ASOS back in profit on warehouse sales: cyber attack dents UK trading

ASOS has returned to a statutory profit, but the headline number owes more to selling two warehouses than to selling clothes. The online fashion retailer reported a pre-tax profit of £24.4m for the 52 weeks to 30 August 2026, against a loss of £281.6m a year earlier, in final results published at 7am on Thursday 5 November.

The same statement gave the first official measure of what October’s cyber attack did to trading. ASOS said the disruption was felt “most notably in the UK” and put the impact since 6 October at about 2–4% of group gross merchandise value (GMV), the total value of goods sold. Sales in the first eight weeks of the new financial year were broadly flat, after growth of 4% in the final quarter of the old one.

What did ASOS report on 5 November?

The full-year statement is the first detailed set of numbers from ASOS since the 6 October attack. Our preview of the ASOS results set out the guidance going in, and the company landed near the top of it: adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) rose 29% to £170.3m, within a guided range of £150–180m.

Sales went the other way, though by less each quarter. GMV fell 5% to £2,349.0m and adjusted group revenue fell 9% to £2,240.3m. ASOS says revenue fell faster than GMV because more partner brands now hold their own stock on its platform, which means it books only a commission on those sales rather than the full selling price.

City AM reports that the £46.4m adjusted loss before tax beat the £61m analysts had forecast, and that revenue was in line with expectations. Reuters focused on the outlook, reporting that the new profit guidance sits above market expectations.

Measure	Year to 30 Aug 2026	Year to 31 Aug 2025	Change
Gross merchandise value	£2,349.0m	£2,456.3m	Down 5%
Adjusted group revenue	£2,240.3m	£2,464.8m	Down 9%
Adjusted gross margin	50.5%	47.1%	Up 340 basis points
Adjusted EBITDA	£170.3m	£131.6m	Up £38.7m
Adjusted loss before tax	£46.4m	£98.2m	£51.8m narrower
Statutory profit or loss before tax	£24.4m profit	£281.6m loss	£306.0m better
Net debt, excluding leases	£109.3m	£184.7m	Down £75.4m
Free cash flow	£16.4m outflow	£14.1m inflow	£30.5m worse

All figures in the table come from the ASOS results announcement. The results were released before the London market opened, so the share price reaction was not available when this article was published.

Is ASOS really back in profit?

On the statutory measure, yes. On the measure ASOS itself uses to judge the underlying business, not yet. The £70.8m gap between a £46.4m adjusted loss and a £24.4m reported profit comes from one-off items that do not repeat in normal trading.

The largest item is a £164.5m gain on selling the Lichfield and Atlanta fulfilment centres, which raised £115.5m in proceeds. Against that, ASOS took a £67.3m impairment on technology after changing the platform for its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. A further £26.4m of adjusting items relates mainly to restructuring and refinancing.

Take those three items together and the arithmetic matches the announcement: £164.5m minus £67.3m minus £26.4m gives £70.8m. Without them, the business spent more on interest than it made from operations. Adjusted EBIT, which excludes interest, was a profit of £18.8m, while adjusted finance costs were £67.9m.

Net debt fell by more than 40% to £109.3m, and ASOS ended the year with £328.3m of cash plus an undrawn £87.5m loan facility. That is about 0.6 times adjusted EBITDA, down from 2.6 times at the end of the 2023 financial year. Much of the improvement came from the warehouse proceeds rather than from trading.

Free cash flow turned negative, at an outflow of £16.4m, which ASOS puts down mainly to working capital and the timing of financing payments. The company guides to positive free cash flow in the current year, and says it is still assessing “opportunities to optimise our capital structure”. It carries a convertible bond due in 2028, held on the balance sheet at £283.3m.

How much did the cyber attack really cost ASOS?

ASOS has not given a pound figure. Its exact wording is that the group paused certain marketing and customer relationship activity immediately after the incident and returned to planned activity within two days. That caused “some short-term disruption to trading, most notably in the UK, with the latest impact since 6 October estimated at c.2–4% of Group GMV”.

That sentence has already produced a large number. City AM headlined the story as a hit of “up to £94m”, calculating between £47m and £94m by applying 2–4% to the £2.35bn of GMV in the year to August. That is a fair measure of the cost only if the percentage held for a full twelve months, and ASOS calls the effect temporary.

A narrower estimate based on the weeks since the attack

The wording refers to the period since 6 October, about 30 days at the time of writing. Last year’s GMV works out at about £45m a week on average, or about £194m over those 30 days. On that basis, 2–4% is roughly £4m to £8m of lost sales so far.

This is shopappy’s own calculation, not a company figure, and it comes with caveats. Autumn trading may run above the annual average, GMV is the value of goods sold rather than profit, and a longer-lasting effect would raise the total. ASOS was due to present to analysts at 9.30am on Thursday, which may produce more detail.

The results also contain a separate, more formal line. Note 20 to the accounts treats the attack as an event after the reporting period, makes no adjustment to the financial statements, and says the incident “is not expected to have a significant impact on the business”. The profit guidance issued alongside it is above market expectations, according to Reuters.

Way of measuring	Figure	Who says so	What it assumes
Share of group GMV since 6 October	About 2–4%	ASOS results statement	The period since the attack only
Applied to last year’s full GMV	£47m to £94m	City AM	The percentage applied to twelve months of sales
Applied to about 30 days of average GMV	Roughly £4m to £8m	shopappy calculation	Average weekly sales of about £45m in the year to August
Effect on the business overall	“Not expected” to be significant	ASOS accounts, note 20	Management’s assessment, with findings still being reviewed

How that compares with M&S

The obvious British comparison is Marks & Spencer, which reported on Wednesday. M&S’s half-year results put the total cost of its 2025 attack at about £134m, and its online store was shut for weeks. At ASOS, by the company’s account, the website and app stayed open throughout, and the trading damage came mainly from pausing marketing and customer messages for two days.

For an online-only retailer, that distinction matters. ASOS has no shops to fall back on, so a closure of the kind M&S suffered would have stopped sales outright. Instead, the risk it now has to manage is one of trust, which takes longer to show up in a sales line.

What does the attack mean for ASOS customers?

The announcement says the investigation, supported by outside cyber experts, has now concluded. It found that “the unauthorised party accessed some basic customer data” and “confirmed no payment information or account passwords were impacted”. The accounts add that the data was held on third-party platforms.

The results statement does not list what “basic customer data” covers or how many people were affected. In October, ASOS said the data included names and contact details, as well as “certain non-personal account-related information”. The BBC reported at the time that a sample provided by people claiming responsibility included names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, customer numbers and search histories, according to a report in TheIndustry.fashion.

ASOS also said in October that it would contact customers directly where it believed “additional information, support or action may be required”. Thursday’s statement does not say whether that has now happened, or how many customers would receive such a message. It also does not report any outcome from the regulatory and law enforcement bodies the company said it had contacted.

What to do if you shop with ASOS

The practical risk from stolen contact details is convincing fraud rather than an emptied account. A scammer who knows your name, address and recent searches can write a much more believable message. These steps follow ASOS’s own guidance and standard UK fraud advice:

1. Treat any unexpected email, text or call mentioning ASOS, an order or a refund as suspicious, even if it quotes correct personal details.
2. Never hand over a password, security code or card number in response to a message. ASOS has said: “We will never ask you to share passwords, security codes or payment details through an unsolicited message or call.”
3. Check orders and refunds by opening the app or typing the website address yourself, not by following a link.
4. Forward suspicious emails to report@phishing.gov.uk and suspicious texts to 7726.
5. If you have lost money, contact your bank immediately, then report it to Report Fraud.

Customers who think their data has been mishandled can complain to the company first and then to the Information Commissioner’s Office. A personal data breach that causes financial loss or distress can also give rise to a compensation claim under UK data protection law, though each case depends on its own facts.

Why did UK customers matter so much to these results?

The UK is the core of ASOS. It generated £1,118.8m of the £2,245.6m reported revenue, close to half the group, and it was the market where the recovery first appeared. It was also, on the company’s own account, the market hit hardest in the weeks after the attack.

Before October, the UK numbers were improving steadily. GMV fell 2% over the full year but grew 2% in the second half. The active customer base ended the year flat at 6.5m, and ASOS says UK active customers have grown for four consecutive months, helped by better retention. New UK customers rose 12%.

The underlying figures show a more selective shopper. UK orders fell 4% and conversion, the share of visits that end in a purchase, fell 30 basis points even as visits rose 1%. Average basket value rose 3%. Across the group, the average basket was £43.59, up from £43.05, and customers ordered 3.29 times a year, down from 3.36.

Market	GMV	Orders	Average basket value	Active customers
UK	Down 2%	Down 4%	Up 3%	6.5m (flat)
Europe	Down 6%	Down 4%	Flat	7.4m (down 3%)
US	Down 9%	Down 18%	Up 7%	1.5m (down 10%)
Rest of world	Down 14%	Down 16%	Up 2%	1.0m (down 17%)
Group	Down 5%	Down 6%	Up 1%	16.4m (down 4%)

The competition is large. Shein’s main British company booked £2.58bn of revenue in 2025, as Shein’s UK accounts showed last month, which is more than ASOS’s reported revenue across every market combined. ASOS says it is focusing on full-price sales, fresher stock and tighter inventory.

What has changed for people who shop on ASOS?

Most of the results statement is written for investors, but several changes affect what shoppers see. They cover delivery, returns, the app and the brands on sale, and some of them are limited to the UK for now.

Delivery and returns

ASOS has extended its UK next-day delivery cut-off to 11pm for all customers and introduced same-day delivery in parts of London. More improvements to cut-offs and same-day options are promised for the current year, without dates. The company says it reshaped its carrier mix and consistently improved its record on missed delivery promises from quarter to quarter.

Returns remain, in the company’s words, “one of our biggest opportunities”. The underlying returns rate improved by 140 basis points, helped by better quality, fit information and more customer reviews. ASOS also cites “greater transparency around customer return behaviour”, and our comparison of retailer delivery and returns fees includes the £3.95 fee Which? recorded in 2024 for its customers with frequently high return rates who keep less than £40 of items.

An exchanges service launched in March has already retained about £5m of GMV across about 200,000 units, according to the company. Exchanged orders are returned at around half the rate of refunded orders. It has since been extended across the UK and key European markets.

None of this changes shoppers’ statutory rights. Under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013, most online purchases can be cancelled within 14 days of delivery, with a further 14 days to send items back, whatever a retailer’s own policy says.

AI in the app and customer service

Artificial intelligence features heavily in the statement. In October, ASOS extended its virtual try-on test to all UK womenswear, about a third of its catalogue. It reports higher conversion and a “directional” fall in returns in testing, with the strongest gains among newer customers. It also says it was one of the first fashion retailers on ChatGPT, launching there in May, where customers can get styling advice through conversation.

Customer service has moved in the same direction. The ASOS AI Assistant handled 4m conversations during the year, and the company says nearly two in three customers can now complete their journey without help from a human adviser. AI-generated product imagery is now live across 25% of product volumes, a figure that shoppers will not necessarily notice on the page.

More brands, including Nike

Partner brands that hold and ship their own stock, or use ASOS’s fulfilment service, now account for 21% of partner brand GMV, up by more than 10 percentage points. In the current year River Island will join ASOS Fulfilment Services and Nike will join its Partner Fulfils model, which ASOS says will mean a broader Nike range and better availability in the UK and Europe. The company added 80 new brands last year and dropped 50 weaker performers.

Loyalty is the other lever. ASOS.WORLD has 5.6m members, of whom 4.8m are in the UK, equal to 74% of UK active customers. The company says its testing shows the programme lifts order frequency and customer value among its more engaged tiers, with Tier 3 members ordering 16% more often than comparable customers after 12 months.

Are online fashion sales growing elsewhere in the UK?

Thursday brought a second reading on UK fashion. Next said UK online full-price sales rose 4.4% in the 13 weeks to 31 October, while shop sales fell 1.7%, for a total UK increase of 2.0%, in line with its guidance. Next also said unseasonably warm weather hurt sales in September, and left its full-year profit guidance unchanged at £1,255m.

That is a useful comparison for ASOS’s own trading in the opening weeks of its new year, although the numbers are not directly comparable. BDO’s High Street Sales Tracker, which showed UK online sales up 10.1% in October, suggests a strong month for online non-food sales generally, with physical shops up 2.2%.

Each retailer reports on a different basis, over a different period, and BDO’s sample covers fashion, lifestyle and homewares. The table below should be read as a guide to direction only, not a league table.

Source	Measure	Period	Result
ASOS	UK GMV	Second half to 30 August 2026	Up 2%
ASOS	Group GMV, all markets	First eight weeks of new year	Broadly flat
Next	UK online full-price sales	13 weeks to 31 October 2026	Up 4.4%
Next	UK shop full-price sales	13 weeks to 31 October 2026	Down 1.7%
BDO tracker	Online like-for-like sales	October 2026	Up 10.1%
BDO tracker	In-store like-for-like sales	October 2026	Up 2.2%

ASOS’s flat start covers all its markets, and the company names the attack as a drag on it. Its next update will show whether growth returns once that effect passes, as the company expects.

What is working at ASOS, and what is not?

The clearest success is womenswear, which ASOS prioritised deliberately. GMV in the category grew 3% over the year and 8% in the second half, with growth in outerwear, evening dresses, casual bottoms and tops. Topshop, 4505 and ARRANGE are named as own brands delivering strong growth, while the ASOS x adidas collaboration sold about 90% of its fourth drop in the opening weekend.

Gross margin has also moved faster than the company’s own plans. At 50.5%, adjusted gross margin has passed the medium-term target, the second straight year of more than 300 basis points of expansion. Stock has fallen to £368.1m from £402.3m, and ASOS says about 40% of its own-brand mix now runs on lead times of under six weeks.

The company is equally direct about the weak spots. “Not everything is working yet,” the chief executive’s review says.

Menswear is “still in recovery phase”, and ASOS hired a new menswear product director for ASOS Design in August. The company treats France, along with menswear, as upside to its plans rather than a requirement for growth. Rest of world GMV fell 14%, although that decline eased to 2% in the fourth quarter.

Customer numbers remain below last year’s. Active customers ended the year down 4% at 16.4m, an improvement on the 9% decline reported at the half year, and reached 16.5m at the end of October. Total orders fell 6% to 53.9m. Marketing rose by 120 basis points as a share of sales, so the recovery in customer numbers has required more spending.

What does ASOS expect next?

For the financial year to August 2027, the board expects low single-digit GMV growth, adjusted EBITDA of £180–200m, capital spending of about 4% of revenue and positive free cash flow. The company describes this as the first full year of growth since it completed the transformation of its business model.

The guidance implies a modest step up from £170.3m of adjusted EBITDA, and growth has to come from a flat start. That leaves Christmas, and the Black Friday period that begins the run-up, carrying much of the burden. ASOS gave no specific commentary on peak trading in its statement.

The longer-term pitch is a project the company calls “The Stylist”, which it describes as using AI to make online fashion more personal and inspirational. “Imagine a store that is different for every customer, every time they visit, built around their own wardrobe and style,” the chief executive’s review says. Details and a new medium-term financial framework are promised at a capital markets event during the financial year, for which no date has been given.

Three things will show whether the recovery holds: whether the UK returns to growth once the effect of the attack fades, whether any regulator publishes a finding on the breach, and whether customers who were contacted, or who read about the hack, come back. An October YouGov poll, reported in our preview, found that 42% of UK adults were less likely to use ASOS after the incident. ASOS’s own figures show its active database still growing month on month in September and October.

Frequently asked questions

Did ASOS make a profit in 2026?

On a statutory basis, yes: a £24.4m pre-tax profit for the 52 weeks to 30 August 2026. That figure includes £164.5m of gains from selling two warehouses. On its adjusted measure, ASOS made a £46.4m loss before tax, an improvement on the £98.2m adjusted loss a year earlier.

How much did the cyber attack cost ASOS?

ASOS has not given a pound figure. It says the impact since 6 October is about 2–4% of group GMV, mostly in the UK, and that it is temporary. City AM calculated £47m to £94m by applying that percentage to a full year of sales. Applied to about 30 days of average sales, the same percentage comes to roughly £4m to £8m on shopappy’s estimate.

Were ASOS payment details or passwords stolen?

ASOS says its concluded investigation confirmed that no payment information or account passwords were affected. It says the unauthorised party accessed some basic customer data. Earlier reporting by the BBC described a sample that included names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, customer numbers and search histories.

Do I need to change my ASOS password?

ASOS told customers in October that they did not need to take action on their accounts, because passwords were not accessed. The bigger risk is scam messages that use your personal details. Be cautious of unexpected contact claiming to come from ASOS, and go directly to the app or website to check orders.

Is it safe to shop on ASOS now?

ASOS says its website and app remained operational and safe to use throughout, and that it has introduced further security measures. No independent regulator has published a finding in the material reviewed for this article. Using a unique password and being wary of unsolicited messages remain sensible precautions on any retail site.

Is ASOS growing again?

GMV grew 4% in the final quarter of the year to August 2026, the first quarterly growth since 2022. The full year was still down 5%. Trading in the first eight weeks of the new year was broadly flat, and the company is guiding to low single-digit growth for the full year.

What is GMV, and why does ASOS use it?

Gross merchandise value is the total value of goods sold on the platform, before tax on a billed basis. ASOS uses it because more partner brands now fulfil orders themselves or through its service, and on those sales it records only a commission as revenue. Revenue therefore fell faster than GMV, by 9% against 5%.

What changes are coming for UK ASOS customers?

The company has already extended next-day delivery orders to 11pm, added same-day delivery in parts of London, launched exchanges and widened its virtual try-on test across UK womenswear. It plans later cut-offs, more same-day options, a broader Nike range and a stronger ASOS.WORLD loyalty scheme, without giving dates.