Eastman Kodak expects improvement in 2010

ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- Eastman Kodak Co. said Thursday it expects improved earnings this year driven by its digital printer businesses and leaner costs from years of restructuring.

But investors appeared unimpressed with the forecasts, sending its shares lower a day after they briefly touched a 52-week high.

At its annual investor meeting, the picture-taking pioneer said it expects digital sales to grow between 5 percent and 9 percent in 2010. Offset by a more moderate drop in traditional film-based revenue, projected sales overall will be flat to 1 percent higher.

Kodak said earnings from continuing operations will range between a loss of $50 million and a profit of $50 million. The company lost $210 million, or 78 cents a share, in 2009.

The company said sales will reach $7.5 billion to $7.7 billion, versus $7.6 billion in 2009. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters are looking for revenue of $7.66 billion.

Analysts, whose estimates typically exclude one-time items, expect on average that Kodak will earn 74 cents a share this year.

Its shares, which hit a 52-week high of $6.94 during trading Wednesday, fell 39 cents, or 5.7 percent, to $6.43 in morning trading Thursday.

"We feel that even with a so-so economy, we're going to have a much improved 2010," Chief Executive Perez said in an interview with The Associated Press before the annual meeting of Kodak analysts and institutional investors in New York.

"We look at the U.S. economy growing by 2 percent," Perez said. "You can hear ... economists and politicians actually talking about 3.9 percent, 4 percent. If it happens, it will be great for us, but we're planning on what we think is a conservative 2 percent."

Kodak broke four straight quarterly losses with a $443 million profit in the last three months of 2009. Its results, posted last Thursday, were lifted by consumer and commercial inkjet printer sales and big licensing gains from its rich array of digital-imaging inventions.

The 129-year-old Rochester-based company pared its payroll from 64,000 to 26,900 during a mammoth overhaul from 2004 to 2007. It eliminated another 4,100 jobs last year, shrinking its work force to a 1930s-era low of 20,300 from a 1988 peak of 145,300.