In today’s Finshots, we tell you if Kodak is on the verge of shutting down and whether its unlikely bet on pharma could keep the shutters open.

The Story

It’s the summer of the 1990s. You’re on a family vacation with a chunky Kodak camera in hand. You wind the reel, press the button, hear that crisp shutter click, and wait weeks before those photos show up in an album (or the “Kodak moments” everyone spoke of). For decades, this was the ritual, and Kodak wasn’t just a brand but a synonym for photography itself.

The numbers tell you that. In the 1970s, Kodak sold over 85% of all the cameras and films in the US. And by the early 2000s, its Digital & Film Imaging Systems division was pulling in around $9 billion in annual sales, making up a bulk of Kodak’s $13 billion revenue.

But inside that number was a split that hinted at the company’s future. Nearly $6 billion still came from traditional film and photo paper, while only about $3 billion came from digital cameras. So you could say that Kodak made a huge chunk of its money on film and processing, not on cameras. And that made sense because the more pictures people took, the more film Kodak sold, and that’s where the fat margins sat.

The only problem? Once smartphones put cameras in everyone’s pocket and cloud storage replaced albums, there was no need for physical films or processing them. And so, Kodak’s profit machine started to shrink. 

Kodak’s downfall was swift. It filed for bankruptcy in 2012, and by 2024, its revenue had shrunk to just $1 billion. The irony is, Kodak once held thousands of patents that could have made it a strong player in digital cameras. But it clung too tightly to film and missed the smartphone wave. When bankruptcy hit, those patents were sold off to a consortium of tech giants like Apple and Google. And the company that once defined memories was reduced to a niche player, surviving on printing plates, workflow software, and chemicals.

All of which brings us to today.

The company recently said in its filing that there’s “substantial doubt” about whether it can continue as a going concern. And the reason is hard, cold math. It owes $477 million in short term loans. But it only has $155 million in cash. To cover this gap, Kodak is hoping a one-time pension plan reversion brings in about $300 million. If regulators approve it, that money would go straight to debt repayment.

Now, the company insists this doesn’t mean it plans to cease operations, shut shop, or file for bankruptcy. And the “going concern” warning, it says, was simply a mandatory disclosure.

But here’s the real question: even if the pension cash comes through, how does Kodak service what’s left of its debt and still find a way to grow?

Strangely enough, the answer is pharmaceuticals!

At first glance, it sounds absurd. How does a 133-year-old camera company get into making drugs? But dig a little deeper and you’ll see Kodak has always been a chemical company in disguise. 

Its very first innovation in 1880, the ‘dry photographic plate’, was really a chemical breakthrough. Before it was invented, photographers’ only choice was to use ‘wet plates’ which were fragile, messy and a hassle to carry around. In contrast, dry plates were portable and quick to use. But making them meant that the process wasn’t about the glass and coatings alone, it needed chemical mixing and a controlled environment.

And for years, Kodak was importing these chemicals from Germany. But World War 1 changed that. Germany cut off supply of key ingredients. And that’s when George Eastman, the company’s founder, vowed that they would never depend on anyone else for their chemicals. So in 1920, he founded Tennessee Eastman, their specialty chemical arm that quietly churned out polyesters, plastics, and industrial solvents while the photo business hogged the limelight. And after being spun off from Kodak in 1994, it eventually grew into Eastman Chemical Company, a Fortune 500 giant.

And that chemical legacy is what Kodak is leaning on today.

Making drugs is a complicated process and it starts with something called Key Starting Materials or KSMs. These are the building blocks that go through many stages to eventually become Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs). Simply put, without KSMs, there can’t be medicines. And Kodak already has an Advanced Materials & Chemicals (AM&C) division with all kinds of KSMs used for electronics and of course, healthcare.

It produced solvents, specialty chemicals, and unregulated healthcare inputs. During the pandemic in 2020, for instance, the US government even tried to hand Kodak a $765 million loan to make drug ingredients onshore. While the deal collapsed in controversy, it revealed how strategic Kodak’s know-how could be.

And right now, the AM&C division is small but vital for Kodak. It’s the only segment that’s driving some growth in the company. In Q2 2025, it pulled in $75 million or a third of Kodak’s total revenue and about $8 million in operational profits. That’s 11% profit margin, and when annualised, that comes to a $300 million business giving over $30 million in profits. 

It’s not film-era money, but compared to Kodak’s Print division, which brings in 70% of sales yet loses money at the operating level, it looks like the only engine worth betting on.

And that’s exactly what Kodak is doing. In Rochester, it has built an FDA-approved plant that will first make a basic lab solution called phosphate-buffered saline. The plan is to move from this simple start to IV saline and eventually to more complex pharma KSMs.

But will that be enough to save Kodak, you ask?

Well, even if Kodak successfully adds $50–100 million in new pharma revenues in the next couple of years, at margins of 12–15%, that’s only $6–15 million in incremental operating profit. Strip out capex and working capital, and you’re left with say $4–10 million of extra cash a year. Useful, sure. But not enough to transform its finances. So maybe pharma isn’t the cavalry; it’s the operating story that convinces lenders that Kodak might have a future.

And that narrative isn’t baseless. Kodak’s strengths — in process chemistry, coating science, and large-scale high-quality production — transfer neatly to pharmaceuticals. Its Eastman Business Park in Rochester is a unique asset. And US policy that favours domestic pharma production could give it a tailwind. If Kodak can lock in multi-year contracts, it gains badly needed stability.

That’s what Fujifilm, Kodak’s old rival, did. Faced with the same collapse of film, Fuji redeployed its chemical expertise into healthcare, specialty chemicals and cosmetics.

As an Economist story put it…

Fujifilm diversified more successfully. Film is a bit like skin: both contain collagen. Just as photos fade because of oxidation, cosmetics firms would like you to think that skin is preserved with anti-oxidants. In Fujifilm's library of 200,000 chemical compounds, some 4,000 are related to anti-oxidants. So the company launched a line of cosmetics, called Astalift, which is sold in Asia and is being launched in Europe this year [2012].

So yeah, Kodak is now attempting a narrower, later version of that strategy. The only challenge is that pharma manufacturing is crowded. Margins could be thin, quality failures can kill reputations, and Kodak enters as a small fish among the sharks. And to really move the needle, it will have to push into higher-value, tightly regulated products where reliability counts as much as price. 

But whether this reinvention works could decide if “Kodak moments” remains a nostalgic relic or a surprising corporate comeback.

Until then…

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