(AFP/ERIC PIERMONT)
The French IT giant Atos announced the end of exclusive negotiations started with the company EPEI, owned by Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky, for the sale of its Tech Foundations branch, in a press release on Wednesday.
The two parties ended the formalized discussions in the summer of 2023 by “mutual consent”, said Paul Saleh, CEO of Atos, during a speech on Wednesday. Non-exclusive discussions with Airbus for the sale of Atos’ big data and security activities are still ongoing.
The Tech Foundations part remains for sale, a source close to the matter told AFP. This entity, which brings together the company’s historical outsourcing activities, resulted from the split carried out in the summer of 2022.
In the midst of a financial collapse, Atos, which was to publish its 2023 annual results on Thursday, postponed this publication until March 20, awaiting the submission of an independent report concerning the company’s accounts.
The group, however, announced that its turnover in 2023 amounted to nearly 10.7 billion euros, compared to 11.3 billion in 2022, and that its operating margin was 4.4% for the financial year.
Atos also specified that its free cash flow for the second half “amounted to -109 million euros” and that its net financial debt was “2,230 million euros at the end of 2023”.
The future of the company has been unclear for several months, while its restructuring project is slipping and its debt level is panicking investors, with 3.65 billion euros of loans and bonds to be repaid or refinanced. by the end of 2025.
At the beginning of February, Atos, which employs some 110,000 employees worldwide, renounced a capital increase of 700 million euros and appointed an agent to negotiate with its creditors.