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Jaguar Land Rover has suffered deep losses after a devastating cyber attack shut down vehicle production for more than a month and led to a slowdown in the UK economy.
The British carmaker, owned by India’s Tata Motors, resumed key parts of its UK production in early October after the August 31 hack put pressure on its vast supply chain involving about 200,000 workers. The company on Friday said vehicle production had now returned to “normal levels”.
For the July to September quarter, JLR reported a pre-tax loss of £485mn compared with a profit of £398mn a year earlier, while revenue fell 24 per cent to £4.9bn. The loss was attributed to cyber-related costs totalling £196mn and other costs related to its voluntary redundancy programme.
The cyber attack has had broader repercussions, with UK economic output unexpectedly shrinking in September, dragged down partly by the production shutdown at JLR. The UK government’s £1.5bn loan guarantee for the carmaker also raised questions among critics over the state’s intervention in corporate activity.
“JLR has made strong progress in recovering its operations safely and at pace following the cyber incident,” its chief executive Adrian Mardell said in a statement.
The Cyber Monitoring Centre estimated that the attack affected more than 5,000 British organisations and cost the UK at least £1.9bn in what the non-profit organisation said was likely to be “the most economically damaging cyber event” for the country.
For JLR, the cyber incident came as the carmaker had been grappling with the fallout from US tariffs and delays to its new electric vehicle launches.