Kodak Posts a Fourth Straight Quarter of Growth – And Film Is Doing the Heavy Lifting

Industry NewsFinancial Results

by Nino LeitnerAugust 13^th, 2026

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Kodak’s second-quarter results, published on August 4, show consolidated revenue of $311 million against $263 million a year ago, gross profit up 61%, and a net profit of $17 million where the company lost $26 million in the same quarter last year. The detail that matters for filmmakers sits deeper in the filing: the product line Kodak reports as “film and chemicals” grew from $68 million to $97 million, accounting for almost all of the company’s growth in the quarter.

Anyone who has followed Kodak over the last decade knows to treat good news carefully, and we will get to the caveats. But this is the fourth consecutive quarter of year-over-year improvement, it comes twelve months after the company was warning about its ability to continue as a going concern, and it lands in the middle of a genuine resurgence in shooting on film. The Kodak factory tour documentary that Leon and Natalie Barnard from Team 2 Films shot on film, and wrote up for us, is the best context we can offer for what these numbers look like in physical terms.

What Kodak reported

Gross profit climbed from $51 million to $82 million, lifting the gross margin from 19% to 26%. Operational EBITDA, the measure Kodak leans on most, went from $9 million to $36 million. Advanced Materials and Chemicals, the segment where film sits, jumped from $75 million to $105 million in revenue and from $8 million to $22 million in Operational EBITDA. Print, still the larger business at $195 million, swung from a $4 million Operational EBITDA loss to $8 million of profit.

Cash stood at $290 million at the end of June, down from $337 million at the end of 2025, but that decline is deliberate: Kodak repaid $100 million of term loan principal in the first half. Long-term debt is down to $108 million from $208 million at the start of the year.

Why the film line is the story

Advanced Materials and Chemicals is a mixed bag by design. Kodak describes it as five lines of business: industrial film and chemicals, motion picture, pharmaceuticals, advanced materials and functional printing, and IP licensing and analytical services. Motion picture film is a named business inside that segment, but Kodak has never reported it as a separate revenue figure, and it is not going to start now.

What the quarterly filing does disclose is a product-level breakdown, and there the “film and chemicals” line rose from $68 million to $97 million in the quarter, and from $134 million to $166 million across the first half. Since the segment as a whole grew by $30 million, essentially all of that growth came from film and chemicals. Two caveats belong here, though. That line bundles motion picture stock together with still photographic film, industrial films and specialty chemicals, and Kodak’s annual report discloses that Kodak Alaris, its still-film customer, accounted for roughly a third of segment revenue in both 2025 and 2024. The financial statements alone cannot tell us how much of the growth is motion picture.

What the statements will not say, Kodak’s own people have. Vanessa Bendetti, Vice President and Head of Motion Picture and Entertainment at Kodak, told Team 2 Films during their factory visit that motion picture film revenue had grown 36% over the previous two years. That is the closest thing to a hard number anyone has put on the record, and it points the same way as the segment figures.

What Kodak says it will do with the money

The clearest signal on film came not in the results release but in a growth principles and capital allocation document published alongside the earnings call. For Advanced Materials and Chemicals, which it calls “Kodak’s highest-growth segment,” the company commits to “continue to maximize film volumes by investing in product innovation and expanding capacity.”

Capacity is the thing the film community has been asking about for years, ever since lead times became a recurring topic on set. There is no specific announcement attached, no hiring plan and no number, so read it as intent rather than a project. Executive Chairman and CEO Jim Continenza put the same idea more broadly: “We are entering a new phase in Kodak’s transformation where we have the operational and financial leverage to focus on growth.”

From going concern to net cash in twelve months

A year ago, with its second-quarter 2025 results, Kodak disclosed that conditions raised “substantial doubt” about its ability to continue as a going concern. That language was resolved by November, and in December the company completed the reversion of its overfunded US pension plan, releasing $1.023 billion in excess assets, roughly $767 million of which came back to Kodak. The scorecard published with these results shows total debt of $110 million against $490 million a year ago, a net cash position of $180 million where there was $335 million of net debt, and trailing twelve-month Operational EBITDA of $102 million against $21 million.

For filmmakers the relevance is simple. A film manufacturer sitting on net cash is a very different supplier from one whose auditors are writing going-concern language, particularly when you are planning a production two years out and need to know the stock will still exist.

The cost of a can of negative

It is not all upside. Kodak flagged higher silver and aluminum prices working against its EBITDA improvement, and inventories rose $37 million in the half, which the company attributes primarily to those two commodities. Silver is not an incidental input for a film manufacturer; it is the light-sensitive core of the product.

That pressure is already visible at the sharp end. Kodak issued a price change bulletin for motion picture films in the US and Canada effective January 1, 2026, covering the VISION3 stocks along with EKTACHROME, EASTMAN DOUBLE-X, TRI-X Reversal and the duplicating, sound recording and print films. It lists new prices without stating a percentage or a reason, so we will not put a number on the increase, but the direction is not in doubt.

What Kodak has actually shipped

The recovery has come with real product activity. In April, Kodak announced VERITA 200D, an ISO 200 daylight-balanced color negative in 65mm, 35mm and 16mm, developed out of the work done on Euphoria season 3 and offered as a specialty stock by request. Running alongside it is the larger engineering project we covered last year, the switch from remjet backing to an anti-halation undercoat across all four VISION3 stocks, in every format from Super 8 to 65mm. Both are investments that only make sense if you expect to be manufacturing film for a long time, and both predate the numbers that now justify them.

Kodak is on firmer ground than it has been in a decade, and film is the part of the business growing fastest, even if the accounts stop short of saying by how much. Does the health of the manufacturer change how you plan a shoot, and would more capacity actually get more of you shooting on film? Let us know in the comments below!