Eastman Kodak fights for its future

— -- ROCHESTER, N.Y.

This is not the "Kodak moment" expected of a longtime technology giant.

After losing money 12 of the last 15 quarters, Eastman Kodak is struggling to avoid bankruptcy protection.

Its stock is worth less than a dollar. Its employees are worried about jobs. Retirees fear losing their benefits. And suppliers worry about getting paid.

Yet despite the drumbeat of negative news, CEO Antonio Perez and his management team insist that Kodak will survive.

"We have fulfilled and remain committed to fulfilling all our obligations," Perez reiterated in a conference call with Wall Street analysts last month.

How far the mighty have fallen in less than a quarter of a century.

The year 1988 was a good one for Eastman Kodak.

The iconic photo and imaging company's worldwide employment peaked that year at more than 145,000, with workers turning out everything from cameras and motion picture film to floppy disks and pharmaceuticals. Kodak finished the year with a profit of $1.4 billion, roughly $2.5 billion in today's dollars.

It was also perhaps the last unqualified good year for the company and the beginning of the end of its role as an industrial giant. Stiff competition from Fujifilm and then the explosion in digital photography — a technology Kodak researchers invented in 1975 — have left Kodak reeling. Its stock, which averaged $25 five years ago and $5 in 2010, closed down 5 cents Monday at 84 cents. Worldwide employment is now below 19,000. Seeing no turnaround in the near future, credit rating giants Moody's and Fitch have downgraded Kodak's debt further into junk-bond status, signaling a higher risk of default.

"I do think it's often overly simplified" to say that Kodak's troubles are the result of it missing the digital boat, says John Ward, a former director of new product development at Kodak, who left the company in 2005 after more than 20 years and is now a lecturer at Rochester Institute of Technology's Saunders College of Business. "The digital business was not going to be nearly as profitable as the film business in any respect. The film and chemical business was one of the all-time great business models. A lot of the change was going to come whether Kodak aggressively embraced digital business or not."

But it has been a long fall for one of America's most iconic companies

Those were the days

Kodak was founded in 1881 after inventor George Eastman pioneered a means of mass producing dry plates — the precursor to film.

Over time, Kodak grew into a global industrial and commercial giant, with "Kodak moment" becoming synonymous with a treasured memory. The Kodak logo and its little yellow boxes of 35-millimeter camera film were found around the globe.

Kodak's hometown of Rochester, N.Y., became the quintessential proud company town, says Daniel Tessoni, an assistant professor and corporate governance expert at Saunders College, which was founded in large part with donations by Eastman.

"The company was very, very generous to its employees and the community," says Rochester Business Alliance President Sandy Parker. "You had a patriarch, almost, that took care of the community. The senior people at Kodak served on virtually all the key boards in the community."

And when it came to big community projects, Parker says, "If Kodak gave thumbs up, we knew others would follow."