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Qantas (ASX:QAN) has seen shares dip into the red right out the gate on Tuesday following the company’s revelation it’s been hit with a cyberattack.
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The carnage was nothing like that facing Medibank (ASX:MPL) back in 2022 on a similar issue, which prompted APRA to take action against the insurer a year later.
Still, not great for Qantas. Though, long-term shareholders likely don’t mind a dip under -2%, looking at 1Y returns of +80%. Qantas’s FY2025 was not unlike that of Commonwealth Bank (ASX:CBA), making it kind of like a safe haven in the skies.
(But as some analysts recently noted when discussing the recent Virgin listing, “Australia won’t have two airlines forever.”)
Regardless, some investors did punish – or at least turn bearish – on the Qantas cyber attack news on Wednesday.
The reason losses were tame is most likely because the heavyweight Australian company took the time to note no credit card information had been breached, meaning there’s less risk of some kind of darkweb-leak-ransomware scenario, often the worst-case outcome for these cyberattacks.
“On Monday, we detected unusual activity on a third-party platform used by a Qantas airline contact centre,” QAN wrote.
“There are six million customers that have service records in this platform. We are continuing to investigate the proportion of the data that has been stolen, though we expect it will be significant.
“Importantly, credit card details, personal financial information, and passport details are not held in this system.”
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The stock is likely hoping that narrative remains steadfast – part of why Medibank was so badly punished in 2022 is that its story kept changing.
QAN last traded at $10.58/sh.
Update: One mention of ‘FY2024’ was changed to correctly read ‘FY2025.’
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