Jaguar Land Rover has plunged to a £310m pre-tax loss in its third quarter, as the luxury car manufacturer continues to grapple with the financial repercussions of a major cyber attack last autumn.
It marks a significant downturn from the £523m profit reported a year earlier.
The cyber incident alone incurred an additional £64m in costs, contributing significantly to the downturn.
The attack forced a five-week production halt across the company’s UK factories from 1 September.
It severely impacted sales volumes and caused revenues to tumble by 39 per cent year-on-year to £4.5bn in the final three months of 2023.
Production only returned to normal levels in mid-November.
Compounding those losses were ongoing US tariffs, the planned discontinuation of older Jaguar models ahead of new launches, and deteriorating market conditions in China.
Despite the setbacks, the group anticipates a marked improvement in its performance during its final quarter.
New JLR chief executive PB Balaji, who took over from former boss Adrian Mardell in November, said it was a “challenging quarter for JLR with performance impacted by the production shutdown we initiated in response to the cyber incident, the planned wind down of legacy Jaguar and US tariffs”.
He added: “Thanks to the commitment of our dedicated teams, we returned vehicle production to normal levels by mid-November, and we are focused on building our business back stronger.
“While the external environment remains volatile, we expect performance to improve significantly in the fourth quarter and we have clear plans to manage global challenges.”
JLR’s latest losses come after it slumped into the red by £485m in the previous three months following a 24 per cent drop in revenues, bringing its losses for the year to date to £444 against profits of £1.6bn a year earlier.
It previously booked £196m of costs linked to the cyber attack in its second quarter.
It is understood this included the cost of hiring consultants to help it deal with the incident, but not the impact of lost sales and other costs, such as increases in engineering costs.
