Kodak Should Put Itself Up for Sale

This column was originally published on RealMoney on Aug. 26 at 9:46 a.m. EDT. It's being republished as a bonus for TheStreet.com readers.

You have to sit up and take notice when a company is cutting back in China. I mean, think about it: Here's the greatest growth market in the world, so anyone who is shutting things down there has to have his head examined.

Unless you are Kodak(EK Quote).

Then, it is just par for the course.

Never in my life have I seen a company squander a franchise the way this Kodak has. So when Kodak plans job cuts in China, the cheapest, best place in the world to manufacture, you have to just say to yourself, "Holy cow, what is the point of this company?!?"

For as long as I have been in this business, Kodak has been a troubled company. (So has Xerox(XRX Quote), but that's a different story.) It has spun off divisions and bought and sold more properties and thrown up its hands more times than any company I know. It has changed managements, it has changed orientations, it has tried to be a health care company, a drug company, a chemicals company, a distributor and a technology company. Nothing's working.

Now it is only a $7 billion company. There's only one thing left for it to do: put itself up for sale. Until then, it should just shut up and go lower. Its managers have been incapable of the former, but the latter's been their forte for years.

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