M&S estimates cost of cyber attack at £300 million
The retailer says it expects to recover and ramp up operations by July.
M&S SHOWED very strong fundamentals in its newly released financial results for the year ended 29 March 2025.
Profit before tax and adjusting items was up 22.2% at £875.5m (2023/24: £716.4m), the highest in over 15 years.
The key adjusting item was the cyber incident.
Chief executive Stuart Machin says: “M&S entered the new financial year with strong trading momentum, with both Food and Fashion, Home & Beauty trading ahead of budget.
“Over the last few weeks, we have been managing a highly sophisticated cyber incident.
“Since the incident, Food sales have been impacted by reduced availability, although this is already improving. We have also incurred additional waste and logistics costs, due to the need to operate manual processes, impacting profit in the first quarter.
“In Fashion, Home & Beauty, online sales and trading profit have been heavily impacted by the necessary decision to pause online shopping, however stores have remained resilient. We expect online disruption to continue throughout June and into July as we restart, then ramp up operations. This will also mean increased stock management costs in the second quarter.
“Therefore, our current estimate before mitigation is an impact on Group operating profit of around £300m for 2025/26, which will be reduced through management of costs, insurance and other trading actions.”
M&S intends to use the attack to bounce back stronger.
Machin continues: ”We are seeking to make the most of the opportunity to accelerate the pace of improvement of our technology transformation and have found new and innovative ways of working.
“We are focused on recovery, restoring our systems, operations and customer proposition over the rest of the first half, with the aim of exiting this period a much stronger business.”
