Addressing Wall Street analysts on the company’s first-quarter earnings call, CEO Erik Carlson said customer databases were not breached in the hack, which largely hit the company’s legacy satellite TV operation. Still, he noted, “certain employee-related records and a limited number of other records with personal information” were obtained by hackers. By the time the quarter concluded on March 31, though, the financial impact had largely been minimized, the company maintains.
Orbon said accounts receivable had declined by the end of the January-to-March quarter compared with the end of 2022., have continued to drift downward in subsequent weeks. But they rallied 2% Monday after the company’s quarterly report, despite the fact that it undershot analysts’ consensus expectations. Revenue slipped to $3.96 billion from $4.33 billion in the same quarter a year ago, about $100 million shy of Wall Street targets.
As to why a downbeat report from a quarter marred by the cyberattack wouldn’t deter investors, SVB MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett theorized that a certain “upside-down world” logic could apply. He said the hacking episode could wind up undermining the FCC’s confidence in Dish as a wireless provider, meaning it could be forced to sell off some of the wireless spectrum it has accumulated in recent years in an expensive pivot from pay-TV to telecom.
The DirecTV merger scenario wasn’t directly addressed in an SEC filing from Dish on Monday morning prior to the call. But the company did say it would “pursue one or more of the following options: raise additional capital, pursue strategic transactions and/or introduce additional cost reduction initiatives.
In the wireless business, he said, “We haven’t proven yet that we can compete.” While he conceded the cyberattack had been a giant distraction as it looks to make strides, Ergen argued that the incident is “behind us” after being dealt with swiftly and effectively. Dish, in the company co-founder’s estimation, ranks “right up there with best-in-class in terms of how to recover from an incident.”