[Image: Ribbon cutting at EPAM's newly renovated Newtown, PA, office space.]

 

Shares of EPAM, a Newtown, Bucks County-based software-outsourcing firm, closed down by 46% Monday after the company said it was helping evacuate its engineers from Ukraine amid the Russian invasion and warned that it could no longer predict its financial results for this year, due to “military actions in Ukraine.”

 

The company’s “highest priority is the safety and security of its employees and their families in Ukraine, said EPAM in a statement. So it is “working to relocate its employees to lower-risk locations in Ukraine and neighboring countries.” EPAM has not expressed any public position on the war itself, which divided countries where it has many workers. The war has been condemned by Western leaders, and Russia is facing a host of economic sanctions, including efforts to freeze the assets of the Bank of Russia.

 

On a day when jittery investors worried about the escalation of the war and the impact of Western sanctions on Russia, EPAM closed at $207.75 a share. Its 45.68% drop was the largest for the three main U.S. stock exchanges.

 

That’s a drop of more than 70% from the stock’s 2021 high and follows another big drop when Russia invaded last week. The decline since November has cut EPAM’s value to investors by more than $35 billion.