Crowdstrike shares plunge 12% after massive global IT outage

• Crowdstrike shares plummeted on Friday after an IT outage caused chaos worldwide.
• Microsoft shares also fell as issues with the firm's services disrupted airports and emergency services.

Crowdstrike's stock price plunged Friday as a massive IT outage caused global chaos.

The cybersecurity firm's shares plunged as much as 20% in premarket trading before paring losses as regular trading got underway. As of 10 a.m. ET the stock traded 12% lower at $302 a share.

Microsoft's stock also briefly declined on Friday, falling by as much as 3% in premarket trade, before paring its losses to trade mostly flat after the opening bell.

The drops come as major airlines, banks, and supermarkets are experiencing widespread disruptions linked to an IT outage after Microsoft reported problems with its online services, linked to an issue at CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm.

The global IT outage also affected the financial world. The London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) confirmed in a service announcement to clients that it was experiencing a third-party technical issue.

The issues with the LSEG meant that company updates were not published to markets through the stock exchange's news service, although the LSEG said services such as the stock exchange itself were still operating as normal.

The global outage temporarily grounded planes and impacted hospitals, banks, and supermarkets, with travelers at airports reporting widespread disruption and some grocery stores having to switch to processing cash payments.

The IT issues also impacted 911 services in the US, with emergency services in multiple states reporting that emergency lines were disrupted as a result of the outage.

"This is clearly a major black eye for CrowdStrike and the stock will be under pressure after this global outage," Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said in a note on Friday.

CrowdStrike could be at risk for "some competitive displacements," Wedbush added. Still, the firm did not alter its bullish long-term view on the stock and the overall cybersecurity sector.

"Today CrowdStrike becomes a household name but not in a good way and this will take time to settle down," Ives added.

In a post on X, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said the company is "actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.

"Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted. This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed."

Microsoft acknowledged the issue in an X update on Friday morning, writing, "Our services are still seeing continuous improvements while we continue to take mitigation actions."

Microsoft did not respond to a request for additional comment from Business Insider, made outside regular US working hours. A Crowdstrike spokesperson did not add anything beyond Kurtz's statement.