A cyberattack continues to hamper the operations of global logistics firm Expeditors International.
The Seattle-based company, which generated revenue of $16.5 billion in 2021, said employees are using backup procedures and other alternatives to assist customers after it confirmed Sunday it was the victim of a targeted cyber attack.
Expeditors said its global systems remain down as it resolves the issue and has not said when it could be back up fully.
The company did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
“Expeditors continue to operate within our global business continuity plan. We appreciate the overwhelming support from our customers, employees, service providers and key stakeholders,” the company said in its most recent update Wednesday afternoon. “Our employees are focused on deploying backup procedures and solutions during this time. Our cybersecurity and technology teams and partners are diligently working on the evolving situation. We appreciate everyone’s patience as we work through this together.”
Expeditors offers customers assistance with air and ocean freight forwarding, customs brokerage, cargo insurance, warehousing and distribution among other services and works across various industries. Customers within fashion include The Kooples, Herschel Supply Co. and Fox Racing Inc.
Hellmann Worldwide Logistics of Germany experienced a cyberattack in December and earlier this month warned certain data may have been exposed and leaked to the dark web. In 2017, A.P. Moller-Maersk said a cyberattack would cost it as much as $300 million.
Expeditors warned investors of the attack’s potential impact on its business.
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“We are incurring expenses related to the cyberattack to investigate and remediate this matter and expect to continue to incur expenses of this nature in the future. Depending on the length of the shutdown of our operations, the impact of this cyberattack could have a material adverse impact on our business, revenues, results of operations and reputation,” the company said the day it confirmed the attack.
Shares of Expeditors, which had a recent market cap of $17.4 billion, dipped less than 1 percent on Tuesday, the first day of trading since confirmation of the attack. Shares, overall, are down 1.9 percent since the company first reported the incident.
The news led to a flurry of price target cuts on Wednesday.
Goldman Sachs reiterated its sell rating on Expeditors’ stock and lowered its price target from $117 to $101. Susquehanna analysts adjusted their price target from $130 to $115, maintaining a neutral rating. Wells Fargo’s price target went from $125 to $115, staying at equal weight. Analysts at Loop Capital cut their target to $120 from $140 and remained at hold.
The cyberattack comes as Expeditors comes off a strong fourth quarter, with results that beat analyst expectations.
The company said Tuesday revenue jumped to $5.4 billion, up 81 percent from the year-ago period. Net earnings rose 128 percent from a year ago to $453 million in the quarter.
The run up came from across business divisions with ocean, air, customs brokerage, order management, distribution and transcontinental seeing growth. Air, in particular, was used at record levels for the company during the quarter, while ocean declined due to carrier capacity constraints.
“While the global supply chain remains stretched beyond recognizable limits, we continue to do all we can to secure carrier space for our customers and move their freight through and around the many bottlenecks in the air, over the ocean and on land,” president and CEO Jeffrey S. Musser said in a statement on the company’s fourth-quarter results. “Roughly two years of pandemic-induced disruption have led to unprecedented conditions throughout industry, with little relief in sight. There is still too little international air capacity, as travelers have been kept from flying abroad; the ocean ports are too congested to accommodate many of the ships that need to load and unload their containers; and worker shortages are severely limiting overland capacity to support the freight that is able to arrive in port.”
Musser went on to say the carrier capacity-demand imbalance is proving a major challenge for the industry.
“There is simply not enough carrier capacity in the air or on the oceans to accommodate the heavy demand for cargo space, particularly from China to the U.S., where historically high average buy and sell rates have been the most elevated,” Musser said.