(Updated with stock market reaction, details, context)
Atos ATOS.PA announced on Monday that it was reshuffling its management team and issuing a warning on its cash flow, which caused its stock to plunge on the Paris Stock Exchange.
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Atos appointed Paul Saleh as general manager on Monday, effective immediately, the fourth in less than two years.
He replaces Yves Bernaert, in place until then since October 2023, who “leaves the group after an intense period of transformation”.
Until then financial director, Paul Saleh is replaced by Jacques-François de Perst in this position.
The new general manager will be responsible for ensuring the repayment and refinancing of the group’s debts, which are in serious financial difficulty.
Atos is currently discussing with its banks to secure its refinancing and had said
at the beginning of the month
do not exclude the use of legal protection mechanisms to govern these negotiations.
The group clarified on Monday that it had not submitted a “request for the appointment of an ad hoc representative or the opening of a conciliation procedure”.
Atos also confirmed that its annual turnover and operating margin will reach the objectives set for 2023 but that its free cash flow should however be “slightly lower than its objective of around -100 million euros for the second semester”.
Faced with these difficulties, the group decided to split its historical IT consulting activities and those in cybersecurity.
The Tech Foundations branch, bringing together IT consulting activities, is to be sold to the EPEI group of Czech businessman Daniel Kretinsky but the project seems “seriously compromised”, explained Les Echos on Monday.
Decisive meetings are to take place in the coming days between the two parties and the banks, the newspaper reports, citing an anonymous source.
Representatives for Atos and Daniel Kretinsky did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment for this article.
At the same time, Atos plans to keep cybersecurity activities in a new entity called Eviden. Within these activities, the BDS division is the subject of a takeover offer from Airbus AIR.PA.
(Report Sudip Kar-Gupta, written by Gaëlle Sheehan, edited by Blandine Hénault)