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ATOS appoints CEO, revises FCF down amidst report of court assistance plea

IT SECTOR
  • Paul Saleh has been appointed CEO of ATOS, replacing Yves Bernaert while Jacques-François de Prest joins as Group CFO.
  • ATOS expects to meet FY23 revenue and operating margin targets, though FCF is expected to fall short by approximately €100mn for H2.
  • French-language paper Le Figaro reported yesterday that Chairman Jean-Pierre Mustier is to seek assistance from the Nanterre Commercial Court to help negotiate with 22 creditor banks with some financing lines requiring renegotiation this month.
  • The ATOS update stated that ATOS has not requested a mandataire ad hoc or open conciliation proceedings but reserves the right to do so.
  • ATOS is concurrently negotiating the sale of two major assets: Tech Foundations to Daniel Kretinsky and its cyber and big data activities (BDS) to Airbus.
  • ATOS have stated that the Airbus bid is in the region of €1.5bn to €1.8bn though we note comments from Oppo analysts that the sale price of strategic assets could be deemed low after Mustier indicated that pleasing shareholders is not a priority.
  • ATOS shares have sold off by close to 40% since our bullet on 14 Dec on the announcement that shareholder Onepoint has increased its holding in ATOS to 11.4% (shedding 30% YTD alone).
  • Short positions in the stock are growing - we see €58.5mn worth of shorts via SPOS, representing close to 11% of the market cap. Astaris Capital Management increased it’s short to 2.35% of market cap on Thursday.
  • ATOS’s 2029 sold off by €1.24 on Thursday and €2.97 on Friday to close the week at €48.37.

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