Vertu Motors faces £5.5 million loss as Jaguar Land Rover cyberattack halts operations

British car dealer Vertu Motors on Wednesday warned of a hit of up to £5.5 million ($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 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 a profit of £27.2 million, according to the company.

For the six months ended August 31, adjusted profit before tax was £20 million, down nearly 10% from last year.