The acquisition is negotiated at an enterprise value of €500m and could go up to €625m including earn-outs.
The French government has entered negotiations with the French IT firm Atos to potentially acquire the company’s advanced computing activities for €500m. The government’s acquisition plan comes after a number of failed attempts to acquire Atos by other private firms.
With a target of signing the share purchase agreement by 31 May 2025, Atos said in a statement to the press today (25 November) that the €500m offer could potentially rise to €625m to include earn-outs. Upon signing the agreement, the government of France is expected to pay Atos an initial amount of €150m.
Atos’ advanced computing business regroups the company’s high-performance computing and quantum as well as the business computing and artificial intelligence divisions. This section of Atos’ business currently employs approximatively 2,500 employees and generated a revenue of approximately €570m in 2023.
In addition, the IT company said it would commit to launch a formal sale process for its cybersecurity products and mission critical systems, which generated revenue of around €340m in 2023.
Atos, who has been struggling for a number of years, divested its energy division Worldgrid to the IT and engineering services firm Alten in a €270m deal expected to close this year. Earlier this month, the French government took a preferred share in Atos’ supercomputing unit.
Meanwhile, earlier this year, Atos, who appointed its seventh CEO in three years this October, received approximately €1.7bn in financing from banks and shareholders. In return, the company converted €2.9bn of its debt into shares, giving banks and shareholders control over the company’s finances.
The struggling company’s share price tumbled significantly throughout 2024, falling from roughly €7.7 per share in December 2023 to its current low of €0.18, down from €2 earlier this year.
In June, digital transformation company Onepoint, who was slated to take over Atos pulled back its bid, while just months earlier, Airbus, who made a non-binding acquisition offer of nearly €1.8bn to Atos, backed off.
The IT services company provides tailored end-to-end solutions for all industries in 69 countries – employing approximately 82,000 with an annual revenue of around €10bn.
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