Kodak to Sell Document Imaging Business to Brother for $210 Million

Kodak has agreed to sell its document-imaging assets to Brother Industries Ltd. for about $210 million, setting the minimum bid for an auction which will be run later in April. The deal would add Kodak scanners, image-capture software and technical services to Brother’s printers and fax machines. The auction will open with Brother as the initial (minimum) bidder.

Both companies said in statements that any deal requires the approval from the judge overseeing Kodak’s bankruptcy case. Brother’s bid also assumes about $67 million of customer prepayment liabilities.

After seeking Chapter 11 protection in January 2012, Kodak has been selling businesses to shrink and fund its switch into commercial printing and packaging. Chief Executive Officer Antonio Perez sold some of Kodak’s digital-imaging patents for about $525 million in December, and is also looking for buyers for its consumer-film and photo-kiosks divisions and shuttering its consumer inkjet-printer unit.

Kodak needs to speed up selling the business units to raise cash under a financing agreement. This agreement would enable it to exit bankruptcy in the first half of this year.

After Kodak filed for bankruptcy, it cut about 4,000 jobs last year and spent $3.4 billion on restructuring before bankruptcy, including payouts to lay off 47,000 employees since 2003.