Eastman Kodak (EK) Shares Fall On KKR Investment

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published

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KKR must not carry the clout it once did. Eastman Kodak (EK) announced that it expects to raise up to $700 million through a series of financing transactions, including a commitment from KKR  to purchase up to $400 million in Senior Secured Notes due 2017.  Kodak’s stock fell 3% to $6.49.

Kodak agreed to issue to KKR warrants to buy up to 53 million shares of Kodak common stock. Kodak, at its discretion, may issue to KKR as few as $300 million of the Senior Secured Notes, in which case the number of shares underlying the warrants will be adjusted to as few as 40 million.

Put another way, current shareholders may see their position in the company diluted. Kodak now has 260 million shares outstanding.

Kodak has not done well in years, so it is a mystery what KKR sees in the firm.

Kodak’s current share price is well below its 52-week high of $16.90. In 2007, the shares traded close to $30. But competition has beaten down the company’s film business.

In 2006, Kodak lost $200 million on $13.3 billion in revenue. Last year those numbers had worsened to an $821 million loss on revenue of $9.4 billion.

The market thinks what is left of Kodak is not worth owning.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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