(Bloomberg) -- The French government offered to buy Atos SE’s advanced computing assets for as much as €625 million ($653 million) after an earlier offer from the state expired.
The non-binding bid gives the business an enterprise value of €500 million and may include additional payments based on future earnings, the company said in a statement on Monday. The offer, which expires in May, includes Atos’s artificial intelligence business as well as its supercomputers, which are used by researchers, the nuclear power industry and the military. Those assets generated revenue of about €570 million in 2023, the company said in the statement.
Atos, once one of France’s premier technology companies, is selling assets to work its way out of a debt pile that threatened its ability to continue operating. The company is being handed over to its creditors, which are seeking to recoup as much value as possible as they try to streamline the business and restart growth. The advanced computing assets, part of Atos’s Big Data & Security unit, are considered to be of strategic importance to the French state.
Atos bonds, which have fallen sharply to just a few of cents on the euro over the past 12 months, barely moved on the news. Its €350 million notes due in Nov. 2028 fell almost half a cent, to around 6.5 cents.
Atos said it will also launch a formal sale process for the remaining parts of BDS, including what it calls mission-critical systems and its cybersecurity offering, which together generated about €340 million in revenue in 2023. Potential buyers for those parts will need to be approved by the French government, the French finance ministry said in a separate statement.
Earlier this month, Atos agreed to sell its Worldgrid unit to French engineering and tech consultant Alten SA for €270 million, including debt.
Atos is a key supplier to major French industries including nuclear facilities and last summer’s Olympic Games in Paris, and the government has monitored its breakup closely, working to keep the most sensitive parts of the business under French control. The state previously bid for the company’s supercomputers in a €700 million proposal that had also included cybersecurity assets from the BDS unit, but that offer expired without a deal.
The earlier failed negotiations with the French state were the latest in a string of discussions for Atos assets that fell apart as the company looked for cash to pay off its debts.
Atos had a market value of about €80 million as of market close on Friday. Shares rose 105% to €0.32 in Paris on Monday, giving it a market value of about €99 million. Shares will be massively diluted when Atos’s financial restructuring, recently agreed with creditors, completes in the next couple of months.
French defense company Thales SA previously said it could be interested in some of the big data and cybersecurity division’s mission-critical assets, though a firm offer hasn’t yet materialized. Airbus SE walked away from a deal to buy the big data and cybersecurity businesses in March. Talks to sell its legacy IT services unit — which started at an initial valuation of €2 billion including debt — to Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky’s EPEI also ended without a deal.
Atos’s creditors will take control of the company by January in a deal that will convert €2.9 billion of loans and bonds into equity and new financing. Philippe Salle, who was named Atos’s seventh chief executive officer in about three years, will take over the role from February and will be charged with steering the deals to completion and turning the company around.
--With assistance from Bruce Douglas.
(Updates with bonds, shares and additional context throughout)
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