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Capita's annual losses were significantly larger than expected, sending the share price of one of the UK's largest outsourcers down by a fifth.

The group said on Wednesday that a series of cyber incidents and charges to exit various businesses had resulted in costs of 25 million pounds, impacting results.

Capita, which provides software and IT services to governments and private companies, suffered a data breach in March last year that exposed details of more than 500,000 members of Britain's private sector pension schemes.

“We took extensive steps immediately following the incident to recover and secure the compromised data,” said Capita CEO Adolfo Hernandez, who succeeded Jon Lewis in January.

The company made a pre-tax loss of £106.6 million last year, compared with profits of £61.4 million in 2022. Analysts had expected a loss of 58 million pounds, according to Bloomberg. Revenue will fall from £3 billion to £2.8 billion in 2022.

Capita launched a job cuts program last year, but Hernandez expanded it on Wednesday, aiming to cut costs by 100 million pounds a year by mid-2025.

“Despite significant rationalization over the past few years, our cost base remains too high,” Hernandez said. The layoffs already underway are likely to affect around 900 jobs.

On Wednesday morning, Capita's share price plummeted 20%. It has fallen more than 60% in the past year, and its market value has shrunk to 275 million pounds.

In another data breach in May, files containing details of local council benefit payments were exposed in an unsecured Amazon data bucket, raising concerns about the company's storage security measures.

The company said it has increased investment in improving cybersecurity and is offering customers a one-year subscription to its monitoring service to prevent any compromised data from continuing to spread online.