Not that Dish Network needs any more problems, but lawsuits are piling up in reaction to the ransomware attack that shut down critical parts of its internal network last month.
On Thursday, the law firm of Levi & Korsinsky announced a class action securities lawsuit accusing Dish of making false and misleading statements related to the cyberattack.
The lawsuit seeks to recover losses on behalf of Dish investors who were adversely affected between February 22, 2021, and February 27, 2023.
Other class action suits were filed by Bragar Eagel & Squire, Bernstein Liebhard and New York attorney Vincent Wong.
At the beginning of Dish’s fourth-quarter earnings call on February 23, Dish CEO Erik Carlson said the company had experienced “an internal outage” that affected internal communications, customer care functions and internet sites, which were down. They were looking into the root causes and consequences of the outage at that time.
RELATED: Dish investigates as internal systems outage continues
In a February 28 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Dish revealed that it had determined the outage was due to a ransomware attack and that it had notified appropriate law enforcement authorities. The company has revealed few details beyond what’s in the SEC filing.
Dish’s stock price fell 79 cents per share on February 28, or 6.48%, closing at $11.41 per share. It was trading around $9.34 per share as of this afternoon.
A Dish spokesperson said the company could not comment on the lawsuits.
As for the restoration of services since the hack, Dish said it has restored many of the systems affected by the incident.
“The vast majority of our websites, customer care functions, self-service applications, and payment systems are now operational,” the company said in a statement Thursday.
Agent support is now available, but wait times may be longer due to higher volumes at certain times of the day and the particular type of service the customer is inquiring about. Self-service account capabilities are available to customers through boostmobile.com, as well as mydish.com and sling.com.
Tumultuous times
The cyberattack is just one of the things on Dish’s plate. Dish’s entry into the postpaid wireless market with Boost Infinite has been endlessly delayed. It’s losing Boost Mobile prepaid customers left and right, and it needs to cover 70% of the U.S. with its 5G wireless network by mid-June.
Earlier this week, UBS analyst John Hodulik cut his rating on Dish from “buy” to “neutral” and lowered his price target to $10 a share from $27. Last month, Bank of America analyst David Barden lowered his rating on Dish from “buy” to “underperform.”
In a March 20 note for investors, analysts at New Street Research (NSR) said they believe the cyber security issues had been resolved and they assumed it would have a bigger impact on Dish’s Boost business than others because prepaid customers may be automatically disconnected if they can’t pay their bills.
They lowered their estimates for Boost’s gross adds for the first quarter 2023 by 200,000 to account for the two weeks when the company couldn’t add subscribers, while increasing churn more significantly as subscribers were disconnected when they couldn’t pay their bills. NSR didn’t make changes to their 5G network segment expectations as those operations were not affected by the hack.
In an update on March 30, NSR analyst Jonathan Chaplin said that as Dish’s debt and equity prices have fallen, investors are asking when the company will run out of cash and what they can sell to avert a liquidity crunch. He ran through various options, from an “everything is fine” scenario to another extreme where capital markets are closed and they consider selling spectrum rights.
Bottom line: “Dish is in a tough spot,” Chaplin wrote. “Navigating through the next few years won’t be easy. But it’s not nearly as dire as most investors assume, and the company has more options than most realize.”