Earnings Labs

Eastman Kodak Company (KODK)

Q4 2005 Earnings Call· Tue, Jan 31, 2006

$13.27

+2.24%

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Transcript

Don Flick, Director, Investor Relations

Management

Good afternoon. I'm Don Flick, the Director of Investor Relations at Eastman Kodak. I'd like to welcome you all to our meeting here this afternoon and I would also like to extend a greeting to those who are joining us via our webcast and teleconference. And as per my custom I would take this moment to invite you all to take your cell phones and other electronic devices and either turn them off or set them on mute if you wouldn't mind. And then just a few housekeeping details to dispense with. Of course, we are making forward-looking statements in the course of today's meeting and these are subject to important risk factors. These are detailed on the Safe Harbor statement that's included in your handout package and of course in the webcast that's being put out today. And in the same sense we also use some non-GAAP metrics in the course of the conversation. Because these are important metrics by which management operates the business, but in each and every case the non-GAAP metric is reconciled to its closest GAAP equivalent and that's done both in the material attached at the end of the presentation deck today and on the website for those of you who are following via the webcast this morning. So now, I would like to introduce Antonio Perez, Kodak's Chairman and CEO.

Antonio Perez, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer

Management

Thank you, Don, and good morning. So I will introduce the meeting and give you my thoughts about 2005. I will get Bob Brust here and we will go through the results of the Q4 and the full year and then as well our forecast, our outlook for 2006. I'll come back and I'll give you my own perspective about next year and then we will go into Q&A. Now, if you look at the overall company in 2005, you look at the results and you look at the positioning of the Company, by any measure that I can find, 2005 was an extraordinary year for Kodak and in my view we make phenomenal progress in our transition. I'm especially pleased with the last four months of the year. The last four months of the year was crucial for several reasons. Among them represented 40% of our digital revenue and more than 100% of our digital earnings and the Company deliver on those. In going further than that, for me the Q4 was the most significant of the four quarters of the year because the Q4 is the first time that I have been able to have the structure in the company and the management team the way it is going to be run in 2006. We had GCG completed, we had the new restructure of the consumer groups into digital and traditional and we have recovered from some of the issues that we had in health at the beginning of the year. So that is the Company that we going to run in 2006 and the fourth quarter was an excellent quarter, a phenomenal quarter in any sense, and that is the Company that we going to run in 2006. And it was excellent both in digital revenue as…

Bob Brust, Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President

Management

Thank you, Antonio. And good to see everybody again and thanks for coming and we will try to run by, a little discussion on the metrics for this year, talk a little bit about the '05 results, a little more color on it and the '06 plan, and some key messages. Early this time last year we said we were going to go and concentrate on three metrics, digital revenue growth, digital earnings, and cash and we still think they are the right things to focus on as we go through maybe another four to six quarters with heavy restructuring going on in the Company and very hard to get clean results because of all of this restructuring and valuation allowances and all the stuff you heard about this year from us. We did have some good progress last year in '05. We will talk about that and we are off with good momentum in '06. In the middle of the year, we accelerated the transformation and the restructuring of the Company and we discontinued guidance and we said we were going to a GAAP only basis which we will only be reporting GAAP measures going forward. But in '05 we had some of both and our objectives were based on operationally and ended up on GAAP so I'm going to try to transit that for you as we go through '05 and then in '06 we will just be talking about GAAP. So last year we said we would, digital revenue growth the target was 36% growth. EFO on an operating basis was 275 to 325 and we were going to try to get investable cash flow of 4 to $600 million. Remember, this investable cash flow we, our cash flow, our earnings, and our restructuring cash outflow are…

Antonio Perez, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer

Management

Thank you, Bob. So I'm assuming that we have some credibility as far as cash generation and probably significant credibility, I hope in digital revenue growth. So I'm going to spend most of the time in this part of the presentation talking about digital earnings and why we put that number on that chart of 350 to 450. First of all, the focus is moving for very good reasons and I will take you through that through our logic, and through our rationale. From share of market to share of profit, when we say that we want to be number one and number two in any particular market, we want to be number one or number two of the share of profit that we can extract from that segment. Not necessarily only share of market in units. This is the purpose. Now, of course, you cannot get to a share of profit without a decent share of market as far as units is concerned. And because of that, during the first two years of this four year transformation, the goals were set in that particular order. Number one was cash. Most important theme for this transition as you can imagine with all of these payments, all these expenses that we have to go through, through the transformation. Number two was to building, build a digital business of enough size. And we did have to sacrifice in many cases the earnings in order to get the size and the market share that we needed to get. Now we have built a very significant business now in the digital business. I took you through the growth during last year and the year before. Now what's going to happen in the second two years is first are going to grow out the cash…

Don Flick, Director, Investor Relations

Management

If we could bring the house lights up as far high as we can. Okay, and as for the normal course, as I recognize you and you get the microphone, if you'd please take and state your name and the name of your business that would be great. We'll start with Matt Troy.

Q - Matt Troy

Management

Thanks, Don. Antonio, wanted to drill down to one of the bright spots of the quarter, the graphics communications groups results certainly ahead of my expectations. As I understood it, fourth quarter you were going to ramp up in terms of product rationalization also in terms of sales force integration. As we look forward to 2006, what are the one or two key metrics you are looking at to monitor progress in that business and integration, what should we be looking for in terms of roadmap? And a follow-up.

A - Antonio Perez

Management

I guess three things, although you probably few more, but I will be looking first of all to get the 70 to 85, hopefully $100 million in cost synergies. Those synergies, we have to get them early or you don't get them. There is a way which the organization, they kind of settle. So it's critical that we get there, we get them this year. We did a good job in the first four months of the year. We got more than we thought we were going to get. I expect, my desire will be to do the same and overperform that number, that's number one. I think the second is look for the synergies in revenue, too. We haven't talked much about synergies in revenue. We had mentioned a few things now. I've seen some of that. I didn't expect to grow NexPress by 82% year-over-year. I mean, this is magnificent. It's really phenomenal. And it's the fact that it's going to get, that's going to give us a lot of consumables next year. So now my goal will be to be break even or better soon during the year with NexPress which will be a great help. And then finally we have very ambitious plans for new technologies that we had in Kodak and they have to go through GCG. I will be looking at Jim Langley and ask him to expedite the transition of that technology from the labs into the products.

Q - Matt Troy

Management

The follow-up then is on the consumer side and I hate to focus on one product in such a large company with so many moving parts and pieces but it does come up in terms of investor conversations and interest and that's the ink jet strategy. I was wondering, on the consumer side could you just give us an update. You had originally talked about back to school special, finish line and then also with HP soon to put their skin in the game in terms of an ink jet strategy at retail, is there an opportunity potentially for Kodak to use that technology and put it into that distribution channel? Thanks.

A - Antonio Perez

Management

We have a great ink jet strategy. We do have, we understand who we are going to be competing with. We haven't changed any plans of what we have said before. We are trying to disclose what we are going to do as late as possible, simply because we think it's better for us. We have several options on how we are going to go about it. We still have several options that we can do and we will pick the one that we think is better for us at the right time. We understand the business very well and we think it's a great opportunity and I'm sorry to be dancing around the topic but it doesn't help me if you knew more than you should.

Don Flick, Director, Investor Relations

Management

We will go to Shannon Cross immediately ahead of you.

Q - Shannon Cross

Management

Hi, Shannon Cross. Curious on the royalty payments and your strategies on that going forward. It looks like there is 60 millionish based on what Motorola said in the quarter. Curious if there were other cell phone providers? Where you stand with Nokia? How we should think about timing on that? And then also, with the success of the royalty in this quarter, what your thoughts with regard to maybe just licensing your inkjet IP as opposed to actually manufacturing it yourselves.

A - Antonio Perez

Management

Second part of the questions wouldn't work. A lots of the companies that work in inkjet, they have cross license across them and the cross license do not allow you to pass technology around. So that, I don't see that working. I can imagine a consultant with my work in certain areas but I don't think it will be a large and stable business. The first time we invested for more than 15 years a lot of money in R&D. We kept building a lot of IP portfolio and know how and then we come in with products, but IP royalties and IP relationships have been part of the program from the very beginning. They are not a one-shot deal. We aren't trying to just get a bunch of money and get out of here. We are trying to build relationships that will continue to bring revenue and profits to the Company with time to come. Because we need to build these partnerships. We can't succeed in this market if we don't have these partners. They control business channels, they control products and other technologies that we need too. So we will continue to make relationships that are valuable for both companies. And the plan with those partnerships is to disclose as much as we can from both, we want to disclose as much as we can until the point in where we are starting to hurt our competitiveness. Both from IBM and us, Motorola and us, or whoever we have a partnership with. So we will continue to try to use our brand and our IP portfolio to build partnerships, partnerships that are revenue generating and profit generating and they have a longer term with much more interest in that than in short of cash tomorrow and we aren't looking for that. We can deal with our cash. We are in good shape with cash. More cash would always be better, but we are in fine shape. We are looking for building a sustainable business.

Q - Shannon Cross

Management

Okay. And a follow-up. Bob, looking at the traditional business, I think you said something, it seemed to calculate out to about the $300 million EFO this year for 2006. Is that sort of in the ballpark when you look at the fact that you had the 900 to a $1 billion worth of GAAP losses and then you've got 1.2 billion in charges. Is that the best way to think about it in terms of profitability and traditional?

A - Bob Brust

Management

Yes, Shannon we're not, we've decided not to disclose traditional. That's where we book all the restructuring charges and some of the restructuring charges are GAAP, some are non-GAAP, some are useful life and everything so I mean the traditional business is still valuable. We always said it would run in the, we said before it would run in the 10% range before the useful life. So it's probably somewhere around where you said.

A - Antonio Perez

Management

It's not wrong. It's just the accounting is so complex that not going to forecast. The analysis, about that, maybe a little more.

A - Bob Brust

Management

98% of the restructuring is against the traditional business. You can figure it out.

Don Flick, Director, Investor Relations

Management

Okay, can we go to Jay Vleeschhouwer in the center of the room. Right there in the center.

Q - Jay Vleeschhouwer

Management

Two questions, both related to your consumer business. What do you see Antonio as the major risk to that growth forecast overall for the consumer business, particularly in light of the maturation of the consumer digital camera market? Secondly, just to delve into the EFO forecast a little bit more, if you take the midpoint of your '06, EFO number that's, let's say 400 million which is well over $0.250 billion more than what you did in 2005, half of that increment is in your consumer business, or let's call it 125, 150 million incremental profitability this year in consumer which seems to be a pretty high proportion of your incremental revenue assumption for the year for consumers. So I know you think about this as an exponentially leverageable business, but maybe give us the components of where you really see that magnitude of incremental dollars coming from, particularly going back to the first part of the question as to any market risks with respect to consumer revenue. And a follow-on.

A - Antonio Perez

Management

Well, we are aiming at, it is exponential. That's all I can say. The risk will be that people will stop printing. People will stop printing and then I have a problem. If people continue to print then they are going to deliver numbers that we have there. And we, obviously we took a plus or minus for all those things, so some people print more and some people will print less. The other risk, we didn't, we are not, we are looking at very low growth in digital cameras for next year. Within the markets. And we are moving up in digital cameras. You probably noticed that we just introduced the first ever dual sensor digital camera in the whole world. Since you asked me I am going to brag a little bit. If you allow me to just for a few seconds. Actually, we got comments that it was really cool that the ultimate film company in the world, Kodak, will be the one that actually tells the world that the analog workload that is used right now with the personal digital camera is no longer going to be valid for the future and they are coming with the first one to break that model. We have a lot of innovation and you will see it coming. And you will see our cameras going steadily up in the price range. You will see CMOS getting to our cameras. The question is when they are going to come into the camera. That is a risk. When. When they are coming will make a difference. Could we sell immediately to other camera manufacturers or not? Or to other devices sooner or later? That could be another risk. The growth that we had around 16 to, what is the growth in CDG as well. 16%?.

A - Bob Brust

Management

Next year? 16 to 18.

A - Antonio Perez

Management

16 to 18?

A - Bob Brust

Management

'06, summer of '05.

A - Antonio Perez

Management

16 to 18 is, we will soon have a very good growth in kiosk in front of us. We will still have a very good growth of home printers. We have consumables growth. Very low growth we've put in those numbers for the cameras. Those are the risks associated with the business. But we have been very aggressive gaining share as you can imagine. And I explained why. You may or may not disagree with that theory. But that, we executed what we thought was what we needed to do. And now we are going to execute on this strategy, that is subordinate the digital growth. You can always buy share in this market if you really want to. So those are the risks.

Q - Jay Vleeschhouwer

Management

Just a follow-up on GCG. In response to an early question, you highlighted revenue synergies, which you and Jim have talked about earlier in prior presentations. You saw some of that at print '05 in terms of your booking commensurate to the show. Is that the preponderant part of your growth assumption for '06 and beyond? Is this really the heart of the strategy?

A - Antonio Perez

Management

I think Jim is a sandbagger. No, I think we just took the market the way, hope he's not listening.

Don Flick, Director, Investor Relations

Management

He is. But he is a well-known sandbagger.

A - Antonio Perez

Management

No, we took, this is our first year with GCG. We want to have a good year. His main concentration has kept the business running. It's give the consumables capacity. We don't have enough capacity for consumables at this point of time. We are running at the edge. We have to ramp fast and get capacity. Integrate those systems, get the natural revenue synergies they are going to come by having all these products with you. Get the cost. That's the biggest thing for the year.

Don Flick, Director, Investor Relations

Management

We will go with Laura Starr, Joe, right next to you.

Q - Laura Starr

Management

I have two separate questions. The first one is on China, can you give us update on China, you had some problems there last year. Could you just tell us what's going on now? And then the second was on the gallery. Do you have any data that you can give us on how many customers you had at the end of the year? And then also a lot of your revenues at the gallery come from people who aren't buying 4 by 6 prints. It's the coasters and the aprons and the T-shirts and all that. Can you sort of break down the growth rates of those two buckets and where those buckets are starting or whatever this year?

A - Antonio Perez

Management

Yes. China is moving to digital fast. I guess that's the best answer that I can give you. We did underestimated that at the beginning of last year. We learned. We learned our lesson. We are dealing with the fact that that's the way it is. So we are moving field more and more into the second tier and third tier cities and we are going for market share in, in cameras and printers. What we are doing as well is we are taking the phenomenal distribution system that we have, which is the Kodak Express stores. We have more than 9000 Kodak Express stores with independent owners. But the work with us and stores are called Kodak Express and we are helping them to move to digital. Yes, some of them, they have kiosks. Some of them they have kiosks.

Q - Laura Starr

Management

Even in the second and third tier markets, some of them have………

A - Antonio Perez

Management

No. Second and third tier they don't have the, they don't have enough money to pay for that, no. But we are, so we are building first in the coastal cities, it's very large. There is a lot of cities, a lot of people, a lot of stores. So still a lot of work to do and one of those cities is like a country in Europe. So it's a big, we have a lot to do yet in the coastal cities. So that's what we are doing in China. I don't know if we will disclose the rest for the color gallery.

A - Bob Brust

Management

We have never put a big splitting apart or parsing apart of all those details. The only thing we've talked about directionally, of course is to acknowledge that we've had a lot of growth in photo books and the other higher value added.

A - Antonio Perez

Management

It's a competitive issue we have three or four guys and another 15 coming into that market and we don't want to tell them what sells and what doesn't sell much. But we are selling all those things.

Q - Laura Starr

Management

How many customers did you have at the end of the year? Did you announce that?

A - Bob Brust

Management

The last number I heard…..

A - Antonio Perez

Management

More than last year. I can't tell you the number.

A - Bob Brust

Management

Last number I heard was about 22 million. But I can double-check that and get back to you.

Q - Laura Starr

Management

And then just finally, you talked at one time or another over the last couple of years about starting to charge for different levels of service or storage at the gallery. Is there anything new on that?

A - Antonio Perez

Management

When is the last time you've been into that website? Because we have been charging for awhile. If you choose………..

Q - Laura Starr

Management

Probably………

A - Antonio Perez

Management

You can choose now premium services. Why don't you go into the website and you will have your answer there, right there. And please sign up.

Don Flick, Director, Investor Relations

Management

Okay, we will go next to Sam Doctor.

Q - Sam Doctor

Management

Thank you. JP Morgan. I have a couple of questions for you. First, is one, based on the cost structure that we had in the fourth quarter ignoring any changes in lease structuring from now, what is the time to market between the print and photo finishing group and the consumer digital group? How long will it take to get to market and what is the product mix that needs to change to get there in terms of devices with the consumables.

A - Bob Brust

Management

If I understand your question right, Sam, the film growth, the parity in margins close to never. I mean, that was a very high margin product. As long as it has reasonable sales and we can continue those facilities, we are down to a couple players left in the world and we, and it's going towards good margins. If we can pull that down fast enough which we are doing, if you just read the restructuring, like you said, if we could pull it down fast enough it will be in a high margin product for a long time and it depends on what part of the digital products you are talking about. If you are talking about cameras, I don't think they'll ever hit. But if you are talking about the consumables and you are talking about papers and stuff like that, maybe, but it's been awhile.

A - Antonio Perez

Management

Let's say the metric would be return on capital. You can't look at the film and look at the gross margins, forgetting that we invested billions and billions of dollars per year to create that. I don't know if that is, it wouldn't help me to know, obviously the margins and the gross margin and the consumer digital group, it will never be higher than, I don't know, 30%. If we will do really well, 32, if we have a great year. If the CMOS sensors are a lot bigger number than the rest, we will go higher. But it will never compare to 65 or 70% margin. But, of the metrics because it's a completely different business.

A - Bob Brust

Management

It's going from a chemical business to a mechanical business. And it's a, the investment intensity is not even comparable. CRIC gets close to them but not the actual margins.

Q - Sam Doctor

Management

Can you give us a sense of the Corporate expense of advertising and other corporate overhead, how is that allocated currently between consumer digital and the other segments?

A - Antonio Perez

Management

One of the things that I agree with your report, maybe one of the few, no I agree with more. We have too expensive corporate center and I think we have to work in our advertising expense. So good point. We are working on it.

Don Flick, Director, Investor Relations

Management

We will go back to Carol Sabbagha.

Q - Carol Sabbagha

Management

Thanks. Just two questions. The first one sticking with consumer digital. It looks like you are looking for that business to earn 150 million in EBIT next year. Is that mostly going to come from output or if you were going to look at that break down of 150 million what are the big sources behind that?

A - Antonio Perez

Management

The system. It's the system. We, first we are not going go down into splitting that. Second we never said the 150. That's yours and that was the second time that appeared. You two apparently said it the same number. But it's a combination of getting, doing a lot better with cameras, doing something with CMOS, doing better with printers, doing better with Kiosk, doing more consumables, and a combination of those. And that's as much as I will go.

Q - Carol Sabbagha

Management

That's not one big thing then?

A - Antonio Perez

Management

No. Which is better, by the way. We know, we are not looking for a miracle will happen. Something that will, we're looking for something that will happen naturally. This is not, we are not mavericks and we aren't expecting a miracle. This has been done through innovation and a lot of hard work, that's why I think it is going to happen.

Q - Carol Sabbagha

Management

And then looking at cash flow for next year, two questions around that. Is it going to be as seasonal as this year with pretty much all of it coming in the fourth quarter? Is it going to be more even? Then if you look at the 4 to 600 million next year versus the 720 something this year, what are, it looks like earnings and the restructuring are going to be similar in '06 versus '05. What are going to be the other big variables that might not come in as big this year in '06 or might come in, whether it's asset sales or so on?

A - Bob Brust

Management

Yes, I think seasonality I hope it's not as late. That was finger biter, but we had a lot of our asset sales currently in the year. We started that process much earlier now and we are deeper into the restructuring so the assets available for sale have been identified. Last year they were being identified during the year and we went out and saw them. Now we have identified them and we're working on them. So some of that will come earlier. We have a much more sophisticated supply chain in digital now. Last year we weren't as efficient during the year at accumulating equipment as we will be this year now because we have got a better way of bringing those to market and more close to the point of sale rather than building a lot of digital equipment up. We built it up and pulled it down. This year I hope we don't, so that will pull the cash a little forward. The earnings, and a lot of that depends on the timing of the restructuring cash outflows which is generally people. So it will be a little more seasonally front. It's a little lower, you are right. The earnings and the cash outflow from restructuring aren't that far part so most of this has to be done by working capital improvements, selling assets, all that stuff we talked about. So if everything works, it will be higher. So I'm trying to give a number that we can run the Company on which is around 500 million.

A - Antonio Perez

Management

The same things seasonality though is going to be, it should be seeing a little better this year but similar to this year. We can't change that this year. Next year we will be, we are getting increasingly better. But first quarter should be low. That's the way. And we don't like it like that either. In fact, we have been being considering, we haven't decided this, but we have been considering would it be better for our investor, for our fiscal year will be different. We'll have a better handle of the year rather than have such a big chunk of things to have to happen in the last four months of the year and so much at stake. We haven't made any decision there. But it would get better with time. But slowly.

Don Flick, Director, Investor Relations

Management

We will go to this gentleman down front, first. I'm sorry I'm not sure I know your name.

Q - Luke Williams

Management

Thank you. Luke Williams, Bertco Advisors. Could you give us the, a discussion of the competitive landscape and the commercial graphics group and what type of profit margins do your key competitors have, please?

A - Antonio Perez

Management

I don't know what they report, but that industry is an industry that should be able to produce anything from 8 to 12% EFO. Some companies they are more dedicated to digital printers and presses. Others have more software so it's hard to make comparisons. But our goal is to end up with something like that in that business.

Q - Luke Williams

Management

Could you though, tell us the main companies with whom you compete and your market share versus theirs? How you plan to change it?

A - Antonio Perez

Management

We aren't going to change them. They are going to keep competing with us. But depending on what area and we have a unique value proposition that we have announced that we thought that the, talking to many customers for many years we figured out that the most valuable thing for the presence of customers is how can we help them to move from the analog world to the digital world and make money while they are doing this. And we looked at the key elements that will contribute to make the addition a reality and that's why we created the Company that we have created including KPG and Creo and NexPress and Versamark that we have. The industry really is not organized like that today. We spend a lot more money and a lot more effort and workflow than many of the companies that we compete with. We have production printers vary at which most of the other people don't have. So it's hard for me to compare. I mean, you have to go company by company and look at the difference. We are slightly different than the majority of the industry competitors.

Don Flick, Director, Investor Relations

Management

We will go with Joan Lappin immediately behind you.

Q - Joan Lappin

Management

Joan Lappin, Gramercy Capital. I have two questions. One is the impact of this tax, the tax court decision that added considerably to your fourth quarter earnings had on all of these reported results. I'm sorry, I don't have the notes here to look and see what you did with that and if it affected any of these groups. And my other question is on the health group. You're forecasting flat year on year earnings and the question is that's a group, that's a business you have been in for 100 years. And yet you're competing there with GE, with huge companies that are also offering doctors and clinics and whatever of these document systems and whatever and they are going around saying why do you want to buy Kodak for? They may not be there to support it. You are saying you've made some changes to address some issues. I don't know if those are the issues you are addressing or what. But I would appreciate more as we say on Wall Street these days, color.

A - Antonio Perez

Management

Did you hear any one of our competitors saying that because I want to sue them.

Q - Joan Lappin

Management

No, but I have a son-in-law who happens to run a very large radiology group here in New York and they just opened a new clinic, your folks came in, he decided not go with you and that was the line he was given and he fell for it. And he is a very smart guy. So I just figured he's, and he frankly was at GE for many years. He knows, well, he was selling against you and so, you know.

A - Antonio Perez

Management

I really don't know what to tell you about your friend. I haven't heard from, I see a lot of these customers myself. Nobody has said that we are going to, that we are going to disappear. This is the first time that I hear this. They did say that GE is larger. Which has some good things, some very bad things, too. That's what they say. So we have our specialties that GE doesn't have, by the way, we have a great relationship with GE. We sell them a lot of our, all of the laser printers that they sell or most of them they come from us. We are happy that GE is very successful in that business, because every time they sell one of those systems, they sell one of ours.

Q - Joan Lappin

Management

But you're saying here, flat year on year earnings so something isn't quite right in an area that you have been functioning in for decades and yet you are still not able to grow there. I'm really asking why?

A - Antonio Perez

Management

I think, I tried to explain it before. What I tried to do is that we needed to invest more in digital. Our digital business had a bad beginning of the year last year. We needed more investment and we needed to do a few other things such as reorganize ourselves. We did that. That's why we are taking this year, we said though, I said that we have grown ACIS more than 30%, 39% for the year. Digital capture devices that include CR. They are growing very fast, too. We had a bad year in health, yes we had a bad year in health, so we trying to recover this year by putting more investment in health. We compete very well with those people, by the way. In our own specialty they are very strong in other areas where we are not participating. The health market is enormous and GE and all the others participate in many other things that we are not participating on. So when you look into the areas in which we are participating like the x-ray, x-ray department, and the radiology we are actually extremely strong in those departments when it comes to x-ray. We are the only company that has the full proposition for x-rays out there. And the strongest proposition. So we aren't trying to be a GE. We don't need to be a GE. We aren't trying to be like them. God bless them. They are a very good company. We are our own and we are going to keep our footprint.

Don Flick, Director, Investor Relations

Management

Bob, did you want to take the tax issue and discontinued ops?

A - Bob Brust

Management

Yes. I think the tax issue you are referring to is the settlement of a 1994 thing which was the sale of the Sterling drug company and we settled with the IRS on that. Just one of those long time things that go on. The proceeds of the settlement were booked against discontinued operations and the interest that they owed us on the, it went against interest income. That's where you would ordinarily expect that kind of stuff to go, so it's discontinued ops.

Don Flick, Director, Investor Relations

Management

We will go with the gentlemen ahead of you on your left.

Q - Hank Wines

Management

Thank you. Hank Wines. Yankon Securities. I have two questions. The first, I would like to get to know what your feel is with the relationship you have with the Lexar Corporations and the sale of digital film. Secondly, I would like to know your reaction to the Minolta and Konica decision to exit the photography business and Nikon's decision to exit the film photography business?

A - Antonio Perez

Management

I'll start with the second. Minolta, we were expecting that to happen in the business that is going down the ways we're going down now unless you have very large critical mass like we do or Fuji does, it's very hard to sustain. These are very large installations and very expensive machinery. If you have that machinery idle for a few hours, you can't make any money any more. So I wasn't surprised. I was surprised by how long it took them to do this. The same with Acfa I didn't quite understand why they kept going at it. So what's going to happen with that decision to us? I don't know exactly but I'm sure it's not going to hurt. I think it's going to, I know it's going to be positive and I don't know how positive yet. We have to watch and see what happens. I feel the same about Nokia. And I think it was an expected thing in the industry. I think as well is no, not going to hurt us. In any case, if anything, it might help us. Lexar we have, we put our brand and they do the product and they do the distribution. We don't cover any inventory, that's what we do. We are making some money. I want to make more, but making some money.

Don Flick, Director, Investor Relations

Management

Okay, we will go with Ulysses Yannas.

Q - Ulysses Yannas

Management

Ulysses Yannas, Buckman, Buckman & Reid. How long do you expect yourselves to continue making single use in 35-millimeter cameras? Or when are you going to decide to outsource them.

A - Antonio Perez

Management

We already outsource them. We use a company in India, a company in China, I cannot remember any more. They buy the film, they make the cameras by themselves, we sell them with our name and with our film.

Q - Ulysses Yannas

Management

That's the single use, or one time use cameras as well?

A - Antonio Perez

Management

Oh, no. Single use, we still do it. It's a pretty complex process for the single use camera. We have the very highly developed. The lowest cost in the industry for single use cameras. So as long as the volumes remain and going down, but as long as we have enough of a volume to run those operations, we are concentrating in the operations though. We used to have three factories, we have……

Q - Ulysses Yannas

Management

So you have everything moving to China?

A - Antonio Perez

Management

Actually, not. Actually not. Because you are going to end up with the fact that most of the uses for single use cameras are not in China, are in the U.S. So whatever you see from manufacturing there you are going to lose that and more bringing it here so we can't do that.

Q - Ulysses Yannas

Management

Another question, if I may, you were asked before about the gallery, and the programs you started last September with premium service. Can you give us some idea what percentage of the people in the gallery have been signing on?

A - Antonio Perez

Management

Did you sign, Ulysses?

Q - Ulysses Yannas

Management

I was the first to sign.

A - Antonio Perez

Management

Very good. Very good. You got me. Small number. We won't say, but this is a small number. This location process is going to take time. For anybody. I mean, you have seen, our competitors are trying to do something similar with videos and things. This is a location process. By and large, consumers out there think that whatever's on the web should be free. That's why people keep going to the web.

Q - Ulysses Yannas

Management

I noticed that with Yahoo! and some of the guys now starting to offer and getting paid for some of the services.

A - Antonio Perez

Management

We are all trying the same thing. Or similar things, I mean the same idea behind different services it's a small number. But we knew it was going to be small. But it's moving but it's small.

Q - Ulysses Yannas

Management

And then can you also give us some ideas to what percentage of the gain in kiosks related volume was media?

A - Antonio Perez

Management

I think last time I disclosed this and I think I said something like 2.5 times so close to 3 times of the revenue comes from media. So it's big time.

Don Flick, Director, Investor Relations

Management

Okay, we have time for one last question and we will go to the back there to the gentleman on your right as you go up.

A - Antonio Perez

Management

I want to give you the right number, Ulysses. Could you check that Don? We will get that number. But it's about that.

Q - Adam Camorra

Management

Thanks. Adam Camorra and Chess Capital. What's your current outlook for the theatrical film business. Does this business segment generate approximately 300 million or so of EBITDA.

A - Antonio Perez

Management

It's a good business. It's a great business. It has grown this year. I know that everybody says that it's going to go away. They tell me all the time wherever I go, they tell me the business, actually it has been going away for the last two or three years and we see them growing year after year. I don't know what to say any more. I don't want to get into a technology discussion. I know very well, as well as anybody else in the world how easy it will be to do that with digital projection. I understand it perfectly well. I could lecture. I could lecture on it. The problem is the business model doesn't work very well. And that is helping to keep the business the way it is. The businesses still grew this year. Do we expect it to grow, do we expect that business to grow in the future? No, we always think it is going to be kind of flattish. Maybe going down a little bit for next year. But we haven't seen significant signs to make us believe they are in decline. I mean, actually we've seen the contrary signs. And we don't disclose what the individual numbers of that business make. For a good reason. First, competitively will be an issue that there are not many suppliers in that business so we don't want to disclose that. Second, because the same machinery that we use, we have four big related assets in the world and one of them is dedicated to this business, but some other the things to and if you were to disclose individually the number that you ask me, you will have to do all sorts of, activation allocations of these very large assets is not very valuable for us. So that's why we are putting within the natural business of which it is. We, the processes business, the best single rolls that they go independent on the cameras we use the same machines or we use as well to do aim films and other films, so we put it all together. That's the best way to do the accounting.

Q - Adam Camorra

Management

But in terms of your long-term forecast, it sounds like you are anticipating that this business stays flat as you look out one years, three years, five years? Or can we eventually, is there a time frame where you think something might change in this business?

A - Antonio Perez

Management

I think it is going to last, I think it's going to last for a significant amount of time. But I said as well publicly that as far as the need from this company to use the cash generated from the business to survive which is sometimes why they ask me this question. They ask me this question and then if I say, well, I feel for the next two years is not very significant changes I keep saying. I don't want to get into the forecasting business how long it's going to be. I think it's going to be a lot more than two years for many reasons. Many technical reasons and many business model reasons. But what I have been saying is that as long as we last, we need that business at a good level for the next two years because we still have a lot of restructuring to do. After that I said that we love the business, but it won't be a necessary business for us to have to be able to deal with the, for the transformation. But I believe it is going to last a lot more than two years.

Don Flick, Director, Investor Relations

Management

Okay, thank you very much. We are out of time. I would like to thank you all for coming and have a very good day.