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Equifax Tells Investors They Could Be Breached Again - And That They're Still Profitable (nypost.com)
"Equifax executives will forgo their 2017 bonuses," reports CNBC. But according to the New York Post, the company "hasn't lost any significant business customers... Equifax largely does business with banks and other financial institutions -- not with the people they collect information on."
Even though it's facing more than 240 class-action lawsuits, Equifax's revenue actually increased 3.8% from July to September, to a whopping $834.8 million, while their net income for that period was $96.3 million -- which is still more than the $87.5 million that the breach cost them, according to a new article shared by chicksdaddy: The disclosure, made as part of the company's quarterly filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, is the first public disclosure of the direct costs of the incident, which saw the company's stock price plunge by more than 30% and wiped out billions of dollars in value to shareholders. Around $55.5m of the $87.5m in breach-related costs stems from product costs â" mostly credit monitoring services that it is offering to affected individuals. Professional fees added up to another $17.1m for Equifax and consumer support costs totaled $14.9m, the company said. Equifax also said it has spent $27.3 million of pretax expenses stemming from the cost of investigating and remediating the hack to Equifax's internal network as well as legal and other professional expenses.
But the costs are likely to continue. Equifax is estimating costs of $56 million to $110 million in "contingent liability" in the form of free credit monitoring and identity theft protection to all U.S. consumers as a good will gesture. The costs provided by Equifax are an estimate of the expenses necessary to provide this service to those who have signed up or will sign up by the January 31, 2018 deadline. So far, however, the company has only incurred $4.7 million through the end of September. So, while the upper bound of those contingent liability costs is high, there's good reason to believe that they will never be reached.
The Post reports that some business customers "have delayed new contracts until Equifax proves that they've done enough to shore up their cybersecurity."
But in their regulatory filing Thursday, Equifax admitted that "We cannot assure that all potential causes of the incident have been identified and remediated and will not occur again."
Even though it's facing more than 240 class-action lawsuits, Equifax's revenue actually increased 3.8% from July to September, to a whopping $834.8 million, while their net income for that period was $96.3 million -- which is still more than the $87.5 million that the breach cost them, according to a new article shared by chicksdaddy: The disclosure, made as part of the company's quarterly filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, is the first public disclosure of the direct costs of the incident, which saw the company's stock price plunge by more than 30% and wiped out billions of dollars in value to shareholders. Around $55.5m of the $87.5m in breach-related costs stems from product costs â" mostly credit monitoring services that it is offering to affected individuals. Professional fees added up to another $17.1m for Equifax and consumer support costs totaled $14.9m, the company said. Equifax also said it has spent $27.3 million of pretax expenses stemming from the cost of investigating and remediating the hack to Equifax's internal network as well as legal and other professional expenses.
But the costs are likely to continue. Equifax is estimating costs of $56 million to $110 million in "contingent liability" in the form of free credit monitoring and identity theft protection to all U.S. consumers as a good will gesture. The costs provided by Equifax are an estimate of the expenses necessary to provide this service to those who have signed up or will sign up by the January 31, 2018 deadline. So far, however, the company has only incurred $4.7 million through the end of September. So, while the upper bound of those contingent liability costs is high, there's good reason to believe that they will never be reached.
The Post reports that some business customers "have delayed new contracts until Equifax proves that they've done enough to shore up their cybersecurity."
But in their regulatory filing Thursday, Equifax admitted that "We cannot assure that all potential causes of the incident have been identified and remediated and will not occur again."
The fact it still exists shows how corrupt things are.
"Equifax admitted that profit declined 28% from a year ago. However, after wiping away the $87.5 million in costs of the data breach for its adjusted earnings metric, Equifax was able to claim a 6% gain in profit and beat average analyst estimates. Equifax’s adjusted earnings are nothing new for it or thousands of other companies. MarketWatch has shown repeatedly how companies use adjusted earnings to make their results appear better than they actually are... the company stripped the charges from a non-GAAP earnings figure that it provided, which allows Equifax to claim that profits are growing even as it takes a hit from the data breach. https://www.marketwatch.com/st...
Well now that they have revealed those numbers, the class action lawsuit lawyers have a concrete goal for the settlement sums, lmao.
They won't have to factor in the costs of lawyers until later.
People should ignore the class action suits, and file millions of personal suits, assuming there are sufficient ambulance chasers available to work knowing they'll only be paid if they win.
If these corporations were actually people, they would be feed to the dogs. They prey on people coming and going. They sell and trade information to manipulate people, while gaming the system in their favor. There are plenty of ways to do business without completely disregarding any semblance of privacy.
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"Use the force Luke" - O. W. Kenobi
You can play the feds like a violin.
Does it matter? There was no evidence the data has been tampered with and that would be easily spotted by comparing another source of data, but even so, any data collected since is what's important for the Equifax customers.
Equifax collects information on individuals and makes timelines for businesses, whether or not a portion of that information at some point in time was made public does not make one iota of difference to their customers.
If they use Equifax data and it ends up being bad, they won't pay for it, loans made out are guaranteed by the tax payer, the tax payer gets an even worse credit score and thus pays increased feeds to the banks for the next two decades.
There is no losing for these guys, that's why they got the IRS contract and will continue getting contracts, how the data is handled is not important to their customers.
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