The recent cyber breach against M&S has cost the retailer £300m off of its 2025/26 operating profit, according to a trading update from the firm.
In its results for the year ended March 2025, M&S said it had been working “around the clock” with its suppliers to contain the incident and stabilise operations.
According to the firm, food sales have been impacted by reduced availability and it has incurred additional waste and logistics costs due to the need to operate manual processes.
Additionally, the supermarket’s online fashion, home and beauty sales have been “heavily impacted” after it was forced to suspend online shopping.
“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,” the company said.
All in all M&S estimated the total impact on the group’s operating profit to be around £300m, though it hopes to reduce this through “management of costs, insurance and other trading actions”.
“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.”
M&S reported a pre-tax profit for the year of £875.5m, a 22% increase from the year prior.
Read more: Supermarket cyber-attacks highlight vulnerability of legacy systems
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