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The fashion and food company was forced to suspend online orders for almost two months, with click and collect suspended for almost four months. Revealing its financial figures for the six months to September, M&S said "the underlying strength" of the chain meant it was "getting back on track" and expected full-year profits to be in-line with last year. One analyst told BBC's Today programme that it was reassuring that the main part of M&S's business, homewares and fashion, only saw sales decline around 16%. "Given that they were offline for most of the trading period and really only came back online for their click and collect in August, it's pretty, pretty resilient," said Judith MacKenzie, head of Downing Fund Managers. She said it was "outstanding" that its food sales were up 7.8% over that time despite it being "a pretty horrendous period" for the company. The fact that costs related to the attack were lower than expected was positive, said Lucy Rumbold, equity research analyst at Quilter. M&S had estimated that the attack would cost it around £300m. "Although the bottom line has been impacted across key divisions, the group's resilient brand and lower-than-feared cost implications reinforce the view that the cyber incident was a one-off," she said. "Normal trading can therefore resume and the positive story M&S had going prior to the cyber-attack remains in place." M&S said in the second half of the year it forecast profits would recover to the levels seen in 2024, "as the residual effects of the incident continue to reduce in the coming months."
