Eastman Kodak Inc

Eastman Kodak Co. this week offered banks a claim on its assets in order to borrow $2.7 billion amid increasing concern about its creditworthiness. Citigroup Inc. has agreed to underwrite the entire loan and will syndicate the deal to other lenders over the next two months, Kodak said. Kodak, which lost its investment-grade ratings on its senior unsecured debt earlier this year, said in July that it would have to provide collateral to attract lenders. The Rochester, N.Y.

Eastman Kodak Co. disclosed Wednesday a second-quarter loss that missed Wall Street expectations by a wide margin and said it would eliminate as many as 10,000 more jobs. The cutbacks are on top of 12,000 to 15,000 layoffs targeted 18 months ago as the company navigates a tough transition from film to digital photography. "I don't need to change our overall strategy -- the further we get into this, the better the strategy looks," said Antonio Perez, Kodak's new chief executive.

Eastman Kodak Co. and Belgium's Barco have formed a strategic alliance to sell digital projection systems to movie theaters and seek to capture a big part of a market potentially worth billions of dollars. Kodak and Barco will sell, install and service the systems, which are set to replace 35-millimeter film projectors, the companies said Wednesday. Barco will provide the projectors and Kodak will offer computer servers and software.

Eastman Kodak Co. is delaying its launch of a highly touted digital camera that will use wireless technology to transfer images to computers or printers. The 4-megapixel EasyShare-One camera, unveiled in January, was expected to arrive in stores next month. But Kodak said it would be shipped in October to take advantage of the end-of-year holiday shopping season.

Eastman Kodak Co., the camera and film company undergoing a difficult transition to digital products, said Wednesday that Chief Executive Daniel Carp would step down in June and be succeeded by Kodak's president, who has a background in digital gadgets. Carp, 57, was credited with setting the once-stodgy film company on the path to becoming a digital photography powerhouse, cutting 15,000 jobs and slashing the company's dividend.

Eastman Kodak Co. restated its profit lower for the last two years because of errors in accounting for income taxes, pensions and retirement benefits. Net income for 2004 was reduced by 14% to $556 million, or $1.94 a share, Rochester, N.Y.-based Kodak said. It cut net income for 2003 by 4.5% to $253 million, or 88 cents.

Eastman Kodak Co., which turned picture-taking into a mass-market pastime a century ago, is quickly making up for a sluggish start in filmless photography in the 21st century. Its digital sales, which surged 40% in the fourth quarter, will eclipse revenue from film and other iconic, chemical-based businesses for the first time in 2005. "You're watching a great transformation," Kodak Chief Executive Dan Carp declared Wednesday at an investors' meeting in New York.

Eastman Kodak Co. is nipping at Sony Corp.'s heels in the ballooning U.S. digital camera market. The world's biggest film manufacturer, aiming to become the No. 1 seller of point-and-shoot digital cameras on its home turf this year, almost drew level with Japanese front-runner Sony in third-quarter U.S. camera shipments, market research firm IDC said Friday. Sony delivered 1 million consumer digital cameras in the third quarter, only 10,000 more than Kodak, IDC said. Canon Inc.

Shares of Eastman Kodak Co. had their biggest decline in a year after the company's third-quarter revenue missed analysts' estimates and the decline in film sales accelerated. Third-quarter profit rose almost fivefold because of the sale of its satellite imaging business to ITT Industries Inc. for $752 million. Net income rose to $479 million, or $1.67 a share, from $122 million, or 42 cents, a year earlier. Sales rose 1% to $3.36 billion, shy of the average $3.54-billion analyst estimate.