British semiconductor firm Ensilica is believed to be the most recent supplier to Jaguar Land Rover affected by the automotive giant's cyber breach, prompting the company to reduce its supply forecasts for the coming year.
The Oxford-headquartered enterprise witnessed its shares plummet on Thursday following a downward revision of revenue projections to £28-30m for the year ending in May, falling short of market predictions of £33m, as reported by .
"A recent cybersecurity issue within an automotive customer's supply chain has occurred and while it is too early to fully assess the impact, the company has considered it prudent to be conservative and revise expectations for chip supply volumes required for this customer," the firm said.
Whilst Ensilica has not officially identified Jaguar Land Rover as a client, no other significant automotive manufacturer has experienced a comparable large-scale cyber incident affecting its supply network recently.
The company's automotive agreement is valued at over $30m across a seven-year timeframe.
Ensilica did not respond to a request for comment.
The business's shares dropped by as much as 14 per cent to 39p during Thursday morning trading.
Jaguar Land Rover partially restarts production
The previous week, Jaguar Land Rover announced that manufacturing operations would soon recommence partially, six weeks following a devastating cyberattack that compelled Britain's biggest car manufacturer to suspend its production facilities. The resumption marks the first occasion the manufacturer has managed to undertake any new vehicle production since late August; a halt that industry sources calculate is costing Jaguar Land Rover £5m daily in forfeited revenue.
The car company also acknowledged that vehicle sales to dealers, distributors, or importers declined 24.2 per cent year-on-year to 66,165 during the quarter, whilst retail sales plummeted 17.1 per cent to 85,495.
In response to mounting calls for government assistance across multiple tiers of Jaguar Land Rover's supply network facing potential collapse, ministers initially endorsed a £1.5bn commercial loan to help prevent failures and redundancies in the º£½ÇÊÓƵ's already beleaguered automotive industry.
Component manufacturers and their trade associations had cautioned that the incident, whose perpetrator remains undisclosed, had left them confronting delayed payments and a shortage of fresh contracts.
However, with the government-supported initiative encountering obstacles, Jaguar Land Rover also announced it had launched a distinct funding programme designed to "provide qualifying suppliers with cash-up-front" as the recovery phase commenced.
Through this initiative, understood to total approximately £500m, suppliers would receive payment "much faster than under their standard payment terms", delivering essential liquidity to automotive parts producers and comparable enterprises.
