All the shocks for the French company Atos
French technology group Atos appoints new CEO and provides update on cash flow. The stock collapses on the Paris stock exchange. All the details
Start of the week with upheavals at the top and a crash on the Paris Stock Exchange for the French group Atos, active in the IT sector.
The company has appointed its chief financial officer, Paul Saleh, to the post of general manager. Saleh, 67 years old, thus takes over from Yves Bernaert. Atos' new general manager has "great experience, especially in the technology sector", said Atos president Jean-Pierre Mustier, who joined the company last October.
In recent times Atos has been struggling to restore its business. The company must refinance or repay 3.65 billion euros in loans and bonds by 2025. Paul Saleh is the company's fifth CEO in 2.5 years, notes Bloomberg who reports that the change at the top stems from a “disagreement between the board and the outgoing CEO on a turnaround strategy for the struggling technology company."
The company, in addition to announcing Saleh's appointment, warned on Monday that free cash flow would fall slightly short of its initial target for the second half of the year, sending its share price tumbling. At 12.20 the stock was trading negative by 13.53% at 4.21 euros.
All the details.
NEW CEO FOR ATOS
Atos said Saleh, currently chief financial officer, would become chief executive, the company's fourth in less than two years as it faces a series of profit warnings.
Saleh succeeds Yves Bernaert, who leaves the company "after an intense period of transformation", Atos said, with Jacques-Francois de Perst joining as CFO after holding finance roles at car parts company Mobivia and the telecommunications group Vodafone, recalls Reuters .
In the note, the company said that CEO Saleh will still focus on debt refinancing, the sale of the Tech Foundations business and the sale of the Big Data & Security (BDS) business, which brings together the cybersecurity businesses, the supercomputers inherited from Bull and those related to artificial intelligence, at Airbus .
COLLAPSE IN THE STOCK MARKET
The news does not enthuse the market, on the contrary. Atos shares fell 16% in early trading. The stock has fallen about 40% since the beginning of the year.
NOTICE ABOUT ONE OF THE FINANCIAL OBJECTIVES
Additionally, Atos also said that it expects free cash flow in the second half of 2023 to miss its target by around €100 million, but still expects to meet its full-year financial targets.
AT WHAT POINT IS THE COMPANY'S RESTRUCTURING?
As Bloomberg recalls, Atos has faced a series of setbacks and governance changes in recent years as it tries to restructure its operations ahead of more than 2 billion euros in debt repayments over the next two years.
Also today, the French newspaper Les Echos reports that the company's restructuring plan is encountering difficulties.
The French IT company is taking longer than expected to negotiate the sale of its loss-making Tech Foundations arm to Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky's EPEI. According to Les Echos , which quotes an anonymous source, a "last chance" meeting between the parties is scheduled for the next few days.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/tutti-gli-scossoni-per-la-societa-francese-atos/ on Mon, 15 Jan 2024 13:59:04 +0000.