Marks & Spencer (M&S) has predicted its operating profit this year will decline by £300m thanks to a recent ransomware attack. The figure surpasses analysts’ expectations and represents about a third of its projected profit. The retailer added that the attack, which took place in late April, is expected to impact its online operations until July, as it announced its annual results for the year ending 29 March 2025.
M&S plans to mitigate the financial blow through cost management, insurance coverage, and additional trading strategies. The company intends to list expenses directly related to the incident as a separate adjusting item.
“Over the last few weeks, we have been managing a highly sophisticated and targeted cyber-attack, which has led to a limited period of disruption,” said M&S chief executive Stuart Machin. “We have tackled this head on with incredible spirit, teamwork and deep sense of responsibility as we prioritised serving our customers.
“It has been challenging, but it is a moment in time, and we are now focused on recovery, with the aim of exiting this period a much stronger business. There is no change to our strategy and our longer-term plans to reshape M&S for growth and, if anything, the incident allows us to accelerate the pace of change as we draw a line and move on.”
Cyber breach disrupted online and food sales
The cyberattack forced M&S to temporarily shut down its online retail systems and disable certain food-related operations. Consequently, food sales suffered due to decreased availability. The company also faced increased waste and logistics expenses due to the necessity of manual processes, impacting first-quarter profits.
In the Fashion, Home & Beauty segment, online sales and trading profits were also severely affected by the suspension of online shopping. However, M&S’s physical stores across the UK have remained open.
Last week, M&S admitted that the cyberattack compromised some customer data, that can include names, phone numbers, home addresses, and birth dates. Hacking collective Scattered Spider, which has also targeted other retailers like Co-op and Harrods, is believed to be responsible for the attack.
The M&S website experienced further downtime shortly after the company released its financial results, with visitors encountering a message apologising for the disruption and promising that the site would be restored to full functionality soon. The outage was due to routine maintenance, according to a BBC News report. The site resumed browsing functionality early Thursday morning. However, full shopping capabilities remain unavailable.
Read more: Cyber incident at Marks & Spencer suspected to involve Scattered Spider hackers
