UK's Vertu Motors sees up to $7.4 million hit from JLR cyberattack

(Reuters) -British car dealer Vertu Motors on Wednesday warned of a hit of up to 5.5 million pounds ($7.4 million) to annual profit from disruptions due to a cybersecurity incident at Jaguar Land Rover, sending its shares down 3.5% in early trading. Luxury carmaker JLR, owned by India's Tata Motors said on Tuesday that it was restarting some of its operations after it was forced into a near six-week shutdown following a major cybersecurity incident. Vertu, which operates 10 JLR dealerships, said about 2 million pounds of the profit impact was in September, with the full-year effect hinging on when JLR restores its systems. "We are currently working with our insurance brokers and insurers to assess a potential claim under our insurance policy, which extends to the impact of third-party systems outages," Vertu CEO Robert Forrester said in a statement. The company said it expects to report annual adjusted pretax profit in line with market expectations, excluding the JLR impact. Analysts on average were expecting profit of 27.2 million pounds, according to the company.  For the six months ended August 31, adjusted profit before tax was 20 million pounds, down nearly 10% from last year. ($1 = 0.7468 pounds) (Reporting by Simone Lobo and Pushkala Aripaka in Bengaluru; Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee)

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