Jaguar Land Rover posts £485m quarterly loss in wake of cyber-attack

The cyber-attack that closed Jaguar Land Rover factories has pushed the company from profit into a quarterly loss of almost £500m, the carmaker said yesterday.

- Gwyn Topham Jasper Jolly

JLR made pretax losses of £485m in the three months to 30 September, with production shut down throughout September because of the hack - a brutal turnaround from the £398m profit it recorded in the same period a year earlier, and ending 11 consecutive quarters of profit.

With factories only now returning to full output after a phased restart in October, the total financial impact of the hack on JLR is yet to be quantified.

The attack has been estimated to have cost the wider UK economy up to £1.9bn, and was blamed by the government for dragging quarterly GDP growth figures announced yesterday down to 0.1%.

JLR reported £196m of exceptional direct costs in addressing the hack, including hiring in global IT expertise as it restarted its systems.

The manufacturer confirmed car production had returned to normal levels, with all plants “at or approaching capacity”, after it halted production in the UK and elsewhere immediately after the hack.