The Clorox Company (NYSE:CLX) fell in Monday pre-market trading after it warned that a cyber attack last month could have a “material impact” on its first-quarter earnings.
In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the bleach and cleaning wipes maker said the cybersecurity attack damaged portions of its IT infrastructure, which caused widescale disruption of its operations.
Following the attack, which it reported on August 14, the company said it took immediate steps to stop and remediate the activity, including taking certain systems offline. Since then, it has been operating at a lower rate of order processing and also recently experienced higher levels of issues around the availability of consumer products.
“The company is repairing the infrastructure and is reintegrating the systems that were proactively taken offline,” Clorox said.
“The company expects to begin the process of transitioning back to normal automated order processing the week of Sept. 25. Clorox has already resumed production at the vast majority of its manufacturing sites and expects the ramp-up to full production to occur over time. At this time, the company cannot estimate how long it will take to resume fully normalized operations.”
While it was still evaluating the extent of the financial and business impact of the cyberattack, Clorox said delays in processing orders and the elevated level of product outages would likely have a material impact on its 1Q earnings.
An update on the financial impact would be provided once it had increased visibility, it added.
Given the ongoing recovery, the company said it was premature to determine the longer-term impact.
Ahead of the opening bell, its shares were down 2% at $143.30.
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