A hacker attack cost the Hamburg-based wind turbine manufacturer Nordex its place in the S-Dax small-cap index, at least temporarily. The company had delayed the release of its first quarter results citing the cyber incident in May. The figures are now to be presented next Tuesday – too late for Deutsche Börse, which is demanding a notification within 75 days of the end of the quarter. Nordex will therefore be removed from the S-Dax and the technology stock index Tec-Dax from next Monday, the stock exchange operator said. However, once the quarterly figures are available, Nordex will have the chance to come back for the regular review of the indices in September.
Deutsche Börse tightened the index rules in 2021 as a consequence of the scandal surrounding the payment processor Wirecard. Since then, companies in the Dax, M-Dax and S-Dax have had to submit annual reports within four months, semi-annual reports within three months and quarterly results after two and a half months. Otherwise they will be removed from the index within two days. There are no exceptions in the rules.
According to Nordex, it was the victim of a cyber attack at the end of March. As a precaution, IT systems were turned off in different areas at the time. The entire IT infrastructure first had to be restored. This led to internal delays, which is why the figures were not published on May 12 as planned. At the end of May, Nordex warned that the attack and its consequences would also affect margins in the current financial year.
Nordex is based in Hamburg. The company manufactures, erects and services wind turbines. In some countries, it is also planning wind farms right up to their turnkey construction. In contrast, Nordex is not active in the offshore sector. The main production facility is located at the headquarters in Rostock; further locations are in the People’s Republic of China and in Jonesboro (Arkansas) in the USA, which mainly serve as service locations. Nordex has branches and subsidiaries in 19 countries. By the end of 2020, the company said it had installed wind turbines with a total output of around 32 gigawatts in over 40 countries worldwide.
For Nordex, the Berlin pharmaceutical company Medios will move up to the S-Dax next Monday, which only dropped out of the index again in September 2021 after a year. In the Tec-Dax, Nordex will be replaced by the solar technology group SMA Solar, which already belongs to the S-Dax. Its paper gained 0.3 percent on Thursday. Nordex shares rose by 0.2 percent.