#TheZooHasGoneNuts: Kodak — after its Crypto-Scheme in 2018 Caused Shares to Surge 300% Before Recrashing — Gets Trump-Pump Worth 2,190% Before Recrashing

Insiders front-run the announcement. Locust-swarms of Robinhood traders pile on top. Taxpayers brace themselves. Shaking my head while holding my nose.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

Yesterday or today was probably the first time that many Robinhood traders had contact with something antediluvian called “Kodak,” and boy did they jump into it.

People who have been around this zoo for an additional two years remember that Kodak last was infamous for a crypto-insider-stock-grant scheme when it announced on January 9, 2018, that it would create its own crypto, called KodakCoin, which at the peak of the crypto-idiocy, caused its stock to quadruple in two days, from $3.10 to $12.40, before it re-collapsed. As you’d expect from an outfit like this, on January 8, the day before the announcement, seven independent directors had awarded themselves huge stock grants.

So, on Monday, Kodak’s shares [KODK] closed at $2.62, up 25%. On Tuesday, President Trump’s announcements started. By Wednesday morning, shares hit $60 for a microsecond, a 2,190% gain in less than two days, before giving up nearly half of it and closing at $33.20. This chart shows the daily action, including the effects of the KodakCoin-scheme:

But this time it’s real fiat money, so to speak, not cryptos, and in a big way, and it smells, with Trump pulling strings personally, with Trump himself announcing on TV to the world that this outfit would get a $765-million loan from the US government, under the Defense Production Act, the first such loan the government issued.

At the White House briefing, Trump said, “Today my administration has taken a momentous step toward achieving American pharmaceutical independence — a very, very big, big step — a focus of our campaign to bring America’s critical supply chains and medical manufacturing back to the USA.  We’ve been working on this for a long time.”

And after a lot of blah-blah-blah, the President got to the nuts and bolts: “Kodak will now produce generic active pharmaceutical ingredients, which is a big deal. Using advanced manufacturing techniques, Kodak will also make the key starting materials that are the building blocks for many drugs in a manner that is both cost-competitive and environmentally safe. We’ll be competitive with almost all countries, and soon with all countries.” Etc. etc.

And Robinhood traders converged on it. Shares soared from $2.62 on Monday to $7.94 on Tuesday at the close. On Wednesday, they opened at something like $18 and under huge volume shot to $60 for a microsecond, a 2,190% gain in less than two days. Then the shares began to melt. This is today’s action:

But it wasn’t quite fiat-money-handover time just yet. It was just an announcement of a signing of a “Letter of Interest.”

The DFC announced that it would sign a Letter of Interest “to provide a $765 million loan to Eastman Kodak Company (Kodak) to support the launch of Kodak Pharmaceuticals, a new arm of the company that will produce critical pharmaceutical components.”

And this is how the DFC’s announcement started out: “At the direction of President Donald J. Trump….”

OK, I got it. This time, it’s not “KodakCoin” but “Kodak Pharmaceuticals.” And this time, the POTUS himself engineered it.

I sure would like to know who put that bug into his ear. And who bought those shares before the announcement because clearly, some people did. On Monday, the day before Trump’s announcement, trading volume, at 1.64 million shares, was 22 times the volume on Friday and 20 times the volume on Thursday, and the price jumped by 25%. Under the magnifying glass – the two weeks just before the announcement:

Hopefully these insiders – along with totally panicked short-sellers – unloaded their shares into the apps of Robinhood accounts at $40 or $50 or $60 – the lucky one.

This outfit that tried to pull a fast one with a crypto scheme will maybe get a $765 million loan from taxpayers to start a company that maybe will manufacture all kinds of pharmaceutical products, or base materials for pharmaceutical products, without ever having manufactured a single pharmaceutical product. OK, no biggie, these are just generic products. It’s not like they’re trying to invent anything.

There are so many amazing aspects to this story: The traders that hit that stock like a swarm of locusts, the brazen insider-trading the day before the President started pumping the stock, and not just pumping it verbally but by promising $765 million in taxpayer money to a company that has been limping along and declining since it emerged from its Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2013. And this company is supposed to start a new division to make pharmaceutical products with zero experience in making pharmaceutical products.

This is what happens when the government borrows something like a trillion dollars every two months and throws it in every direction, with the President personally getting into the trenches and throwing his share too. All this just leaves me shaking my head while holding my nose, which is not that easy to do.

Enjoy reading WOLF STREET and want to support it? You can donate. I appreciate it immensely. Click on the beer and iced-tea mug to find out how:

Would you like to be notified via email when WOLF STREET publishes a new article? Sign up here.



  125 comments for “#TheZooHasGoneNuts: Kodak — after its Crypto-Scheme in 2018 Caused Shares to Surge 300% Before Recrashing — Gets Trump-Pump Worth 2,190% Before Recrashing

  1. Danno says:

    What next?

    Nothing would surprise me anymore.

  2. Rain says:

    Is it just me? I feel this kind of madness appears more often when a crash is imminent… we had plenty this year alone, seems to me fewer market “scams” like this happen during a truly booming economy.

    • Memento mori says:

      This is how money dies

      • Cas127 says:

        DC has been acting to murder the US dollar for 50 years…it is much easier to run a grotesquely incompetent gvt when you can steal the value of your citizens’ savings to paper over perpetual f*ck ups.

        • NoFreeLunch says:

          This is why the Washington NFL team will be called the “Washington Plunderers”, to reflect the main industry that exists in that city.

        • joe2 says:

          It’s the lack of accountability that is the real killer of real government. Tell a fairy tale and steal money, no one checks or cares. Like everyone is just hoping 1) for the lottery, 2) to get elected, 3) to get some elected crook to give you money.

          Has anyone heard the term “earned value” in the last 20 years? Or seen a PERT chart? Nah, It’ll be fine.

    • Mike says:

      The stock market has severe down syndrome. Corky from “Life Goes On” is the one doing all the trading and manipulating the market.

  3. Denise says:

    It makes you wonder if they really meant Eastman Chemical. Eastman Kodak according to Wikipedia

    “Kodak provides packaging, functional printing, graphic communications and professional services for businesses around the world. Its main business segments are Print Systems, Enterprise Inkjet Systems, Micro 3D Printing and Packaging, Software and Solutions, and Consumer and Film.[4][5][6]

    How after a $700 million dollar investment they will produce pharmaceutical grade chemicals equates to a lot of questions. Something fishy hete?

    • Apple says:

      No pharmaceutical grade chemicals will ever be produced. This is all just a big grift that points back to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

      • cd says:

        they have been making pharma ingredients for 4 years….
        not saying this is right as their are better mnfcts in US to do this…

    • MCH says:

      Fundamentally, this Kodak scam I can kind of believe in, Eastman Kodak was largely into imagery and photography, their real money maker in the old days was all about chemical processing, specifically for film, but they did enough specialty chemicals that they have the knowledge and the background to pull this off, in theory. The reality of course is that those plants have long ago been downsized, and I’m not really sure if they have the right work force that can pull this stuff off any more.

      That said, flavor of the day, we can just line it up.

      Kodak Crypto
      Kodak Pharm
      Kodak vaccine
      Kodak Cannibis
      Kodak Chicken (to supply critical chicken needs)

      Hey while we’re at it, we can also see if we can use a few other iconic names that has faded. Xerox, Polaroid, I wouldn’t mind buying Polaroid coins.

      • Cryptoboomer says:

        I live in Rochester, NY, home of Eastman Kodak. Been around long enough to remember the glory days. I have to admit I’m excited about the prospects of this endeavor. The infrastructure is still there, local governments are on board, and the company has a long history of making pharmaceutical grade chemicals-it even split off a separate business in Eastman Chemical around 25 years ago-that this whole thing could work. My two main concerns are that the leadership of the company over the last 30 years have been unadulterated idiots, and that most of the experienced engineers will have to be coaxed out of retirement (most are still here) or other jobs to make this work. If they put a good management team in place and hire experienced personnel, this might fly. Or, they could just screw it up at every turn as they usually do, and it will crash and burn.

        • Ethan in NoVA says:

          Maybe a new generation of engineers could do the job?

        • VintageVNvet says:

          You and Enova make a good case for exactly what happened to me in 2016:
          ”Recruiter” somehow got hold of my resume and pulled me out to CA to a very good and very fast growing company.
          When I got to work, they put me with a young guy who was full of piss and vinegar, AKA enthusiasm, and was very up to date and also very good, and we did good,,, and he got promoted, so they put me with a couple of other youngsters, one a dud, one another really good learner/youngster..
          I loved it,,, the company did well/good, the young folks did great,,, win win win win…

      • rhodium says:

        DT represents our bubble economy better than any other president could I think. He’s a total windbag full of air and nothing else lungs to head. He gladly took on what he deemed a massive bubble on the campaign trail, and now wouldn’t it be so poetic if a president who is a bubble himself, with this now infamous Kodak moment, pops while presiding over the implosion of the bubble economy under the tatters of a promise to make everything great. Perhaps God destroys hubris after all. I was dumb enough to think humans would learn after 2008. No, maybe this is just the way it is.

  4. Apple says:

    Even CNBC called out the Kodak CEO for the massive trading that occurred on Monday prior to,the announcement (he pleaded ignorance).

    • Noelck says:

      Where is the SEC? Have they been closed?

      • Gandalf says:

        Nothing works in this government anymore. All the regulatory commissions are frozen by lack of sufficient bodies, as the appointees are not qualified and the Senate has been slowed to a death crawl for confirmations

        • Gandalf says:

          Just waiting for January 20 to roll around.

          My suspicion is that all heck will break loose between Nov. 3 and Jan. 20.

          Yes, politics and external events do affect the economy and stock market

        • Gandalf says:

          Fast forward to December, when a lame duck Senate has to negotiate a new massive Federal debt ceiling increase with the House and White House.

          The pandemic will have almost certainly skyrocketed, with winter flu season coming on also, and with schools reopening.

          Anybody want to start a betting pool on how all that will turn out?

      • fajensen says:

        The SEC has been replaced by a Labrador retriever; if you are really bad, he will drool on your sleeve.

      • Chemdude says:

        They were last seen doing autopsies.

  5. A fish rots from the head says:

    If I got $1 for every time Trump has been dishonest, I’d be multi-millionaire. If I gave back $100 for every time he’s done anything remotely honest, I’d still be a multi-millionaire.

    • nick kelly says:

      A lot of those ‘misquotes’ are on video or audio tape, or were broadcast live.
      Some he had to clean up, like this beauty: “I thought it would be obvious, it should have been obvious, that when I said I didn’t see why it would be Russia, I meant why it wouldn’t be Russia’

      Kind of ‘I never said that stuff I said’

      Trump is famously litigious, having sued as well as been sued many tines. If all these respected journalists like Bob Woodward (‘Fear’) are making stuff up, where aren’t they being sued for slander?

    • doug says:

      Lee, MSM misquotes everyone IMO.
      Have ever been interviewed, or been around someone who was? I personally have never seen someone (D,R, or in between) quoted correctly. Doesn’t seem to happen, even for local pols.

  6. lenert says:

    “Ok but could you do me a favor?”

  7. Escierto says:

    The US has sunk to the level of a banana republic with corruption everywhere, the government combating law abiding citizens in the streets, and the printing of worthless fiat currency to cover their bills. In a few years people will be fighting over rat meat and cooking household pets for food.

    • Sit23 says:

      Exactly. I hear Kodachrome is being spun off to market shaven head grooming products. Can’t wait for the IPO. Only 99% will be fighting over rat meat and living a Gotham Cityesque life. The important 1% will be behind their walls controlling the government and the finances.

      • VintageVNvet says:

        Just exactly the way it’s always been, eh S5?
        While WE the Peedons get robbed one way or another, the 1% or so just get richer and richer; really, the only difference worth talking about is that these days they just steal our money, while in the old days they stole our cattle, chattel, daughters, and brides as well as anything we could not hide sufficiently,,, and most of the time took off our actual heads in the process if we would not immediately and permanently agree to be cannon fodder or the like..
        So, last few millennia, what has changed? Not a damn thing!!!
        Nor will it until we have actual democracy, and not some pitiful excuse for it such as the ” a republic, ma’am, if you can keep it.”

        • Lisa_Hooker says:

          Most of the “functional” democracies in history have been based on slave labor.

        • Happy1 says:

          Oh come on. Yes, the market manipulators are stealing by inflation from the elderly saving class, but they are the 0.001%, the 1% are largely successful professionals and business people who are working very hard for their money and deserve what they earn, they aren’t stealing from you or anyone else.

      • ALWAYS TANKIE says:

        Mama don’t take my Kodachrome away

    • Bluto says:

      Totally prescient!
      I have only been fattening my chihuahua for a month and he’s already looking pretty tasty.

  8. MonkeyBusiness says:

    Shopify

    Price/Sales = 60. They did turn a profit but would not give guidance.

    Totally nuts.

  9. EJ says:

    Reported to who? Trump’s SEC? A voter base who won’t change their mind anyway?

  10. Lil Salty says:

    Lost 84k shorting this. At one point I couldn’t get out bec it was getting halted so much and so quickly.

    I’m glad everyone is aware of the BS that happened. I don’t expect a letter in the mail saying I am due some money after an investigation, but wouldn’t be surprised if I got one (3 years from now haha).

    I’ll be back at it tomorrow. Will have a stop loss moving forward.

  11. Ethan in NoVA says:

    Disregarding the stock side pump and dump… Kodak has a chemical production background and it’s a good sign that there is action to get this manufacturing capability back to the USA. Of course I don’t want to see taxpayer dollars used to fund this and big pharma charge high prices for the end products.

    Would be strange to get your generic drugs from Kodak tho.

    • Prof. Emeritus says:

      At best they could produce films for X-ray machines. Except X-ray machines no longer need film, it’s all digital nowadays. The engineering background of Kodak is gone forever, the only lab they have serves mainly Hollywood customers.

      • Ethan in NoVA says:

        Don’t forget all the specialty crazy high grain films used in cameras far above the land. Those films that don’t appear in the catalogs ;-)

        Looking at their 2019 financial results it’s definitely not the worst US company out there. I didn’t know they were making money in the Inkjet printer realm.

    • Lee says:

      I don’t want to see taxpayers dollar given to an outfit that make EV’s either.

      Nor do I want to pay a salary to some idiot in Congress who asks if Guam is going to fall over if the US moves a lot of the Marines from Okinawa to Guam.

    • So does Bryan Cranston.

    • nick kelly says:

      The term ‘chemistry’ is almost as broad as the term ‘science’.

      A typical industrial chemical engineer, who might work at Canadian Oxy (a division of Occidental) where I knew some, wouldn’t even apply to work at a very specialized organic chemistry, pharma outfit like Merck.

      This makes as much sense as hiring a plumber to fix a urinary tract infection.

  12. Bet says:

    Smells like a munchkin

    • 728huey says:

      Or like Jared, Ivanka, Don Jr., Eric, Sen. Roy Blount, and Kelly Loeffler getting g lined up to make a killing on insider info.

  13. Garry Davies says:

    For the Robinhoods
    Endor – Pump It Up (official video) – YouTube.
    Lyrics
    You got to pump it up
    Don’t you know? Pump it up
    You got to pump it up
    Don’t you know? Pump it up
    You got to pump it up
    Don’t you know? Pump it up
    You got to pump it up
    Don’t you know? Pump it up
    You got to pump it up
    Don’t you know? Pump it up
    You got to pump it up
    Don’t you know? Pump it up
    You got to pump it up
    Don’t you know? Pump it up
    You got to pump it up
    Don’t you know? Pump it up
    You got to pump it up
    Don’t you know? Pump it up
    You got to pump it up
    Don’t you know? Pump it up
    You got to pump it up
    Don’t you know? Pump it up
    You got to pump it up
    Don’t you know? Pump it up
    You got to pump it up
    Don’t you know? Pump it up
    You got to pump it up
    Don’t you know? Pump it up
    You got to pump it up
    Don’t you know? Pump it up
    You got to pump it up
    Don’t you know? Pump it up
    You got to pump it up
    Don’t you know? Pump it up
    You got to pump it up
    Don’t you know? Pump it up
    You got to pump it up
    Don’t you know? Pump it up
    You got to pump it up
    Don’t you know? Pump it up
    You got to pump it up
    Don’t you know? Pump it up
    You got to pump it up
    Don’t you know? Pump it up
    You got to pump it up
    Don’t you know? Pump it up
    You got to pump it up
    Don’t you know? Pump it up
    You got to pump it up
    Don’t you know? Pump it up
    You got to pump it up
    Don’t you know? Pump it up
    You got to pump it up
    Don’t you know? Pump it up
    Source: LyricFind
    Songwriters: Michael Anthony Hall / Leonardo Stella
    Pump It Up lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Reservoir Media Management Inc, Warner Chappell Musi

  14. Inno says:

    Currency Rupture imminent…prepare for hull breach.

  15. Bob Hoye says:

    The Vancouver Stock Exchange has always been a forum for speculation.
    But it has rules.
    This wild move in Kodak reminds of the Dot-Com Bubble that completed in March 2000.
    Some of those promotions trading on the Nasdaq would double in a day.
    At the time, the VSE had a rule that if a stock jumped, say 15% within a trading day, the stock was halted.
    Until the company issued a news release.
    Maybe the SEC should check things out with the VSE?

  16. Lou Mannheim says:

    Teapot, meet Dome.

  17. Dave says:

    I watched the move yesterday and today. Trading was halted several times during the day. I suspect some people were shorting KODK and that helped to goose the price even more. Many many stocks have been doing this every week for the last few months. (NKLA, SHLL, UONE, CARV, ….). Great opportunities to be a bag holder.

    Now all President Pump has to do is to get Powell to print jobs. If they can do that, I’ll be impressed. They can use those fancy 3D printers.

    While typing I came up with a great idea. Why not make the next president a robot that looks like whomever you want him to look like? One side of hi head could look like Trump and the other side like Biden. He speak out of both of his mouths and everyone can be happy!

    • Mark says:

      With regard to the idea of a robo-president.

      Isn’t that what we already have with the GOP/Dem duopoly?

    • Brian d Richards says:

      In our dismal corrupt world, there is a glimmer of humor. Thanks.

    • El Katz says:

      A two-faced politician? What a concept!

    • VintageVNvet says:

      You guys are GREAT!!
      I used to have to go to many of the currently available on the net ”cartoons” FKA ”The Comics” in the newspapers to get my daily laugh.
      Now a days, I can just tune in to the latest WS article and read the comments to get that ROFLMAO moment to start my day.
      Thank you, and thanks again to the Wolf!

  18. curiouscat says:

    I think we may have seen the principal result intended by this action – the announcement.

  19. Robert says:

    “All this just leaves me shaking my head while holding my nose, which is not that easy to do.”

    It’s likely, although I won’t be big on it, that the markets will continue to spike up. Only thing that can derail this market is a China related ‘event’, whatever that may be. Also, a surge in the dollar. Most people are unaware that the weaker the US economy becomes, the stronger the dollar will get.

    The thing is, this is a bad news is good news market. More bad news = more money from the Fed.

    https://www.multpl.com/s-p-500-pe-ratio

  20. Gian says:

    The net wealth of those in Congress just shot up exponentially.

  21. Betty says:

    Back in the 1940s-1970s, Kodak had a chemical division that made vitamin pills, and other stuff that was put into processed foods, etc. in Rochester, NY. I know this because my dad and my neighborhood all worked there. That Division got moved to another Kodak plant in Kingston TN. You had to transfer to keep your job.

  22. Icanwalk says:

    Wasn’t there a war effort around the 1940’s? Companies that made typewriters started to make guns?

    Big Yellow made chemicals for decades. They fire all their chemists?

    It was a Dow listed corporation.

    Kodak manufactured hand grenades in WW2.

    The President wants them to help with Corona Virus. This is a bad thing?

    Please don’t commingle a struggle to find a way out of this mess with the President of the United States trying to make a buck on the deal. Or make a buck for his friends.

    If there was insider trading, that’s a crime.

    If a couple of people made a lot of money trading penny stocks, who cares?

    When this is all over, we will be wiping our asses with the paper money of whomever’s nation prints the physically largest bill.

    • Apple says:

      We are 6 months into a pandemic and this is all we got?

      • Wisdom Seeker says:

        Amen. But Thank Glod someone’s finally starting to Do Something to restore American industrial independence in an area that’s demonstrably critical to the national interest.

        I think that’s where a lot of the price support is coming from. Gotta be other investors like me who want to see the US making stuff it needs in a crisis, so next time there’s a crisis the Chinese (etc.) don’t have us in a vise.

    • Dave says:

      As I understand it, insider trading is NOT a crime for congress women and men. Therefore, some people probably made good money. Not only they made money but probably others in the know.

      • bigchin says:

        “…insider trading is NOT a crime for congress women and men.”

        you are correct.

        ’nuff said

      • Wisdom Seeker says:

        Yet another area where Congress has lost its mind about the distinction between what Ought To Be Criminal vs. what they define as legal.

        President Trump’s doing himself no favors with his own financial conflicts of interest either.

        To minimize conflicts of interest, all incoming senior government officials should be required to liquidate all assets other than personal home (and maybe a vehicle or two), and invest the proceeds generically through a blind trust constrained to own just US-only broad index funds, for the duration of public service.

        After public service, give them a lifetime stipend in lieu of never having any sweetheart book deals, private sinecures, “speaking fees” or other influence-trading payback schemes.

        This will probably be Plank 1 in the forthcoming Wisdom Seeker’s Platform for an Honest America…

  23. BuySome says:

    Kodak’s origins, Camera Obscura….dark chamber. [Don’t even need to dwell on source of “Camerlengo” for what that other guy seems to fancy himself. Maybe it is time to cut the flow of stimulus funds after all.]

    • Herman Shek says:

      So how do I unplug myself from this F up version of the Matrix? I think I rather live in Zion at this point…please unplug me now Morpheus

  24. Yaun says:

    Why Kodak? The US has a whole bunch of pharmaceutical, biotech, and chemical manufacturing companies. If Trump want to ‘insource’ generics manufacturing wouldn’t these have been the natural point of contact? Instead we get photography company where the only connection is that their photography business also had to do something with chemistry, and even that was downsized massively. That’s the best option? It’s like saying, if we don’t want to work with Huawei, then why not use Facebook, they also do things with computers. Generics manufacturing sounds simple but there are a whole bunch of regulatory complications and even though no new drugs are invented, you still need a medical/biology research division. I have some doubt Kodas will ever produce a generic, and if they do, then it will be at 10 times the price of the current Indian manufacturer. A true WTF.

  25. Eddie says:

    Mr. Richter,

    You havent gave importance to my words and rather raising voice in public support for DNR ,you dumped the topic. As I mentioned earlier that its not difficult to for DNR to arrange debt buyers and look they arranged the buyers but still going for bankruptcy to take over high asset value company (Malafide). They are showing everything so perfect. They bought almost all unsecured bonds on highly undervalued prices.

    Now they are going to issue warrants to themselves against unsecured bonds which will surely endup in dustbin and warrants to common stock holder as a feeling that they are getting something.

    I will keep raising voice for people. And I started writing to various courts requesting them to digg deeper into DNR Chapter 11 filing because it not related to CoVid19.

    Hope you will use your God gifted language and analytical skills to look other side and raise very agressive and loud voice.

    Thanks

    • Eddie, please rewrite this in English, so we can understand what you’re saying.

      • Wolf Richter says:

        I think this is part of a dialogue between Eddie and me — some of which I deleted — which has been ongoing on since my DNR article a week or so ago. I think I understand what he is trying to say.

        • Eddie says:

          Sorry for my writing issues Mr. Richter.

          I really hope you are getting what I am saying.

          I am not a random researcher or investor.

          Because of my father I have 30 years of history attending meetings and observing these CEO’s and managment people.

          For straight 40 years straight my father did business involve managing credit goods for big companies. He even taught us that how through using credit you can control labor and pricing in other parts of the world.

          I have experienced many things which happened behind the doors even decisions like putting fire on your own warehouses for insurance claims.

          Again I am repeating that my investment in DNR is almost nothing but I have studied this company from a different angle. Their assets are great. Their Bankruptcy is not related to Covid19. Its a grab and they are in hurry.

          I want someone to caught them off guard for sake of hard working people who are honestly invested in their company since long (Not Covid) after reading balance sheet, my voice will make no difference but I am trying. I even wrote to banking courts and request them to dig deeper.

          I know you are more knoeledgeable then me and when you dig deep to raise voice then I wish God it will be a game changer. Grab them from neck.

  26. JC says:

    What other great companies of years past can we resurrect with a massive loan? How about Sears or Polaroid – I’m they could do something to help with the pandemic.

    • BuySome says:

      Hey, Lionel made handheld magnetic compasses for the Army and knew how to run assembly lines. Now of course it’s not the original company, but hey, who cares? They can hire people with knowledge. If they could survive three wars and a depression what can stop them? Even MTH trains has moved to throw in the towel. Now what business do we want to put them in next week?

  27. Joe says:

    WSJ has an article about why there was unusual trading on Monday. Basically Kodak leaked the news to local press.

    • Wolf Richter says:

      The WSJ talked about the price surge on TUESDAY before the announcement which happened in the afternoon. I was talking about the 25% surge on MONDAY.

      • TheRealMRDyno says:

        Wolf,
        You seem to be good at digging up this kind of information, and this looks egregious, so is there anything you could do to push the market regulators to find and prosecute whoever was buying at 20x normal before the announcement? These people need to be in jail.
        Thanks

      • Harrold says:

        The CEO Jim Continenza purchased quite a few shares on June 23.

      • Joe says:

        “Just after noon on Monday, two news reporters in Rochester tweeted information about a Kodak initiative with the government in response to the coronavirus pandemic. One reporter has since deleted the tweet, the other has kept it up. The tweet that remains up has a time stamp of 12:05 p.m. ET.”

        link:

        https://emailshare.cmail20.com/t/n/d-l-cfe96842d28b11ea8abf07b43248de01-l-d-r-l/

  28. Diverting contracts to front companies is political fraud. Duke Cunningham did hard time for setting up a front with a phony defense PDF contract (and taking a kick back). The company had no employees and no equipment. Enter Kodak? Hard to guess what is going on here.

    • Icanwalk says:

      Ambrose,

      Can you explain this remark of yours? Do you know that Kodak does not have the capability or capacity to help with Covid in this area?

      I just want to make sure that we are separating our politics from our capacity to fight the pandemic.

      • CRV says:

        It’s simple to explain that kodak can not help against covid by making generic medicines. Generic means that it is (almost) a copy of a medicine of which the patents are expired. There is nothing registered against covid, so there is nothing expired against covid, so there is nothing generic against covid.

        But Trump didn’t mention covid specifically.

        My wife is a Senior Regulatory Affairs Manager in the field of medicines. She tells me that it takes at least half a year to fast track a dossier through the FDA. That is when you buy an existing generic medicine from another company and keep everything the same, from suppliers to your customers and you effectively only have to change the name of the holder of the registration. There is no need to explain that you cannot be cheaper then the one before you. Except maybe if you accept a lower profit margin.

        It becomes more complex and time consuming when you want to produce yourself. Building a manufacturing plant, setting up all that is neccessary to meet all requirements, batch testing (at least three batches to prove you can produce consistantly and the product meets the same specifications as those in the originator), to pass all regulatory obstacles and so on. It at least takes a year, even if you know exactly what’s needed and what you are doing and have all the wind in your back. Good luck with finding the workforce to manage this. These people are scarse and very expensive.

        I’m a chemical engineer myself and know it’s a whole other ballgame to produce batteries then to produce chemicals for medicines.

        This whole Kodak story is a hoax to fool the ‘market’ and rake in some dough. Probably before filing for backrupty.

        • VintageVNvet says:

          Did I miss something in the article?
          My idea is that this is an attempt, however crudely done so far, to begin manufacturing the basic chemicals needed to produce drugs in USA, not enabling/empowering the actual manufacture of drugs themselves.
          As pointed out earlier, there are already companies in USA manufacturing drugs; but again, what I have read is that most of the manufacturing of the base synthetic chemicals are made outside USA.
          Last time I went to my ”geriatric internist” (who was partially educated in Austria before finishing med school and his PhD in USA,) I told him I could not tolerate any synthetic pain relief and was relying on natural substances; he said that at least I could know where those came from, but that he was not allowed to know, and neither was any pharmacist, where any of the drugs he prescribed came from.
          And we who are looking have certainly seen both the quality control problems and now, recently, the problem with having SO much of our drugs coming from outside USA, eh?

      • lenert says:

        From 1976 to 1996 most drugs in the US were manufactured in Puerto Rico. Over 20 big pharma companies built about 80 plants and at one point employed 18,000. Then the tax abatement ended and they packed up for China and India. Seems politics and healthcare capacity are inseparable.

        • Petunia says:

          Manufacturing of drugs and cosmetics in PR goes back to the 1960s. My cousin was a makeup artist for a cosmetic company named Dubarry back then, which was made on the island.

      • Generic drug manufacturing (not covid) is the issue here, and Kodak has no facilities, or employees, to make these drugs. This is a defense contract. The president does not the authority to hand out DOD contracts at his whim to companies with no expertise and probably no security vetting. Maybe Kodak will set up some offshore entities, ship the stuff in and stamp USA on it. Most likely they will never be able to meet the requirements of the contract. This is just Trump jerking the markets chain.

  29. polistra says:

    Meanwhile Russia, which DIDN’T offshore its industries and skills to China, and DIDN’T turn its entire economy into daytrading, is already starting production on a vaccine.

    Sputnik 2.0 = Shotnik.

    • Wolf Richter says:

      You’re welcome to try it out.

    • Happy1 says:

      Ha ha haha, Russia, yes, they will rescue the world from COVID-19. They may have average life span less than 60 and live in squalor but they can make one thing we could use?

    • Gandalf says:

      Yes, Russia apparently jumped ahead of everybody in the vaccine race by skipping the usual II, and III stages of testing for efficacy and safety and just proceeding to produce their adenovirus based vaccine after giving it to their army recruits as test subjects. It’s been in limited release to whoever among the rich and powerful in Russia wanted it.

      Classic sloppy Russian methodology, which is how Chernobyl happened.

      And it’s not the same thing as getting enough doses manufactured for a country wide mass vaccination program.

      It would be equivalent to allowing Moderna, which was the first in the US to start Phase I testing in March, to start mass producing and selling its vaccine right now, right after just the successful Phase I testing.

  30. Harvey Cotton says:

    Maybe KodakBlockchain.com/CBD can issue some more shares and use the raised cash to invest in some Forex CFDs in South Africa.

  31. TimTim says:

    I wonder if, in a real zoo, whether sprinkling the penguins’ fish with cocaine would have the same behavioural effect…?

    • probably says:

      I think it’s cocaine, the lot of them, but others have told me it’s Adderall.

  32. Zebedee says:

    Actually, Kodak has been involved with pharmaceutical production since 1988, when it purchased Sterling Drug. Back then they were looking for ways to diversify, since their revenue from film production of all types was in rapid decline. Ultimately, they abandoned this venture as expected profits never materialized, but to say that Kodak has zero experience in pharmaceutical production is 100% false.

  33. timbers says:

    “We don’t care if we’re blowing bubbles” – Fed Chair Powell.

    There out to be an Occupy the Fed movement, directed at Public Enemy #1.

  34. Phillip says:

    So I thought Trump was going to drain the swamp? Shows just how much a denizen of the swamp he really is. And if anyone tries to defend him by saying that he was manipulated, then it shows what a terrible businessman/deal maker he really is. So either he is a crook, naive or just incompetent, take your pick. On any level, not much POTUS material.

  35. The artist formerly know as Marcus says:

    How is it knowable that the price fluctuations are meaningfully driven by Robinhood traders versus traditional online trading or automated algorithms? I get the coincidence of the Robinhood platform, but usually Wolf provides data to support pretty much any assertion. Not being snarky. I really want to know if there is a way to track volume by trading platform.

  36. Mr. Smith says:

    Why Kodak?
    The top 5 US manufacturers of pharmaceuticals, Pfizer, Roche, J&J, Sanofi and Merk account for $215 billion in annual sales. There are another 20 pharma companies behind them.

    Big pharma is accused of having a stranglehold on the entire US medical industry from the AMA, medical schools, medical conglomerates, all the way donw to individual doctors.

    They are accused of ruthless price gouging, restraint of trade, monopolistic business practices and out and out fraud. The lawsuits pending against Big Pharma total into the hundreds of billions. They pump out drugs that end up causing massive misery and death, get their asses sued off then retreat into another round of drugs that only treat symptoms and RARELY cause an actual cure.

    Along comes Kodak, that isn’t part and parcel of the Big Pharma cartel and, for a mere $billion, can get fired up to produce basic components that will be incorporated into final products at a REASONABLE price. By all appearances they are independent of the cartel, will take on a guaranteed profitable business and not gouge the hell out of the final consumers.

    Makes sense to me. All the corruption behind it is inevitable. This country, from the top down, is ruled by corruption. BELIEVE IT

    • VintageVNvet says:

      YES smitty, I do believe it!
      About 22 years ago, my bride and I decided we had had enough of the coastal culture going postal, and moved to a ”fly over” location where everyone dry farmed and bought a place with huge creek and spring, a la RD.
      Best neighbor ever, 5th gen native there and I had a debate as to which ”home county” was more corrupt; mine had every single county commissioner put in jail by the feds, but his had more unsolved murders than any other county in USA for several decades!
      When and IF, and IMHO, only IF, WE the PEEDONs manage to take back control of USA and make a working democracy, will WE be able to get rid of at least the majority of the corruption at every level of guv mint.
      ”Clean House, Senate Too” is a motto I heard first long ago in CA, but it is a motto worth following IMO, and it’s about damn time we did so.
      IOW, vote out every incumbent until we get folks running who commit and do actually represent WE the Peedons, and not the 1% who immediately do their best, usually successfully, to bribe our politicians.
      BTW, I do see a very small % of elected and appointed guv mint folks who not only seem to understand this, but appear to do their best to represent and help their constituents, but, of course, not nearly enough!

      • Petunia says:

        I watch a good bit of the tech hearing yesterday. Most of the congressmen on the panel take money from one or more of those tech companies. I couldn’t decide if the hearing was theater for us or another shakedown of the tech companies, probably both.

      • BuySome says:

        Another old one to remember, “Don’t change d*cks in the middle of a screw, Vote for Nixon in ’72!”. Youse buys yor ticket, youse takes yer ride.

  37. roddy6667 says:

    A lot of towns in Northern New England require that their employees get their prescription drugs from Canadian pharmacies to get the cheap price. All they do is email or fax the prescription to the pharmacy and Fedex is at your door in 2 days.
    American exceptionalism.

    • Gandalf says:

      Canada only manufactures a few drugs in Canada. Most of its drugs are imported, and the generics are imported from the same foreign countries (China, India, Mauritania, etc.) that the US imports from

      The main reason that Canadian drug prices are so much lower is that its National Health system negotiates prices DOWN with the pharmaceutical companies, as do most other National Healthcare systems around the world.

      The US Medicare system is specifically prohibited by law from doing the same thing with drug prices due to the corrupting campaign contribution influences of Big Pharma on Congress. Campaign contributions are the American version of Chinese guanxi.

      Since you live in China, you should know about the Chinese culture of guanxi, which infuses literally everything in daily life there, from getting the best healthcare to getting your kids into the best primary schools, getting a good job, getting a business started, etc., etc.

      As bad as some American problems are these days, I’m 100% sure that China is worse, it’s just that nobody knows about it because it’s all hidden because of tight censorship of the news media and the internet.

  38. Lisa_Hooker says:

    “Using advanced manufacturing techniques, Kodak will also make the key starting materials that are the building blocks for many drugs in a manner that is both cost-competitive and environmentally safe.”

    Safe to assume Kodak will produce pseudoephedrine and ephedrine building blocks?

  39. Brian says:

    I bet we now see a bunch of H1-B visas approved for Kodak. Can’t let this trickle down to the American workforce.

  40. SGates says:

    here is the rotting fish smell…. Can i get “things you cant make up.” for $200 Alex.
    Ted Suhl, a manager at Southeastern Asset Management, the largest shareholder of $KODK with 55.3% ownership of KODK’s stock (through the convertible bonds and pfd) had his bribery prison sentence commuted by President Trump last year

    • Joe says:

      it’s nothing more than a coincidence. a legitimate mutual fund company happens to have the same name as Suhl now defunct corporation.

      • Matt says:

        Actually, no.

        Ted Suhl’s Southeastern Asset Management was based in NH & existed for just one year.
        https://quickstart.sos.nh.gov/online/BusinessInquire/BusinessInformation?businessID=371367

        Ted even used a Arkansas number on that registration.

        Ted was ferrying the Governor of Arkansas around: Huckabee.

        You see who was the press secretary? Who was her Dad? Yes.. her Dad is Huckabee of Arkansas.

        You think some random guy from New Hampshire was doing that? Just so used the same name as a southern based hedge fund who owns Kodak.

        Oh and whoops! accidentally Trump helps out said Kodak and allows SAM to turn $100 into $1B overnight?

  41. Kaleberg says:

    If it’s chemicals, try EMN, not KODK.

  42. ron says:

    Totally unfair when regulated market moves $$ from poor to rich…

    Market is for those who have close connections to powerful gov officials…all others can pound sand…… hard lesson to learn…

  43. Nabi Rasch says:

    It’ll make total sense when you hear about the Polaroid announcement on tuesday. Buy now!

  44. msf says:

    Check the options granted on July 27, right before the news hit. Unlike last time (you wrote of “plausible deniability” because the directors, not exec, got grants), this time it’s the CEO and two VPs.

    They received grants of 1.75M (CEO) and 45K (VPs), at exercise prices ranging from $3 (the majority) to $12/share.

  45. Henri says:

    If the SEC don’t do anything about this blatant fraud, I won’t be surprised

Comments are closed.