M&S expects online business to be "fully" operational by August

(Sharecast News) - Marks & Spencer's boss Stuart Machin has predicted that the retailer should be back to full capacity by the end of this month following the damaging cyber attack that has hampered operations since April. At the company's AGM on Tuesday, the chief executive said the online business should be "fully" operational by August, having previously indicated that it would take "all of June and all of July, maybe into August" to resume operations.

M&S was forced to suspend all online orders for nearly two months after a "social engineering" hack in April. Online shopping had resumed in June, but its click and collect service remains paused and the full product range is not yet available to access online.

"During the incident we chose to shut things down because we didn't want the risk of things going wrong," Machin said.

"Within the next four weeks we are hoping for the whole of online to be fully on [...] We're hoping that by August we will have the vast majority of this behind us and people can see the true M&S."

Machin added that the company, which estimated a £300m hit to profits from the disruption, will have to work to win customers back "in the autumn" after losing market share to competitors since the hack.