SAN FRANCISCO (Legal Newsline) – Law firms are battling to lead a securities class action against cybersecurity company Okta, which saw a drop in the value of its stock after an incident with hackers.
Three motions to appoint lead counsel were filed on July 19 in San Francisco federal court. The firms involved are the usual heavy-hitters of shareholder litigation.
Pomerantz LLP is representing the City of Miami Fire Fighters’ and Police Officers’ Retirement Trust, which lost $220,030 on its investment of $489,633.
Labaton Sucharow is representing the Nebraska Investment Council, which says it lost nearly $2.2 million on its investment.
Robbins Geller is representing Dr. Kathryn Flynn, who lost more than $909,000 on her $3.6 million investment of Okta securities.
Judge Susan Ilston is handling the case, which was filed May 20. It hopes to compensate all who bought stock in the company between March 5, 2021, and March 22, 2022.
The company - which sells cybersecurity products and services to small and medium-sized businesses, universities, nonprofits and government agencies - merged with Auth0 two days before that class period began.
The complaint says the company had inadequate safety measures during the class period, which led to hackers known as LAPSUS$ posting screenshots of Okta's internal company environment.
The company on March 22 declared 2.5% of customers had potentially been impacted. News coverage noted the company had more than 15,000 customers at the time.
Raymond James downgraded the company from "strong buy" to "market perform," citing concerns over the security incident. Its stock price fell $17.88 per share - nearly 11% - to $148.55 after the downgrade.
Okta’s stock price is now all the way down to $103 per share, as of presstime. Fifteen months ago, before the class period began, it traded at $292.