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Marks and Spencer has said disruption from a major cyber attack is expected to continue through to July and reduce operating profits by around £300 million before action to offset the hit.
The company has revealed its performance to investors on Wednesday in an update to the stock market, and said that its online sales and profits in its fashion, home and beauty department have been “heavily impacted”.
The high street retail giant said disruption to online shopping could continue into July, but it hopes to have this partly restored “within weeks”.
Disruption to online operations is set “to continue throughout June and into July as we restart, then ramp up operations”, it added.
It is almost a month since the retailer was first impacted by a major “cyber incident”, reportedly linked to hacking group Scattered Spider.
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Hackers were able to secure customer personal data, which could have included names, email addresses, dates of birth and postal addresses during the attack.
As a result, M&S has had to pause online orders for the past three weeks, while payments and click and collect orders were also impacted.
Empty shelves were seen in some stores as the availability of items was also knocked by the disruption, with the company having to change parts of its IT systems.
M&S said the incident is expected to drag its group operating profits down by around £300 million this year, but it expects this to be reduced through cost management, insurance and other reactions.
Chief executive Stuart Machin said: “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.”
David Wallace, an M&S shareholder, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Wednesday that he believes the cyber attack “should have been handled better”.
“They’ve dropped the ball with this. They’ve stumbled on this one,” he said.
“M&S have to take firm control of this situation, solve the problems and reassure customers and shareholders. They need to be firm, decisive and communicate their solution. It took a little bit too long…
“They should be making it very clear how they are handling it and how people have been impacted by it.”
Mr Wallace said he would remain invested, adding: “I still believe in them.”
Speaking ahead of Wednesday, Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: “Although the annual numbers won’t show the effect, as they end before the outages of operations occurred, some guidance for the year ahead is expected, and it’s likely to be very cautious indeed.
“With online orders still suspended, the breach is expected to be costing around £4 million a day in lost sales.”
She added that fashion sales could be a particular casualty, with the disruption coming amid a spell of warm weather during a key period for spring/summer clothing lines.
