Advalorem, I haven't received any feedback yet. I guess we'll have to go with the information supplied earlier by Cooters.
Your figures on book value are worth noting: In six years, the book value per share has gone up more than 7 times. The average stock takes more than six years to double in book value. The best long term measure of shareholder wealth, in my view, is change in book value per share. Actual price per share is important only when you're actually buying or selling. What you really want is for your intrinsic value to grow. The market will take care of the rest.
In this connection, as one who monitors events at Kodak in nearby Rochester closely, it is significant that Kodak has announced it has stopped its share buyback program recently. There may be two reasons for this. First, the stock is not particularly undervalued, particularly since the advent of digital photography is making serious inroads into conventional film and processing revenues.
Second, Kodak sees a need to be more aggressive in digital. It has already entered into an agreement with Olympus, and it is committed to protecting its digital patents, by court action if necessary. The latest announcement also suggests that Kodak may be ready to buy into a supplier of key products for the digital market (SanDisk perhaps?). Without any ownership of flash memory technology or manufacturing assets, Kodak has really nothing to replace lost sales of conventional film. At least an investment position in a key supplier to the digital photography market would be sensible for Kodak, and now that the shares of flash memory companies are depressed, Kodak may have decided to step in, rather than to buy back its own shares.
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