AP Moller-Maersk, the world’s largest container shipping company, has cut its profit guidance after drop in profits and share price due to a cyberattack in July and August.
Danish shipping giant AP Moller-Maersk has fallen to a quarterly loss that was partly due to the cost of a major cyberattack. The shipping company’s parent company Maersk Group reported a $1.5 billion loss for the third quarter from a profit of $429 million a year earlier.
The group revamped its profit guidance from >$1 billion to “around” $1bn, according to the Financial Times, due to “continuing higher cost to recover services and reliability after the cyberattack” in mid-2017. Maersk now expects 2017 profit to be $1 billion more than the $384 million loss in 2016 rather than “in excess of $1 billion.”
The NotPetya cyberattack cost the company $250-$300 million in lost business, the company added. Container volumes in the third quarter fell by 2.5%, largely due to the 12-day shutdown brought on by the cyberattack. Maersk chief executive Soren SKou said Maersk Line was averaging around 210,000 containers a week before falling to 160,000-180,000 in the early weeks of July as shippers booked containers with other carriers.
The shipping firm’s shares sunk following the report, dropping almost six per cent to 11,360 Danish Kroner.
As reported by Lifars in August, Maersk admitted that NotPetya had impacted operations in a number of ports around the world leading to a backlog of shipments. The shipping company also revealed losses could stack up to $300 million – the first time that a company publicly placed specific figures in the wake of a cybersattack.
The NotPetya ransomware attack also impacted TNT, a major logistics company that confirmed permanent data losses due to the attack. The company was forced to resort to manual paper entries after its computers failed and took over a month to recover from the cyberattack.
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