Sas Astral Foods Flags Sharp Profit Fall, Reports Cyber Attack

Astral Foods said on Monday it expects its half-year profit to decline by as much as 60, with a recent cybersecurity incident compounding the impact of lower chicken prices and higher input costs.

South Africas top poultry producer said its flagship division was negatively affected by downtime in processing and deliveries to customers following a cybersecurity incident on March 16, which impacted its half-year profit by about R20 million.

This was due to revenue losses and the added costs of clearing the production backlog, Astral said in an initial trading update.

All business units were now operating normally and no confidential information or sensitive data of customers, suppliers or individual stakeholders was compromised as a result of the cyber intrusion, the company added.

Astral said it expects its profit to decline by as much as 60 in the six months to March 31 on the back of lower prices for chicken amid constrained consumer spending and higher feed input costs following last years drought.