How Kodak is trying to turn around after teetering on bankruptcy

On Jim Continenza’s first day on the job as Eastman Kodak executive chairman in 2019, he got a call from a star Hollywood filmmaker telling him the company was making a big mistake.

The photography technology company was in the process of shutting down its acetate factory, which makes one of the key ingredients used in film. Christopher Nolan, the director behind major movies like “Inception” and “Oppenheimer,” urged Continenza to stop the process.

“He goes, ‘Do not turn this off. Please take a look.’ And I did,” Continenza, now CEO, told CNBC. “He was right. I started looking at it because I shoot 35 millimeter [film], and I’m like, ‘Why would one of the greatest directors of all time even have this conversation?'”

Continenza, a self-proclaimed “turnaround specialist,” said he quickly realized how central film was to Kodak’s roots, and how it could be one of its biggest strengths as he fought to bring the company back from teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

Fast forward roughly seven years, and multiple 2026 Oscar-winning movies, including “One Battle After Another” and “Sinners,” were shot on Kodak film. It’s part of a bigger trend as the category sees a resurgence fueled by both a nostalgia for film in Hollywood and by younger consumers.

That road wasn’t smooth, though. The company declared bankruptcy in 2012 and reemerged a year later. Then it cautioned last year that its financial conditions “raise substantial doubt about Kodak’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

In the second-quarter earnings where it made that going concern statement, Kodak posted a 12% decrease in gross profit, with millions in debt obligations.

But Continenza said it was one step in a longer process toward rebuilding the company to its former success.

Last month, the company’s earnings report looked different. Its fourth-quarter gross profit reached $67 million, a 31% increase from the year prior. Kodak also said it had reduced its annual interest expense by roughly $40 million.

Continenza said at the time that the results were signs of the long-term plan he began executing in 2019. He told CNBC that he chose Kodak as his final company to revive before closing his chapter as a C-suite executive, having previously served in leadership roles at communication companies including AT&T and Lucent.

“Here’s what our goal is: We’re going to create jobs for the next generation. Make no mistake, we’re going to fix this company and put it on a stable foundation and put building blocks to grow all the systems,” Continenza said. “We didn’t put in what we need, we put in what we want, and that’s a difference.”

In a digitally evolving society, Kodak has been fighting to keep its place and relevancy.

The company’s 2012 bankruptcy protection came after it failed to improve its finances as digital photography took off and revolutionized the industry. When it reemerged the following year as a smaller company, it shifted its primary focus to commercial printing.

Though it’s not a company that is largely covered by investors anymore, Melius Research analyst Ben Reitzes wrote in a note last year that the onset of digital technology posed a significant setback for Kodak.

“At the time, Kodak management told us that film would co-exist with digital cameras and more photos would be taken — and more would need to be printed by Kodak,” he wrote.

Still, Kodak faced its struggles. Its stock sank more than 35% in 2014, continuing to gradually fall over the next few years and hitting an all-time low of $1.55 per share during the onset of the pandemic in March 2020.

Last August, the more than 100-year-old photography company said it had roughly $155 million in cash and nearly $600 million in loans.

A Kodak spokesperson said at the time that the going concern language had to be included because Kodak did not have enough available liquidity to pay off its debt, due within 12 months. Still, the company said it was confident it would pay off a significant portion of that loan before it became due by terminating its pension plan and said the disclosure was just a required technical report.

Wall Street investors didn’t like what they heard. The stock plunged from a price of roughly $7 per share a few days prior to just over $5 per share on the day of earnings.

“We could have done a better job on it, because to us, it wasn’t as dire straits, it was more of a GAAP accounting coincidence by dates,” Continenza said, adding that it was a “timing issue” for the loans.

Continenza said Kodak’s main challenges were in its “huge tranches” of debt and a lack of communication with its shareholders and customers.

The CEO said he’s never sold a share of Kodak and instead bought stock after the company issued its going concern disclosure.

“You’ve got to put the work in and the long-term investments, and you’ve got to be methodical, but you’ve got to fix your operations, and I’ve spent seven years of doing it,” he said. “[It’s] a 130-plus year old company, right? You can imagine what’s in the attic.”

Continenza said he’s been intentional about instituting long-term changes since he took over the company. He’s changed about 90% of the company’s leadership, paid off more than $400 million in debt and reorganized the company’s priorities to focus on print and advanced materials and chemicals.

He said it was also important to be “transparent” with his team and acknowledged that turning around the company would mean layoffs and staffing changes.

“First thing I always do is go out and get people who want to hold the company and buy them out, and that’s what we did,” he said. “I got a board and investors who love what we’re doing — we keep them informed, and they help guide us.”

As he examined what worked for the company, Continenza said he saw an opportunity with Generation Z and the resurgence of the film aesthetic. The look of photos and videos shot on film captures something that “penetrates your heart and soul,” he said.

Kodak leaned into the analog and authenticity trend, investing its resources in its film capacities and creating products that consumers, directors and filmmakers alike were interested in.

Continenza said he also refinanced the company three times and rightsized its balance sheet.

It seems to have hit the right note on Wall Street. Over the past year, Kodak’s stock has shot up nearly 100%.

“We’re doing our job. The stock’s not supposed to spike, it’s supposed to crawl, because that’s how we grow,” he said. “I don’t look at our stock price. I don’t care. I couldn’t tell you what it is today. I’m a long-term investor.”

Continenza said success to him will mean continuing to improve finances and ensuring Kodak has a solid succession plan in place to continue its growth.

Though the company is well over 100 years old, he said he likes to treat Kodak as a startup, where all of the debt is paid off, the brand is well-loved and only Kodak itself could, at this point, “screw it up.”

“We don’t need to be a $5 billion or $20 billion or $80 billion company,” Continenza said. “We’re a billion-dollar global company, but one thing we have going for us is our brand recognition. And make no mistake, around the globe, it is endeared and loved, and it’ll continue to be.”