Atos welcomes “with satisfaction” the non-binding offer from the State on its sovereign activities

The State is taking a further step in its commitment to the issue of the Atos technology group, which is in serious financial difficulty. The State Holdings Agency sent a non-binding letter of intent this weekend to the group's management to buy certain sensitive and strategic activities affecting the sovereignty of France. The objective is “to prevent strategic activities for France from passing into the hands of foreign actors,” Bruno Le Maire said on Sunday on LCI.

More precisely, the scope concerned brings together activities on high-performance computing and servers participating in AI and quantum computing (“advanced computing”), critical systems concerning communication systems (“mission critical systems”). and cybersecurity products (“cyber products”). Atos supercomputers are used in particular in the field of Defense for the simulation of nuclear tests and in the civil sector for the management of EDF's nuclear power plants. This scope represents a turnover of 900 million euros (out of a total of nearly 11 billion euros for the entire Atos group), according to Bruno Le Maire's office, and around 4,000 employees mainly located in France. If Bercy refuses to indicate the price at which it valued this scope of activities, according to our information it would have given an indicative value of between 800 million and one billion euros.

For Thierry Breton, European Commissioner for the Internal Market and former CEO of Atos, “the company's very strategic assets must remain in Europe”. “Atos had become number one in cybersecurity and number three in the world, it was a company which had zero net debt,” underlined the businessman, on France Inter. Following his departure and “for two years, the company was still one of the ones that performed best but then there were strategic differences with the succession of five general managers,” he then added.

The action of the French IT group Atos jumped 14% in the first exchanges on the Paris Stock Exchange after the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire announced that he had sent a letter of intent with a view to acquiring all the sovereign activities of the group. Atos shares showed an increase of 13.99% to 2.17 euros around 9:10 a.m., but still showed a fall of almost 70% since the start of the year. In financial difficulty, Atos clarified on Monday that it now needed 1.1 billion euros in liquidity to finance its activity in 2024-2025, compared to 600 million euros previously estimated.

The State now wishes to take advantage of the coming weeks to deepen the "due diligence" work and submit a firm offer by June, the time to advance discussions with a consortium of industrialists who would ensure for the future development of these high-tech activities. “The State is not intended to manage such activities alone,” adds the minister's office. Bercy does not wish to give names at this stage of the groups with which it is in discussions, but these would be companies operating in the fields of defense or aeronautics. “Industrialists who would make sense in terms of the development of these activities” is simply indicated by Bercy, some having already looked into the Atos file in the past.

The Ministry of the Economy had indicated at the end of March its desire to build “in the coming weeks a national solution for the protection of strategic activities”. The State had participated to the tune of 50 million euros in financing of 450 million euros to help it stabilize its financial situation and in return acquired a preferential share (Golden Share) which allows it to have a special presence on sensitive activities and to veto certain operations.

The ball is currently in the court of Atos management, which must discuss this offer with the board of directors. Reacting this Monday morning, the ex-flagship expressed his “satisfaction”.