{"id":25600,"date":"2023-04-27T06:40:39","date_gmt":"2023-04-27T06:40:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/frances-atos-posts-higher-than-expected\/"},"modified":"2023-04-27T06:45:52","modified_gmt":"2023-04-27T06:45:52","slug":"atos-cybersecurity-unit-drives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/atos-cybersecurity-unit-drives\/","title":{"rendered":"Atos&#8217; cybersecurity unit drives sales ahead of split"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Mathieu Rosemain<\/p>\n<p>PARIS (Reuters) -Struggling French IT consulting firm Atos posted higher-than-expected quarterly sales on Thursday, driven by its cybersecurity and digital transformation unit Eviden, as the group continues to work on its costly split-up plan.<\/p>\n<p>Home to assets deemed strategic by the French government, Atos is striving to regain investor confidence after several setbacks, heavy losses and sharp stock swings precipitated by governance instability. <\/p>\n<p>The recent withdrawal by Airbus, the world&#8217;s largest planemaker, from a plan to buy a minority stake in Eviden leaves Atos looking for other strategic partners as it seeks to firm up the financing of its transformation plan. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;(This) has clearly dampened the sentiment around the stock and investors are understandably keen to get clarity on interest from potential suitors,&#8221; Citi said in a note prior to Atos&#8217; quarterly update. <\/p>\n<p>Eviden groups Atos&#8217; most coveted assets such as cybersecurity division BDS and supercomputers, fuelling speculation about interest from other players in the cybersecurity field, such as Thales. Thales&#8217; CEO reiterated last month he wasn&#8217;t interested in Eviden. <\/p>\n<p>First-quarter revenue was up 2.8% from a year earlier to 2.81 billion euros ($3.11 billion), beating the analyst consensus provided by the company.<\/p>\n<p>Eviden, which the group plans to spin-off by the end of the year, posted 9.5% growth in sales on an organic basis to 1.33 billion euros, offsetting a 2.6% drop in sales at Atos&#8217; loss-making Tech Foundations IT consulting legacy activities.<\/p>\n<p>Yet the group said its &#8220;book-to-bill&#8221; ratio, which helps investors evaluate the outlook for tech companies, only marginally improved in the first quarter, coming in at 73% compared to 72% a year ago. <\/p>\n<p>Shares of Atos, which used to be part of France&#8217;s blue-chip CAC 40 index, have recovered some losses since the start of the year, but are still down almost 50% over the last 12 months.  <\/p>\n<p>The group confirmed its full-year targets. <\/p>\n<p>Atos said its much-expected shareholder meeting would take place on June 28, amid strong criticism from some investors of board chairman Bertrand Meunier. <\/p>\n<p>($1 = 0.9047 euros)<\/p>\n<p> (Reporting by Mathieu Rosemain;Editing by Uttaresh Venkateshwaran and Mark Potter)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/frances-atos-posts-higher-than-expected\/file-photo-people-walk-in-front-of-the-atos-companys\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportTechnologyNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3Q04H-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3Q04H-VIEWIMAGE\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Mathieu Rosemain PARIS (Reuters) -Struggling French IT consulting firm Atos posted higher-than-expected quarterly sales on Thursday, driven by its cybersecurity and digital transformation unit Eviden, as the group continues to work on its costly split-up plan. Home to assets deemed strategic by the French government, Atos is striving to regain investor confidence after several [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":25601,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1220],"tags":[1223],"class_list":["post-25600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-technology","tag-updated"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportTechnologyNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3Q04H-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25600"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25600\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25698,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25600\/revisions\/25698"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}