Marriott’s massive data hack was certainly bad news for its reputation, as well as its customers. But it barely made a dent in its bottom line.
Marriott’s giant hack has cost it $72 million so far, with $44 million of those costs coming in the first quarter, the company disclosed Friday. But it has collected $71 million in insurance reimbursements for the incident. $46 million of those payments came in the first quarter, meaning that it ended up with a slight gain in its first quarter financial results, after a slightly larger loss at the end of last year.
As many as 383 million guests had personal information exposed by the hack, according tot the company. Although that was fewer than the 500 million customers it was initially reported to be victims of the hack, it was still was one of the largest hacks of personal information ever to take place.
The breach started in 2014, but Marriott did not disclose it until November 2018.
Compromised information included customer names, phone numbers, email addresses, passport numbers, date of birth, credit card numbers and card expiration dates. Marriott offered affected guests free membership to WebWatcher, a personal information monitoring service.
The company’s overall operating profit came to $482 million last quarter, down 1% from a year earlier. But share repurchases allowed for a 5% increase in earnings per share, which was a bit better than forecast by Wall Street analysts. Revenue was little changed at $5 billion.
Shares of Marriott (MAR) were 1% lower in premarket trading on the report.
