefly raise share prices -- allowing them to sell their position and profit -- but which aren't to the long run benefit of the company.

These kind of strategies were very common (and controversial) during the 80s. The era of so-called corporate raiders. A number of corporate governance strategies were invented to deal with this: gold handcuffs (management abdicates bonus if they leave too soon forcing them to focus on the long run), poison pills (a set of policies, too many to list, that make acquiring more than X% of a company prohibitively expensive), issuing stock to long term employees as bonuses (people who are naturally more invested in the long run), among other things. These policies work to varying degrees and the problem is by no means solved.

By the way, private companies are no way exempt from this. Indeed many of these "corporate raiders" from the 80s specialized in private companies. That's a topic for another time. But generally speaking the less liquid the shares are (you can buy and sell apple shares anytime you want, you can't buy or sell shares of John Doe's privately owned restaurant without his permission) the more likely you are to attract shareholders who are in it for the long haul than those who are looking to make a quick profit.