For more than a month, Atos has been launching a call for applications with the aim of finding shareholders for its future subsidiary Evidian. The Digital Services Company (ESN) officially announced on February 16, 2023 that it is entering into a phase of advanced negotiations with Airbus for a stake in this spin-off.
Airbus makes an offer to Atos, who seem to be quite happy with the proposal
Since January 10, the day the tender was opened, Atos and Airbus had entered into preliminary talks to better understand the aerospace giant’s project. Since February 16, these discussions have turned into real negotiations. The aircraft manufacturer wants to become the reference shareholder of the subsidiary with 29.9%. An offer that, according to information from the newspaper, was received very positively internally The Echoes. The stock market also welcomed the announcement as Atos’ share price rose by more than 8%.
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In June 2022, the French ESN announced its new strategic plan for the period 2022-2026. The company planned to split into two separate, publicly traded companies. In reality, this split aims to focus on activities like cloud, data and cybersecurity that they believe could easily interest buyers. Atos then founded Tech Foundations, his subsidiary, which took over his historical activity, namely outsourcing. A second spin-off called Evidian will bring together cyber security, cloud and digitization consulting.
Specifically, Evidian recovered 70% of Atos’ capital, while Tech Foundations took over 30% of the remaining capital. At the same time, the company will part with Unify, its subsidiary that specializes in remote collaboration solutions such as video conferencing or document exchange. Canadian company Mitel, well established in the business communications space, is on track to acquire this company, which would allow it to double its customer base.
The aircraft manufacturer is the only candidate to become a shareholder in Evidian
Initially, Thalès was at the top of the list to become one of Evidian’s shareholders. The French giant had shown interest and received the support of the Ministry of Economy to resume this activity. Nevertheless, during the opening of the tender, Thalès took the time to inform the media that ultimately it would not make any offers to Atos. The group has no desire to diversify into areas of activity that it does not already serve “.
Other organizations had shown interest, such as Onepoint, a French company specializing in digital transformation. The company had offered to buy the company for 4.2 billion euros. A proposal rejected by Atos last September. Rightly so, because the French ESN wants to achieve a valuation of at least 7 billion euros. Under these conditions, Airbus should pay out at least 1.2 billion euros to get what it is looking for.
For now, the aerospace champion is the only player to have made a concrete offer as Atos is officially looking for shareholders. ” We do not intend to grant exclusivity to Airbus and no certainty can be given as to the outcome of negotiations and the conclusion of a final set of agreements between the parties. “, says the company in its press release. Atos no doubt expects other players to intervene in the deal.
Source: siecledigital.fr
