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Shares of "CrowdStrike" fell by 13% due to the impact of the global technology outage.

Shares of "CrowdStrike" fell by 13% due to the impact of the global technology outage.

By Mounira Magdy

Published: July 22, 2024

CrowdStrike's shares fell by 13 percent on Monday, continuing their losing streak, after Wall Street analysts downgraded the stock due to concerns about the financial implications of last week's global technology outage.

The faulty update of CrowdStrike's security program caused disruptions to computers running Microsoft's Windows operating system, resulting in internet services being disrupted worldwide and impacting a wide range of industries, including airlines, banking, and healthcare.

Microsoft said on Saturday that about 8.5 million devices running Windows, or less than 1% of all Windows devices, were affected.

While analysts largely expect CrowdStrike to recover from the incident due to its leading position in the industry, concerns about reputational damage, hitting new customer contracts, and potential competition and legal disputes remain.

Analysts at Guggenheim stated, "We do not believe this will materially affect renewals, at least not in the short term... but we believe this will at least delay signing deals, if not cause some losses in highly contested deals."

Meanwhile, shares of rival SentinelOne rose by 11 percent on Monday, as JPMorgan described the company as "the clearest beneficiary" of what analysts say is the broadest IT outage in recent history.

Peter Wade, an analyst at Bernstein, noted that there is a non-zero chance of legal battles after CrowdStrike customers restart their systems.

Services across industries gradually resumed on Friday, but companies were dealing with backlogs, delays, and even flight cancellations, raising questions about how to avoid such situations in the future and whether such critical programs should remain in the hands of a few companies.

CrowdStrike's shares traded at $265.24 on Monday, following an 11% drop on Friday. At least six brokerage firms have lowered their price targets on CrowdStrike, with two others downgrading the stock from "buy" to "neutral."

JPMorgan analysts said, "The global disruptive nature of this event is likely to impact CrowdStrike's financial and operational performance... time spent on damage control is time not spent selling."

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