Ahold Delhaize puts cyberattack cost at up to 250 million euros in lost sales

Images

×

Empty shelves in an AH supermarket in Amsterdam. Photo: Dutch News Dutch News

Ahold Delhaize expects last month's cyberattack to cut fourth-quarter sales by €200 million to €250 million and operating profit by a further €75 million to €100 million, the company disclosed alongside its third-quarter results on Wednesday. Hackers struck online shopping networks and supply chains in the Benelux countries and the United States, forcing the grocer to take systems offline; shelves at Albert Heijn emptied and the chain's website and app were down for days.

The figure moves cybercrime out of the technology appendix and into the trading statement: a quarter of a billion euros in lost sales is the sort of number a retailer normally associates with a price war or a weak Christmas. Chief executive Frans Muller said most of the disruption was contained within two weeks, though work continues to restore normal operations. The company has apologised to customers and launched special promotions as a thank-you — paying once in lost sales, then again to win the shoppers back — and it expects further costs from responding to the attack and repairing its systems, so Wednesday's numbers are a floor rather than a total.

The bill is also still growing. This week Delhaize, the group's Belgian chain, was among several European supermarkets hit by a separate attack in which hackers tampered with fridge temperatures to destroy fresh produce; while the group was still tallying the first intrusion, a second one arrived in its freezer aisles.

The attacker, for its part, has restocked no shelves, refunded no customers and filed no estimate of its costs.