Kodak Files for Bankruptcy Protection

Eastman Kodak Company has announced that it and its US subsidiaries filed voluntary petitions for chapter 11 business reorganization in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. The company says it expects to pay employee wages and benefits and continue customer programs; subsidiaries outside of the US are not subject to proceedings and will honor all obligations to suppliers, whenever incurred. Further, Kodak and its US subsidiaries “will honor all post-petition obligations to suppliers in the ordinary course.”

“After considering the advantages of chapter 11 at this time, the Board of Directors and the entire senior management team unanimously believe that this is a necessary step and the right thing to do for the future of Kodak,” says Antonio M. Perez, Kodak’s chairman and CEO. “Our goal is to maximize value for stakeholders, including our employees, retirees, creditors, and pension trustees. We are also committed to working with our valued customers.

“Chapter 11 gives us the best opportunities to maximize the value in two critical parts of our technology portfolio: our digital capture patents, which are essential for a wide range of mobile and other consumer electronic devices that capture digital images and have generated over $3 billion of licensing revenues since 2003; and our breakthrough printing and deposition technologies, which give Kodak a competitive advantage in our growing digital businesses.”

“Kodak is taking a significant step toward enabling our enterprise to complete its transformation,” continues Perez. “At the same time as we have created our digital business, we have also already effectively exited certain traditional operations, closing 13 manufacturing plants and 130 processing labs, and reducing our workforce by 47,000 since 2003. Now we must complete the transformation by further addressing our cost structure and effectively monetizing non-core IP assets. We look forward to working with our stakeholders to emerge a lean, world-class, digital imaging and materials science company.”

Kodak will be filing monthly operating reports with the Bankruptcy Court and also plans to post these monthly operating reports on the Investor Relations section of kodak.com. The company will continue to file quarterly and annual reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which will also be available in the Investor Relations section of kodak.com.

EASTMAN KODAK
www.kodak.com