Overview
- Underlying pre-tax profit fell 55.4% to £184.1m in the six months to 27 September, with reported profit down to £3.4m.
- M&S estimates the cyber incident will reduce annual profit by about £136m, with £101.6m booked in H1 and roughly £34m expected in H2.
- Online orders were halted for around six weeks and logistics were disrupted, with home delivery resuming in June and click-and-collect in August.
- Clothing, home and beauty suffered most, with sales down 16.4%, online down 42.9% and divisional profit down about 80%, while food sales rose 7.8% but saw lower operating profit due to waste and markdowns.
- The company recovered £100m via cyber insurance, reported theft of some customer personal data, ended its TCS IT helpdesk contract, and lifted its cost-savings target to about £600m with H2 profit expected at least in line with last year.