Eastman Kodak Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Eastman Kodak (NYSE:KODK) reported third-quarter financial results on Tuesday. The transcript from the company’s third-quarter earnings call has been provided below.

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Summary

Eastman Kodak reported a 3% year-over-year increase in consolidated revenues for Q3 2026, reaching $276 million, with gross profit up 7% to $73 million.

Advanced Materials and Chemicals (AMC) emerged as a key growth driver, with a 21% increase in revenue to $99 million, contributing significantly to operational EBITDA.

The company generated $27 million in cash for the quarter, reflecting improved operational profitability and a strengthened balance sheet with reduced debt levels.

The commercial print business saw a 7% decline in revenue due to higher raw material costs and digital competition, though it remains a strategic focus for the company.

Management highlighted ongoing investments in AMC, film, pharmaceuticals, and battery coating as strategic initiatives to drive future growth and innovation.

Full Transcript

OPERATOR

Good day, and welcome to the Eastman Kodak third quarter 2026 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Denise Goldberg. Please go ahead.

Denise Goldberg (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. I am Denise Goldberg, Head of Investor Relations for Eastman Kodak Company. Welcome to Kodak’s third quarter 2026 earnings call. At 4:15 this afternoon, Eastman Kodak filed its Form 10-Q and issued its release on financial results for the third quarter of 2026. You may access the presentation and other materials, and the webcast for today’s call, on our Investor Center at investor.kodak.com. During today’s conference call we will be making certain forward-looking statements, as defined by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. We intend for these forward-looking statements to be covered by the safe harbor provisions for forward-looking statements contained in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Investors are cautioned not to unduly rely on forward-looking statements, and such statements should not be read or understood as a guarantee of future performance or results.

All forward-looking statements are based upon Kodak’s expectations and various assumptions. Future events or results may differ from those anticipated or expressed in the forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements include, among others, the risks, uncertainties, and other factors described in more detail in Kodak’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time.

All forward-looking statements attributable to Kodak or persons acting on its behalf only apply as of the date of this presentation and are expressly qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statements included or referenced in this presentation. Kodak undertakes no obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

In addition, the release just issued and the presentation provided contain certain measures that are deemed non-GAAP measures. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures have been provided with the release and within the presentation on our website in our Investor Center at investor.kodak.com. Speakers on today’s call are Jim Continenza, Kodak’s Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and David Bullwinkle, Kodak’s Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President.

We will not be holding a formal Q&A during today’s call. As always, the Investor Relations team is available for follow-up. I will now turn the call over to Jim. Thank you, and have a great day.

Jim Continenza (Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)

Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining the third quarter 2026 investor call for Eastman Kodak. Kodak continues to deliver strong performance. We continue to execute our long-term plan, delivering year-over-year improvements in key metrics including revenue, gross profit, and operational EBITDA. Let me give you some highlights for the third quarter 2026: consolidated revenues of $276 million compared with $269 million for Q3 2025, an increase of $7 million, or 3%. Gross profit of $73 million compared with $68 million for third quarter 2025, an increase of $5 million, or 7%. One of our key metrics, operational EBITDA, of $31 million compared with $29 million for third quarter 2025, an increase of $2 million. And, extremely important, we generated $27 million of cash in third quarter 2026.

Moving on to Advanced Materials and Chemicals, AMC as we like to refer to it. AMC, as planned, has become the company’s growth engine. We’ve invested heavily in AMC over the last several years, and we’re starting to see returns for those investments. Advanced Materials and Chemicals revenue of $99 million compared with $82 million for third quarter 2025, an increase of $17 million, or 21%. Today the business accounts for approximately a third of our revenue and approximately more than half of our operational EBITDA.

It’s a big turnaround and a great investment, and have done an outstanding job of operating that business. Some highlights. Still film: we now offer a wide range of Kodak films sold directly to distributors, which have sold well. As expected, we continue to see growth in motion picture film. Film continues to be the capture medium of choice for major features, including recently released Sense and Sensibility and Digger starring Tom Cruise, shot on Kodak film in VistaVision format. Pharma: announced the launch of our Kodak Pharmaceutical web store and the addition of a new saline product.

We continue to work towards obtaining Class 2 certification to manufacture more complex, higher-margin products. Battery coating: investing in capacity to coat electrodes at a large scale, using the pilot coating facility to help customers scale to new technologies. Moving on to highlight commercial print business. Print revenues were $165 million compared with $177 million in third quarter 2025, a decrease of $12 million, or 7%. The decline is primarily due to challenges from higher prices and availability of raw materials, digital substitution, competitive pricing pressure, and an uneven playing field in Europe as we continue to focus on more profitable businesses. The print business is performing as expected.

We’ve experienced growth in other parts of the world, and particularly in the United States. It has delivered solid performance year-over-year, year-to-date. We remain committed to the print business. We stated before, we’ll say it again: it’s our intent to be the last manufacturer standing in plates. In our digital business, we expect our imprinting systems business to make significant contributions. Now let me turn it over to Dave for the third quarter financial results.

David Bullwinkle (Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President)

Thanks, Jim, and welcome to the call, everybody. Thank you for joining us today. This afternoon the company filed its Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2026. As I have done consistently, I encourage you to review the filing in its entirety along with today’s earnings release, which provides additional detail on the results and metrics discussed during this call. Let’s begin with the financial highlights for the third quarter of 2026. Our revenue was $276 million, up $7 million, or 3%, driven by strong growth in Advanced Materials and Chemicals. AM&C contributed 36% of the company’s revenue for the quarter, up from 30% in the prior-year quarter. Our gross profit increased $5 million, or 7%, to $73 million, driven by improved pricing and product mix and higher volumes in Advanced Materials and Chemicals and Brand, partially offset by lower Print volumes and increased manufacturing costs.

Our gross profit percentage was 26% compared with 25% in the prior-year quarter. Our GAAP net income increased $8 million, or 62%, to $21 million, driven by lower interest expense resulting from the significant reduction in our term loan debt over the past 12 months, operational improvements resulting in higher gross profit, partially offset by higher SG&A costs, primarily related to increased equity compensation and changes in employee benefit accruals.

Our operational EBITDA increased $2 million to $31 million, driven by profitability improvements and higher volumes in Advanced Materials and Chemicals, which more than offset higher commodity and SG&A costs. Moving on to our year-to-date results, for the first nine months of 2026 we reported revenue of $852 million, up $73 million, or 9%, from the prior-year period. Currency fluctuations had a $5 million favorable impact on revenue. Revenue reflects growth in all of our segments, led by 21% growth in the AMC segment. Our gross profit increased $47 million, or 28%, to $212 million, primarily driven by improved pricing and product mix, higher volumes, and lower Print manufacturing costs, partially offset by higher commodity costs and increased manufacturing costs for Advanced Materials and Chemicals.

Our gross profit percentage was 25% compared with 21% in the prior-year period. That is a 4 percentage point improvement versus 2025, or approximately 19% improvement in gross profit margin year-to-date. GAAP net income was $22 million compared with a $20 million GAAP net loss in the prior-year period, an improvement of $42 million. This was primarily driven by higher operating earnings, lower interest expense from the term loan debt reduction, and lower other charges, net, due to the absence of asset impairment charges, partially offset by lower non-cash pension income following the CRIP pension plan termination.

The company’s operational EBITDA increased by $42 million to $82 million, primarily driven by the significant improvement in gross profit through the company’s smart revenue approach, which again more than offset higher SG&A expenses. The results for the third quarter and first nine months of 2026 reflect the return on investments we have been making over the past several years to improve the company’s operations and infrastructure. Jim has described many of our operational improvements. As an example of the impact of our infrastructure improvements, we have gained efficiencies in our reporting processes through more automation and centralization, allowing us to take a week out of our reporting timeline, which means quicker and better decision making.

We will continue our efforts to improve the functions supporting our operations. To further illustrate the impacts of the team’s efforts over the last several years, I would also like to call your attention to our Capital Management Scorecard, which we have provided on the Investor Center as part of our Q3 earnings information. The metrics provided are intended to illustrate the significant improvement in the health of both our balance sheet and our operations.

Each metric presented shows impressive improvement on a year-over-year basis. For example, our liquidity has almost doubled compared with this time in 2025. At the same time, we have shrunk debt levels by approximately $400 million. On top of the strength of the balance sheet, our operational EBITDA has more than doubled over the trailing 12 months to $104 million, and the company’s free cash flow has improved, which provides us with the opportunity to continue to invest in growth, as Jim has highlighted.

I’ll close with a brief update on our cash and liquidity position as of September 30, 2026. We ended the third quarter with $317 million of unrestricted cash, up $27 million from June 30, 2026, driven primarily by improved operating profitability. Cash decreased by $20 million from year-end 2025; however, this decline primarily reflects required term loan repayments of $101 million made during 2026 and $18 million in capital expenditures, partially offset by $93 million in cash proceeds received from the redemption of CRIP investment assets, and cash used from an increase in inventories driven by silver and aluminum cost increases.

Restricted cash supporting both our undiscounted actuarial workers’ compensation obligations with the New York State Workers’ Compensation Board and our letter of credit facility agreement decreased by $14 million from year-end 2025, primarily due to lower cash collateral requirements. These reductions were created in part by the strengthening of Kodak’s balance sheet and the reduction of our term loan debt. We continue to pursue opportunities to further reduce restrictions on cash.

Last, our net cash position increased by $79 million to $207 million as of September 30, 2026, compared with $128 million at year-end 2025, reflecting the company’s reduction of debt. We are very comfortable with our debt levels and the ability of the company to generate cash as we continue to execute on our long-term plan. Thank you for your time. I’ll now turn the call back over to Jim.

Jim Continenza (Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer)

Thank you, Dave. Let me just give a summary again of the third quarter 2026. As we highlighted earlier, Kodak generated $27 million for the quarter in cash. Our consolidated revenues were up 3% year-over-year. Our gross profit was up 7% year-over-year. Operational EBITDA up $2 million. Our three core businesses continue to contribute to our growth: Advanced Materials and Chemicals, Print, and Brand Licensing. In summary, Kodak has built a stable, growing business and continues to deliver strong year-over-year performance and improvements in these challenging times. We are continuing to generate cash, which strengthens our balance sheet and is an indicator of our operational strength. We continue to invest in AMC, and it is emerging as a growth engine, as we have indicated it would. We will continue to look at ways to accelerate profitable growth. We continue to invest in Print, which continues to perform in targeted areas globally.

Our goal: achieve consistent cash generation, deliver on our long-term plan, continue to create shareholder value, care for our employees, and always put the customer first. I’d like to thank all of our employees, our customers, and our investors and shareholders and directors for all their support. Thank you very much, and have a good night.

OPERATOR

This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.

Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company’s SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants’ and analysts’ statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.