Kodak: Lights Out Or A $10 Stock?

By Kay Fitzpatrick It looks like it’s lights out for Eastman Kodak (EK). The 131-year old company appears to be about to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Once considered a titan of technology that drew engineering talent to its Rochester, NY headquarters, the company has failed to keep up with the disruptive digital technologies of the 21st century and associated new business models. What was once a solid monopoly on photographic film began eroding by foreign competition in the 1980s. Kodak seems to have followed the same trajectory of other photography giant, Polaroid, which filed for bankruptcy in 2008. Ironically, it was Kodak that invented the first digital camera in 1975 but never really leveraged that technology to be a market leader. The company began a “digital makeover” in 2004, a late start in the race. This happened the same year that it got bumped from the Dow Jones industrial average. CEO Antonio Perez, who had been head of Hewlett-Packard’s (HPQ) printer business, took the helm in the 2005. Not surprisingly, Kodak turned its focus at that time to digital printers for consumers and commercial printers. But its products never caught up with industry leaders like HP, and Kodak remained…