Cleaning product giant Clorox said in a regulatory filing on Monday that it’s reeling from a cyberattack that’s been affecting the company since August, disrupting operations and likely hitting its quarterly earnings.
Clorox said in the Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it “identified unauthorized activity on some of its information technology systems” on Aug. 14, and has been working to remedy the situation ever since by initiating “manual ordering and processing procedures” and reducing its production.
However, “due to the order processing delays and elevated level of product outages, the company now believes the impact will be material on Q1 financial results,” the SEC filing said.
Clorox is currently in the first quarter of its 2024 fiscal year, which began on July 1.
The Oakland, Calif.-based bleach brand reported strong earnings for the fourth quarter of 2023 last month, including a 12% increase in overall sales, to $2 billion — a sharp increase compared to flat sales in the year-ago quarter, which the company attributed to a “favorable price mix” of its array of household staples.
For 2024, Clorox expects net sales to rise as much as 2% year over year, buoyed by “supply chain optimization,” the company said in its latest earnings report, though this outlook may change following the month-long cyberattack.
“Clorox is still evaluating the extent of the financial and business impact” the cybersecurity attack had, it added in the SEC filing.
It’s the first time Clorox has revealed the extend of the digital attack since it was first noted last month. “The cybersecurity attack damaged portions of the Company’s IT infrastructure, which caused wide-scale disruption of Clorox’s operations,” the Pine Sol-maker said, noting that it “believes the unauthorized activity is contained.”
More specific details on the cyberattack — including who was behind it — were not revealed in the SEC filing.
As of Sept. 25, Clorox “expects to begin the process of transitioning back to normal automated order processing.”
The company has already resumed smaller-scale production of its cleaning products, with expectations to “ramp up to full production over time.”
“At this time, the company cannot estimate how long it will take to resume fully normalized operations.”
When The Post sought comment from Clorox — which owns brands like Burt’s Bees, Brita and Glad — a company spokesperson pointed to an update on its site, which said Clorox “is continuing to operate at a lower rate of processing.”
In the early hours of trading on Monday, Clorox’s share price was down nearly 2%, to $143.53.
Clorox isn’t the only company struggling to recover from a cyberattack.
Just last week, MGM staffers at the hotel operator’s 12 hotels on the Las Vegas Strip were wasting no time in handing out $25 vouchers to quell guests who were frustrated that many of the hotel casino’s slot machines were silenced following a “cybersecurity issue.”
As of Friday, many gaming machines at the MGM-operated Aria hotel showed blacked-out screens displaying an “out of service” message, while over in the lobby, a long line stretched at the reception desk.
An update shared to the company site said that as of Monday, MGM Resorts was still being affected by a cybersecurity issue, though its website and mobile app are operating.
Meanwhile, Caesars Entertainment on Thursday reportedly paid roughly $15 million in an attempt to placate hackers who threatened to leak the sensitive customer data stolen during a summer cyberattack.
Caesars admitted that the hackers breached its systems through a “social engineering attack on an outsourced IT support vendor,” according to a regulatory filing.