M&S says its will face online issues until July after cyberattack – here’s how badly it was hit

M&S says it will only return to full online shopping capabilities sometime in June or July after a cyberattack wreaked havoc on its systems.

Speaking at a results presentation on Wednesday 21 May, M&S CEO Stuart Machin said the group 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, it has been managing a highly sophisticated cyber incident. As a team, we have worked around the clock with suppliers and partners to contain the incident and stabilise operations, taking proactive measures to minimise the disruption for customers.”

“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,” he said.

Machin added that since the incident, food sales have been impacted by reduced availability, although this is already improving. The group has also incurred additional waste and logistics costs due to the need to operate manual processes, impacting profit in the first quarter.

Major impact on trading

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.

Machin said that this online disruption will 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, he said

“Therefore, our current estimate before mitigation is an impact on Group operating profit of around £300 million for 2025/26, which will be reduced through management of costs, insurance and other trading actions. It is expected that costs directly relating to the incident will be presented separately as an adjusting item,” he said.

He added that the group’s overall strategy remains the same and there is no change to our longer-term plans to reshape M&S for growth.

“We are confident that we will enter the second half with a strong customer proposition, returning to the performance we were delivering immediately prior to the incident and throughout 2024/25,” he said.

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