Latitude Group has cut its profit guidance, scrapped its interim dividend, and projected first-half losses of $95-$105 million – all of which sent shares down by more than 7 per cent.

This dire situation follows the March cyberattack, which saw the personal records of 14 million past and present Latitude customers stolen.

Latitude are retail partners with David Jones, JB Hi-Fi, Harvey Norman, and Apple.

“While Latitude was able to continue processing transactions as it responded to the March cyberattack, new account originations and collections were closed or severely restricted for a period of approximately five weeks,” Latitude said in a statement.

“Latitude had anticipated some normalisation in loss ratios across its portfolio, however the cyberattack has materially worsened this trend due to lost collections activity.”

The company said its net profit after tax would be in the range of $5-$10 million for the first half, but the March cyber attack forced the company to recognise around $53 million after tax, including costs from the attack, and a $46 million provision “largely for customer remediation cost.

This doesn’t include “the potential for regulatory fines, class actions, future system enhancements, or an assumption of insurance proceeds.” This means the hit to the company is likely to be even worse than projected.

Full-year cash NPAT will be “adversely impacted” by the cyber hack, with cash NPAT likely to be in the range of $15-25 million.

Its full year statutory result is expected to be a loss, meaning it is not likely to declare a dividend for the second half of FY23.