Le pré-release du call sous forme d’article, avec seulement les questions posées par les sales managers a suscité beaucoup de curiosité et un peu de frustration et de mails du type « quelle était la réponse à la question « pourquoi il fallait plus de cash, alors que les liquidités étaient censées être OK jusqu’à la fin de l’année ? »
D’ores et déjà à cette question, je peux vous répondre cash, la réponse de Paul est la suivante : « c’est parce qu’on n’imaginait pas que nos fournisseurs iraient jusqu’à nous demander d’être payé avant de livrer, ce qui nous oblige à leur faire des avances [Pourtant le blog, lui, début janvier expliquait que 80% des fournisseurs demandaient un paiement au cul du camion et j’ai jamais été DAF ni DG], D’autre part, si un mois X, un gros client payait en retard, nous ne voudrions pas décaler vos salaires de quelques jours et créer une terreur à l’intérieur de la société, aussi, nous avions besoin d’un peu de flexibilité. »
CQFD. Le fameux coussin de sécurité !!
Donc la rumeur que nous avions eu début février que les salaires de février étaient assurés mais pas forcément ceux de mars, c’était bien un risque réel après le tsunami du CCC. Rumeurs d’ailleurs qui ne venaient pas des couloirs, mais de Yannick Tricaud, rapporté par ses équipes.
Ce qui est marrant c’est le choc culturel. Aux USA on aime bien les explications très précises, ça rassure. En France on est habitué à la langue de bois et une réassurance générale, mais pas aux détails.
Donc je serais salarié Atos et j’entendrais « il y avait un risque qu’on vous décale le salaire de quelques jours » et même si depuis 450M€ sont tombé du ciel, si j’avais un prélèvement Cetelem le 31 du mois, à la vitesse où Atos brule le cash, je serais terrorisé que la paie tombe le 3 du mois et que le prélèvement soit rejeté.
Donc là Paul, il est à côté de la plaque. En voulant rassurer, il effraie.
Les autres points clefs à noter :
En permanence Atos est génial, c’est la meilleure companie du monde, vous êtes extraordinaire, on a des milliers de brevets (mais ça a touché « une d’Airbus sans faire bouger l’autre »…). Une fois c’est amusant, mais le comique de répétition, il faut aimer…
Comme dirait Mr Wolf, Paul Saleh aime bien tailler des pipes à tout le monde… C’est presque à se demander pourquoi l’action vaut 1.80€ et la MOP à 4% dans une boite si géniale… Peut-être parce qu’il est PDG que depuis le 15 janvier et que maintenant ça va dépoter…
Point très intéressant au début du call, hors de question d’un reversal (marche arrière et refusion de TFCo et Eviden) ce sont deux businesses qui n’ont rien à voir l’un et l’autre, à un tel point qu’on se demande comment Thierry Breton faisait pour survivre 😀 .
Et puis à la fin de l’interview, il explique que tous les clients qu’il a rencontré depuis 15 jours (Point positif, il a rencontré au moins un client) souhaitent avoir un seul interlocuteur pour toute les ligne de produits d’Atos. Si c’est pas une demande de reversal des clients, ça, qu’on m’explique ce que c’est !!
Pour ceux qui n’ont pas lu le 1er article, je recontextualise : Visio-Call par Teams le jeudi 10 avril. Cette fois Teams marchait même si en interne, il se dit que la facture Microsoft de janvier n’a toujours pas été payée. Pour ceux qui veulent revoir les moments d’humour du management Atos lors de la réunion Teams qui a foirée il y a un mois, cliquez-ici .
Aux commandes, Paul le DG, Carlo le COO, et Clay Van Doren désormais directeur commercial Monde pour TFCo et Eviden (si c’est pas un reversal ça…).
PS: désolé pour la remarque sur les cheveux de Clay au CMD, il y avait des raisons médicales et d’autre part Clay fait partie des talents d’Atos que le blog aprécie tout particulièrement. Si j’étais président d’Atos, il n’y aurait pas photo. Paul aurait dégagé et Clay pris sa place.
Au poste de DJ, c’est Clay qui officiait. Entre les questions posées à l’écran et celle que Clay a choisies, il y a eu une certaine sélectivité. En gros, Clay a évité les questions les plus sensibles que je vous remets avant de vous laisser prendre connaissance de :
1/ la bande son
2/ la transcription écrite car la bande son est très dure à entendre.
Au passage pour les demeurés de Boursorama qui se demandent pourquoi j’ai fait une tirelire, 30€ de sous-traitance pour extraire le texte Script Python + AI + 4h de boulot pour corriger les erreurs …
Une question restera vraiment taboo, durant tout le call, c’est le retrait éventuel de la note CCC.
En effet, le sujet était hyper sensible car le vendredi 11, S&P au lieu de la tant espérée sortie de CCC, annonce une nouvelle dégradation à CCC- et surveillance négative.
Or il est strictement impossible que l’émetteur (Atos) ne soit pas averti à minima la veille, voir l’avant-veille de la dégradation.
Donc clairement, Paul n’a pas eu les couilles de leur dire « non seulement on va pas sortir de CCC, mais au contraire tant qu’un plan de sauvegarde ne sera pas signé, on risque d’être dégradé de nouveau, possiblement dans les prochains jours.
Là franchement, c’est couille molle à donf !
Bande son, exclue blog, suivie de la transcription.
If a fluent english reader see some corrections to do to the transcription, thanks for sending me the fixed text on MS-Word format 2003.
===
2024 April 10th.
Sales-managers call.
Paul agrees to share it to all sales people.
PAUL SALEH :
really, as I mentioned, sets us greatly for the future. There are a couple of messages that I want to just leave with you because there’s a lot of information that has percolated in the market over the last few days and so I want to just really put it in perspective for you. The first one is the fact that we have very clear strategy for the company that entails keeping all the assets of the company together. So I want to make sure that you just really anchor around that view right now. While we are keeping the business in separate ways, both tech foundations and Eviden and we’re working to coordinate our go-to-market plans there, I want to just really make sure that you understood that everything that we’ve communicated is based first of all on all the all the assets of the company remaining within the family of Atos. And then second of all, importantly also, is that we went out of our way to just really, just only not talking about the assets that we have and the talent that we have in each one of our activities within the company, but outlining the strategy, the top line strategy, as well as all the profit actions that have to take place over the next few years to position us for long-term success. And in fact, we gave even financial projections of what that may look like over the next four years. I invite each one of you just to go back and get access to those slides there and not just really throw away our slides. They actually outline very clearly what’s going to happen within each one of our offering lines, right, and what we intend to do. There’s obviously a whole lot more details that we have that we haven’t communicated beyond that, but I don’t want you to miss out on the fact that a lot of people wonder, okay, what is the strategy of the company? How are we going to help our clients basically using technology to just really achieve their own objectives?
02:04.160 –> 02:08.400
How are we going to do it is very outlined in this presentation that we made two days ago to the market. I would invite you to get access to it, and if you need also the talking points that link with that, we’ll make those available to you. It should not be any reservations about somebody coming to us and saying, I don’t really know what we’re up to. That should not be the conversation.
It should be very, very clear. This is what we’re up to. This is what we’re going to do. This is the objective that we’re going to get to target, and it should just really be communicated throughout your respective organization. That’s the first message I want to make with you.
The second thing that I want to just really also reinforce is that I am confident. I am confident, we are confident, meaning the board, as well as Carlo and the rest of the senior management team, we are confident we will have a solution to our financial position of debt.
Let me repeat that. We will have a solution, and we will have it by July of this year.
You ask, how do you know that? How could you just be so confident about it? I tell you that just because of two very specific factors. The first one is our banks, as well as our debt holders, have been working with us, and in fact, they’ve given us 400 million euros. 400 million euros.
They have increased their exposure to ATOS. They’ve given us 400 million in cash and in liquidity to continue to use for our business because they are confident that they will work with us in finding a solution of our debt. That should be just really an incredible confidence booster for you to say, well, this is not something that we have to fight for. The other of the participants are equally eager to find that solution with us.
04:04.320 –> 04:10.880
The second thing that is also very positive is that the French government is also participating in helping find a solution, and they’ve already shown interest by putting 50 million euros into the bucket of liquidity just to make sure that the company had at least signal to all of their clients that the French government is equally interested in making sure that the company is really on solid financial footing and will find a solution to its high level of debt.
That’s the second message. We will find a solution and we will find it by July. You have, you can walk away and communicate that to your clients without any reservations. The third one is we apply the parameters that are needed for us to just find that solution. Not only are we going to find it, but we have already said what it may look like. We’ve said that we would need 600 million in cash for new money in the form of investment. This is to fund the business over the next two years. And why do we need money over the next two years?
Because we do have investments that we’re making still in trying just to really invest in the business. We have some restructuring that we have to complete, and we also have investment that we’re making particularly in some sector of the business such as cloud, or we’re also making some investments in our advanced computing business. So that’s basically some of the things that are really with us still over the next two years. After that, as you look at the financials that we have published, the business ought to be generating more cash from operation. And the plan that we have shared with the market is a relatively conservative plan, because we didn’t want to really be just setting too high of a target, but it’s a reasonable plan that you can look at.
So the third point is that we’ve outlined both parameters. Another parameter that we shared with the market is that we need additional financial flexibility, or at least we would like to have it in the form of 300 million in terms of credit line that will allow us just to draw on it if we ever needed it. And then 300 million in bank guarantees. And what does that mean is that in some cases we may be pursuing contracts where the client may require bank guarantees instead of performance guarantees from the parent. And therefore we would like to have that in place so that we don’t have to just go knocking on different doors to be able to secure that. So 600 million in cash, 600 million in the form of credit lines for the company as well as bank lines that will allow us to just do the bank guarantees. The other thing that we said that we would need to do is reduce our debt by 2.4 billion.
2.4 billion. This would allow us to have a double B credit rating profile. What does that mean? It will allow us basically to go back to a level of rating that gave us ample access to the capital market on the way to just better even print profile over time. And lastly we also indicated that as part of the parameters we need to see the debt that remains of the books after the 2.4 billion reduction. Those that debt be just be extended by five years. So what does that mean?
That means that debt that was coming due at the end of this year would be moved by five years.
The debt that was coming due in 2025 will be moved to 2020-30 and the like. So basically giving the company again a lot more time to execute on its plan. So all the information that came out yesterday or at least on Tuesday was meant to just really give you the right signals to our clients, right signals to all of our employees that one the company has a very clear strategy that the company is keeping all of its assets to manage the business. Thirdly, that you know that a solution will be found and that solution will be found by July of this year. And lastly parameters that that solution will be very clearly if there’s any proposal for a solution will have to meet the parameters that we had outlined in our release. So over the next few weeks we should get a number of proposals towards that end and in fact we’ve already received a few of them already where people are indicating interest and proposal of how to deal with a solution along those lines.
Okay. So with that I’m going to just turn it to you for any questions you may have of me and or I don’t know if I have to just drag over to anybody or to Clay.
09:01.760 –> 09:06.720
CLAY VAN DOREN :
Yeah, it’s well.
So actually we’re gonna ask Carlo to reflect on some of the custom interactions he’s had in the last couple days and then we’ll go to Q&A. Well you could have done this also yourself Clay so I’ll do it on behalf of both of us.
CARLO D’ASARO BIONDO :
I’ve saw the last days are very positive probably the best days I had since I am at Atos. The impression I got is the customers and I spoke with seven customers in two days and they’re continuing the coming days. There is a joint reaction which is okay we see the end of the tunnel. They have a date now and they have an additional date because you know in addition to what Paul has said we have also communicated that we are waiting for offers from the different consortia interested parties developed by the end of April which means that you know we could also have at the end of April offers which are positive which implies that you know it’s like having all the ingredients in the kitchen.
You have all the ingredients in the kitchen and you can cook the dish once you have the ingredients cooking the dish that’s no matter of work but it’s actually easier. So the customers see that as very positive point one we are coming out of the woods. Point two they are now putting back targets saying I can help you again I can you know put you back in big tenders I can trust you for long term if you confirm in the coming two months that this is the trend which we will confirm.
10:23.520 –> 10:30.160
So this is one.
The second point I wanted to tell you is Clay and I will and me in particular because Clay is already doing that but I want to spend now 70 percent of my time I ask the authorization to my boss here present I want to spend 70 to 80 percent of my time outside not in Paris but with customers. I am personally convinced that the way we bring this to success is by spending more time with customers because they need that to hear directly from all of us and maybe from me as as part of the leadership and Clay that you know we are getting out of the woods and things are going well and all the customers say one thing quality of delivery is very high I’ve got only two exceptions since I arrived but everybody says and our people matter so we have to do whatever we can and understand that some things are difficult but whatever we can to keep people stable on the business and going around the world would be the best solution so please invite me to see your customers I’m here to serve you and I am very optimistic because the first reaction from customers were like you know a breath of fresh air so I think this is good to see that we are now seeing the end of the tunnel.
Clay sorry just wanted to add that experience and I think you had the same experience in the last two days because I saw your smile when we spoke before the call before.
CLAY VAN DOREN :
Yeah no I think um I mean let’s move on to Q&A but uh the reaction has been positive uh that the to be honest it’s one of the questions is in here so it’s kind of a good lead in Paul right if I could the the only question has been how come you’re so confident will be done in July and what actually will be done in July is that just the debt refinancing you know or might there be new investors and the new investor paradigm and all that might change but that’s the only you know real challenge I’ve gotten is you know will you really be done in July and what actually would be done in July right
PAUL SALEH :
so let’s open up with that one yeah let me try my best at it again the reason I can say that is that everybody is so eager I’m talking about all three of us in the first place is we want to just get clarity for our clients as fast as possible but also our banks and our bondholders as well as the French government they all realize as parties to this these discussions that the sooner we can get to a resolution the better it is for the business that time is not it’s not on our side so they want to just get this thing done as rapidly as possible you can see from the timetable that as we have indicated we’ll get all the proposal in by the 26th of April and then we’ll be able to sort through to them to make sure that they get to the objective that we have, we have shared in the market. So I’m feeling confident because everybody’s just incredibly incredibly invested in time in fact just to give you a sense of it we were still working at four o’clock in the morning the night before the earnings just to make sure that or not the earnings before the market update to make sure all the points were really well clarified and that is a reflection of people you know on bank side as well as lawyers and advisors and everybody totally invested in four in the morning that gives you get a sense of how committed people are they’re not just really sitting there.
And why July just because the conciliation process that we have started has a four months period and you know and something has to happen within the first the four months it can be extended one more time you know so, so it can go five months.
But knowing that French holidays in the summer starts in the beginning of August I’m pretty sure that all the French bankers and all the French lawyers and all the various banks are going to be eager just to be going on vacation and so I do believe the July time frame will ultimately hold and if you ask which form would it take by that time we would have all parties agreeing to the overall solutions that would just basically be a solution that addresses all the parameters that I have mentioned there will be either bondholders or banks or new investors that say I’m putting 600 million in the form of cash in return for X.
We will hear somebody saying here’s how we’re going to really reduce as part of my proposal we’re going to reduce the debt it may take a form of X or Y and those are the kind of things that will come together as one solution overall that will be endorsed by the various parties that will be therefore executed by ultimately all parties and ratified by the courts.
15:25.680 –> 15:31.120
CLAY VAN DOREN :
Sounds good let’s I got a question for Carlo if we can go next and Carlo it goes along the lines attrition are we worried about attrition and it seems that everybody’s targeting our employees and accounts and all these other things and people are concerned about you know can we maintain attrition at low levels until the July time frame when the fix comes.
First of all I’m extremely concerned and I should be and we should look at attrition with extreme attention also because we are asking sacrifices to people we’re asking sacrifices to the sales force you know and we have to work on that but we’re asking sacrifices on the bonuses we are asking sacrifices on you know having difficult targets we’ll do whatever we can to make things more achievable but you know we are asking sacrifices to people the sales force in presence but also to the delivery people we are doing this knowing that you know we are doing whatever we can to treat people in a fantastic way but we have to leave is that head companies in difficulties at the moment so the sacrifice I think we need to be honest I’ve acknowledged that we are asking them the reaction I see seems generally is incredible first of all I have to tell you that I’m monitoring this very closely and I’m not talking about delivery we do have on 98 percent of our customers delivery but improving quality since last year so I am incredibly moved by the extraordinary effort people in these companies are to do their job well because delivery of this quality means that people are not only not abandoning but they are doubling down and so we should be as salespeople extremely grateful to all of that not to mean I’m not grateful to the sales for that and the fact that we don’t have a significant attrition on the delivery for now and I’m monitoring this every day and it’s not seeming to increase is what is keeping our customers with us they love the people that they’re in front of them again the more customers we bring to India the more customers we bring to the US the more customers we bring around to see the teams meet the teams the better so this is the first part of the answer.
The second part is yes I’m of course scared for the salespeople as well and for everybody doing those sacrifices but I have to tell you something it will be out of the woods in two three months now and then we’ll be part of rebuilding one of the best companies the world starting from a very healthy core because this delivery is a healthy core and us in sales and in business have the opportunity to develop that starting from there it’s an extraordinary opportunity and I know that Paul myself and the board and everybody will know will be recognition for people that stayed and fight and brought us where we are so I would say you know it’s interesting to see the end of the story and then participate to the development it’s important to explain to our people that the quality of the work and what we do the quality of missions we have with customers is great and this is probably the reasons why people stay.
Last thing I want to add is few customers tell me « Carlo what they love about Atos because I always ask what you like and online is that you take risks for us » so Paul maybe we’re not always the most profitable company in the world I discussed with you and I about our job to try to improve that we always remember we do that Paul the first that this company is doing mission critical job taking risks and so this is also one of the reason people are proud you are since people and our kids are proud of what they do the way they do it and they’re happy to take risks not many system integration companies do that this way this is the values that company we create simplicity we take risk for our customers we fight for them and we are not shy of you know dirty our hands for our customers you don’t have many companies really doing that so I think those elements are the reasons why there is not much churn because finding a company with people operational level which are at sales level which have better values than ours go for it.
CLAY VAN DOREN :
good luck
PAUL SALEH :
I would just want to echo something that everything that Carlo has said I want to summarize it look I’ve been in this industry for about maybe 14 years and I will tell you without any reservation that we have one of the best organization the best talent in the industry I’ve seen you know the caliber of individual that we have the level of certification that people have the quality of our academies the quality of our trainings the quality of the opportunity that we’re giving people these are things that really make sense makes us such an incredible company in fact that’s what’s something that I’ve always marveled at looking at Atos from the outside again if I say this is a place that was recognized one of the best places to work out why because you will find a nucleus of tremendous talent that draws enough talent and work that we do that you will not find anywhere else.
So I think that is something that we need to preserve it’s just a matter of time before we just really lift that cloud that’s been over our head and we will just come back to just really continuing to make the right investment the right opportunity and giving the right opportunity for people and I’m feeling confident that we’ll get there very very fast.
CLAY VAN DOREN :
okay Paul I think this one’s for you there’s several questions.
20:46.720 –> 20:55.520
Around the additional funding we’ve received so one question is but they’re all unrelated one is why why do we need the additional funding I thought we had funding to carry us through the end of the year and then the second part being to that question is why would anybody lend us additional funds given our financial situation and our credit rating
PAUL SALEH :
all right let’s start with the first one I think the reason why we wanted additional liquidity is that we have a lot of you know development that can come in at some point are another surprises in fact Jacques Francois was telling me that some of our suppliers at some point were turning and started to ask us to pay things in advance which we had not really totally factored you wonder why is that that we needed to do that and but that’s was the price to pay for being in this environment of uncertainty and so we wanted to have additional flexibility to deal with these potential issues.
In fact also we wanted to have enough flexibility in case some clients for example failed to pay us on time in fact that was the case at the end of March where you know several clients I think they might have to maybe 80 million euros or the like slipped in a few days. Well if something like this were to slip we didn’t want to be in positions like well we’re paying our payroll at the end of the month let’s not just suddenly slip it by a few days people would be freaking out if we did that so we wanted to have enough flexibility so that we didn’t have to just really be as tight otherwise.
And then lastly it’s just the normal thing you want to be able to take advantage of some market opportunities to invest faster in certain areas and that it was a very welcome amount of flexibility that’s been given to us now.
Why would banks do that or why would the bondholders do that just because again they fundamentally believe that the company is very very valuable that the assets that we have are just not properly recognized in the marketplace and the more they spend time with us the more they realize that you know given the right time we will be able to just really regain the leadership position that we’ve had not only in the top line but also in improving the profitability of the company so that’s why they believe in this solution and it’s coming from the same people that are going to be asked to just really reduce their debt so it’s just really a remarkable once again of the confidence that lenders have these are existing lenders this is not new folks.
This is the existing lenders. They have incredible confidence in the fundamental value of the company i’m going to turn to Jacques Francois if he wants to add anything
JEAN-FRANCOIS
thank you very much Paul
hi everybody glad to be on this call with the team. Yes thanks for the opportunity
Maybe one or two messages i’d like to take advantage of these questions to pass on to you so we are managing cash very carefully and that’s healthy and that’s good and we want to do that you have a role to play in there and you can help at us by billing on time by collecting on time at the end of march we had more than 300 million collections overdue and you know it’s a big amount and every single one of you can make sure the house is in order and that’s helping to make to make sure again that we can pay suppliers on time and that everything goes well. So i thank you in advance for your support.
CLAY VAN DOREN :
very good a couple more questions
one i’ll handle um that uh it says we’ve talked about our SGNA decreases as we go forward um yeah i’m in sales should i be worried about my job going forward if someone from tech foundation so i’ll answer it from that perspective so we don’t have any material headcount reduction targets in inside of the sales force inside of tech foundation there’s inevitably every year there’s some reshuffling that happens but we’re investing in sales at this point.
So never say never but at least for now i don’t want anybody worrying about the job based on any cost takeouts that we have to take right now.
25:33.440 –> 25:40.640
okay next question.
is i paul i think this has to go to you so there’s three questions that are enrolling into one that says we spent the last two years talking about splitting the business and splitting all our efforts and splitting the business.
Is the recent comments a reversal of that in terms of reintegration of our activities yeah i think.
PAUL SALEH :
let’s just be very clear once again the fact that we are keeping all the assets of the companies together does not mean reintegrating the businesses we’re going to continue we’ve said it repeatedly, we’re going to continue to run the businesses as separate entities because they have different investment needs they have different characteristics to deal with they have sometimes different clients interestingly enough it could be the same name of the company as a client however the people who make the decisions may be totally different sometimes it could be a CEO office sometimes it’s a business leader that’s making the decision on behalf of their new business unit.
So we need to be somewhat recognizing the fact that we need to continue to drive those businesses as separate businesses. However when it comes to the client should not be worrying about how to do business with us they don’t have to sort through as if somebody from Atos from the left side or the right side or whatever jersey colors they have.
In fact recently i was with one client i think in the European Union and i just really heard that same comment from the client they say well it was great but we like the fact that when we go to atos we go to one you know one supplier to our needs and you are there for us meaning they just really love to have that you know relationship where we as a company take the responsibility of divvying up the work the way we believe it should be divvied up it does not mean that everybody has to be in the same integrated unit it just means that we have to bring those solutions to the client in a way that is totally transparent to the client meaning like they don’t have to worry about is this coming from uh this cyber is coming from this components on the left and then i have to combine it with something on the right it’s our solution it’s our way of presenting ourselves to the client the rest of the business is run accepted so that’s basically what we’re saying right now it’s the way forward
CLAY VAN DOREN :
Gotcha
Okay next one’s for you carlo um which is in the past we’ve made investments around our partners and being present at their conferences and we’ve gotten quite a bit of business out of that how do you see that happening in 2024 and they specifically mentioned an AWS summit in pairs which i don’t know but i think mostly this is about reinvent and all those activities.
CARLO D’ASARO BIONDO :
we have invested to be present at most of the investment business ap microsoft table us we invested in the salons for cyber security we maintain that if i’m not wrong between 80 to 90 percent of the presence to those places because indeed they are important to service customers what we try to do is we diminished the the level of fanciness of how we are present sometime we went down from the level of platinum to gold or we diminished the size of goods so we try to make some savings because we have to accompany an institution like ours has to be very tight and it would also look strange that we are in a situation where we are in and we slur you know so we have been very careful to that but the presence has been maintained i don’t recall i think having refused an event assembly with us in Paris i look at with the teams it’s possible that we don’t participate to one event in particular but we have a full list of events resembling us with scp with google where you participate another thing i’m trying to work on and Clay you and i have been working on is to say look how do we prepare those events what meetings do we organize we make sure that there is a fight coming out of those events are we really rigorous on how we manage and exploit those events because i mean out of my experience and i’ve done that as i was at google as well there are many ways to manage that and i’ve been very very annoying in making sure that we do have meetings set up that the people who go there i have in front of them the right the right people that we are exploiting that at the maximum because we owe this to all of our colleagues when we have the chance of going to those events i try to go myself to most of those things i’ll be at sapphire in june in Orlando i’m trying to do my best to represent everywhere i was not at the google event last week because of the actuality of the situation and it’s impossible to be everywhere but yes we should be present yes we are present we are limiting the investment but we have a full selection of those events of which we participate if you feel as a sales guy that there is one event where you think we should have participated more or we didn’t participate give the feedback and we try to improve but we are not abandoning that at all
31:06.160 –> 31:12.640
CLAY VAN DOREN :
okay thank you so this one i guess is to jack françois if he’s still there i can’t tell but um we’ve done all this activity right and we would have thought that we would have seen a share price increase why has our share price not bounced
PAUL SALEH :
Hum so the Jean-François can dig out not okay sorry but he has to step up but let me try to just really give some guys typically we don’t really count that much on stock price movement because it’s totally out of control it’s just really trading between various parties except to say that you know right now for a lot of investors they do not know for sure or they are starting to worry about not worried it’s hard to just take into consideration the fact that if new money is going to come in or if that is going to be reduced it may come in the form of dilutions for them right so imagine today the stock the market price is closer to 200 some million euros.
So if we were to raise 600 million if that money new money is coming in the form of equity somebody that owns 20 to 100 percent of the company with that 200 million is going to be diluted because the market cap will be 800 and therefore they will have you know just a just about a smaller percentage of the company 20 to some percent of the company 100 company if all the debt that we have the 2.4 gets basically converted into equity you can imagine that in their case they’ll have even less ownership you know in the total company so that’s basically what is on the mind of investors that’s why the uncertainty still of what solution will be out there this way a little bit yet
But one thing that was positive though if you’d look at where the bonds were trading the bonds just really went up literally more than 50 percent or actually more than that they doubled in value after the announcement that we made.
CLAY VAN DOREN :
Okay
So the next question is really around partnering and so Carlo over to you i think and the question really says now do you feel that we should have a joint go to market between Atos and Tech foundation and specifically, what’s happening with cloud and the rationalization of cloud between tech and
CARLO D’ASARO BIONDO :
So on cloud the world cloud is the world that means many things it’s clear to me that this was two years ago there is a big change in the market and the analysts are now recognizing it which is cloud is more than public cloud Amazon google Microsoft it’s a it systems are complex infrastructures and given to lots of reason i don’t want to spend too much time answering the question but things like latency things like specific frameworks like banks and insurers of regulation sites sovereignty like cost of managing big data for AI on public cloud infrastructure will be more complex if we want a foundation to be a self-sustaining company and have a future it has to be the company developing the infrastructure of the future so some element of cloud foundation of cloud redesign of redefinition of the approach of information systems from private cloud to public cloud needs to work in tech foundation and tech foundation need to be able needs to be able to prime with the customers that serve them because if i come to you and tell you i’ve been serving you today tomorrow it’s somebody else it’s more difficult to sell that if i say i’m taking responsibility.
Of course Eviden is innovation, Eviden is you know lift and shake evident is redesigned Eviden is AI engineering services and managed services on the applications world so if you want to divide it badly we can say tech foundation will focus more on the infrastructure layer if you then focus more on the application layer and the two needs to work together because there is complexity and one will prime to the other according to the situation so for example if we are building a complex information system on CRM for a company together with sales force and maybe the use also of SAP and some things because it’s a very complex thing including clients you’ll have oh but i need some data close to me so maybe i need some elevating cost to me and having the data centers we have and having this presence will help so sometimes the evidence will lead because the app approach will lead innovation will lead from there sometimes tech foundation will lead and coming from there my personal conviction and i’ve never been hiding this and you know Paul and i have been discussing this many times it raised a big benefit in having both companies working together because one can prime and the other but we can answer the question whichever way it’s asked and somehow provide the right value so i believe that both companies need to have a cloud offer it may it has to be a little bit different but both of the companies need to be the company of the future so the infrastructure of the future is tech foundation the application of the future is more evident badly said but two needs to work together and personally i have convinced that at least the worker will try to do as much as they can in the coming weeks we need to restart spreading love between those two companies we need to start spreading back love and respect in those two companies because the level of sometimes fight that we had is not serving us it’s serving our competition.
CLAY VAN DOREN :
Okay thanks
i’ll take the next question which was more related towards sales is specifically targeted on Eviden and so i’ll focus on that, saying how do we continue to grow in evident given the circumstances and i’m relatively new to my time and Eviden although certainly not new to us that’s for sure and i think the first thing is our number one thing is we need more pipe right so we need to get into origination space and one of the things we haven’t focused enough on is large deals over time and you’re going to say well who knew what large deal new logo is going to come for us that’s probably true it’s going to be very difficult over the next couple months but actually if we create the pipe we’re going to come out of this as Paul said in in the July august time frame and we have to have that pipeline there.
The second thing is we’re not using all of the opportunities for us in either tech or in evident in terms of origination so we don’t consistently use advisors and we don’t tackle them globally our partners we’re not leveraging to the extent that we could i mean there’s great examples of where we do SAP in Central Europe and aws in france but we’re not consistent enough about that and then you know quite frankly we need to do our own white space analysis and territory planning inside each of the geographies in terms of what services can we upsell to our existing base and then what customers are coming to market in the near future.
So our execution could be better. But that isn’t our number one problem our number one problem is we need more pipe and more and more customers will be there and we will come out of this and when we come out of this we got to make sure we have the pipeline to convert.
So if i could ask anybody focus on pipeline over and over again over the the next period and i’m hoping that we have more than word. It is in sales force that’s your first step but then we’re not using all the tools consistently across the globe and that’s the number one thing if we want to go and do better over the near term.
I think we’ve time for one more and then and then we have to to wrap it up um this one is i mean and i’ll let Carlo you and Paul answer this because you deal with customers but is there anything new that we should be doing to reassure our customers different than what we did over the last three six months maybe Carlo
PAUL SALEH :
yeah first of all i i will go back to just really my initial comments to you in the sense that two new things if you were really the company right now has set a very clear path forward in terms of how it’s going to be executing its plan that has really been shared about that strategy for the next four years and second of all that we are confident really confident so before we it’s not that we were not comfortable finding a solution but right now it’s just you have more proof points we are confident that there will be a solution that’s going to be emerging to get us out of this financial dilemma we find ourselves in and the proof points as i mentioned to you where the banks and the bondholders lending us even more money and just being totally, totally committed to a solution with us as evidenced by giving us more money and as well as our the participation of the state which is really another indication of strong support for the future of the company and all of these things with a very clear timelines that are going to be really followed so those are the kind of new messages so just really this is the time to believe in the fact that we will get out of this thing very rapidly and then you have confidence that the talent that we have which has been really a high retention rate that talent is going to still be there to serve you for me
i’ve got three not very very new things but very shortly one is we need to spend more time with customers so any occasion we have to go out to customers spend time with them listen to them show empathy is particularly important in this moment because it counterbalanced the fact that we have difficulties so spend more time with the customers to take a lot of care as leaders because salespeople lead to the market they bring to the market take a lot of time and care in spending time with our delivery people connect with delivery more the quality of what we do and cross-sell and upsell is easier than new sales so if i were in sales today i would spend time with my delivery team also to understand what short things i can help to sell up how can i increase, how can i get through there what’s the next loop i would spend time there and and the third element to me is is try to bring as much as you can play myself and other leaders to customers with you because they need reassurance from you know the closer possible to both so the more we go there the more we spend time there the more we can help the better never hesitate to ask for help never hesitate to spend time with customers never hesitate to spend time with the delivery people.
Those are my three main messages today then we can talk about connection with the product but it would take time and i would like a workshop on product and connection with the product in the coming may weeks we are working on this display this may well be the topic of the next call
42:06.800 –> 42:10.400
you know how do we connect with our products and how we make sure that we we sell exactly what we want but it’s another topic that today
okay
PAUL SALEH :
Well listen mario let me try to wrap it up because of the time that we have so if you allow me so first of all i want to go back and thank you for just really your commitment to the company for everything that you do i think there’s a lot of things that you do that don’t go sometimes go unnoticed in a sense that you know people don’t fully realize the amount of time that you already spend with the client and the type of uh you know difficulties sometime in answering all the questions that they have but i want to just really thank you for your you know dedication to the company for your persistence and for your you know you’re you’re you’re all out for helping the client just really stay with us during this uncertain time but there’s a positive things coming up that we should just really be re incurred encouraged that we will get out of this thing very rapidly what you heard from Clay and also heard from Carlo, we have incredible opportunities as far as i look at in the future to grow the top line there is absolutely no talent that we miss or asset that we miss that can prevent us from achieving additional growth we have an incredible sales organization when it comes to the local sales effort but there are certain things that i think muscles that we need just to now work on a little bit i was just really talking recently to a group of people i just go to the gym at times as much as i can i mean i can see people just working on one part of their body which put things a little bit out of balance i would tell you in our case we do great at the local level, but we haven’t yet found the goods way and with this what we’re going to work with and you’ll hear it from Clay shortly and you’ll hear it from carlo as well we have to find a way just to take ideas that work in one market and just really spread them as a wildfire across the organization we should just have those playbook or use cases just absolutely no reason for them to percolate throughout an organization the opportunity also to cross that we have amazing amazing technology amazing people unbelievable come make yourself familiar with those capabilities in Gan AI or some of the things that we’re doing in cyber or some of the things that are coming out of advanced computing just to name a few; are just really just unbelievable solution that can be just of great interest to our client particularly as they, they’re moving into the next phase of their transformation so just from here on yourself because probably said it very well cross-sell is a great opportunity for us to grow the top line and build a pipeline.
The other thing that play is going to be working on is it was already working on is the new logo and also getting that big deals you know the engine going this is going to take a little bit of time to put together but i think we’re going to focus on that as well and finally i know that Diane and her team are thinking a little bit more about partnership how can we just really relaunch our partnership effort so that it gets really in part with what some of our peers are next next first of again in closing thank you for what you do let’s work together on some of the opportunities that are lie ahead for us and i believe i strongly believe we have a bright future ahead.
thank you
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Si vous avez subi d’énormes pertes sur Atos, sachez qu’une action en réparation est en cours de constitution sur le site Upra.fr (l’Union Pour la Réparation des Actionnaires), pour recouvrer une partie de vos pertes par voie de justice. Cette action sera totalement gratuite pour les plaignants car nous la ferons financer auprès de fonds spécialisés qui prendront un pourcentage en rémunération et l’UPRA ne vous demandera aucun paiement ni cotisation ou autres. À ce jour, plusieurs fonds ont fait part de marques d’intérêts, mais nous n’avons pas encore de réponse définitive. La réponse dépendra du nombre de personnes pré-inscrits et des comptes audités 2023.
Afin de ne pas déstabiliser la société, cette action ne visera ni Atos, ni ses dirigeants ou ex-dirigeants, mais uniquement ses auditeurs (commissaires aux comptes) en particulier DELOITTE supposé être le n°1 mondial de l’audit, mais que l’UPRA soupçonne avoir été très complaisante vis-à-vis d’Atos avec les règles comptables en vigueur, et leur reproche d’avoir fait manquer une chance aux actionnaires de ne pas acheter l’action quand elle était surcotée vis-à-vis de sa réelle valeur et d’avoir fait manquer une chance d’avoir vendu, quand la société s’effondrait et que la comptabilité ne reflétait pas cet effondrement, en particulier une absence totale de dépréciation d’actifs en 2022.
Je rappelle qu’à la publication d’un jugement qui dirait le contraire, Deloitte est supposé avoir certifié les comptes d’Atos de manière totalement sincère, et l’avis exprimé ci-dessous est l’avis de l’UPRA uniquement et reste à l’état de soupçons tant que nos preuves n’auront été validé par un juge.
Pour des raisons de coûts de procédure, elle est réservée aux personnes ayant subi des pertes supérieures à 10 000€, sinon les coûts judiciaires, avocats, expertises, etc… en millions d’euros seraient supérieurs à la perte et ne seraient pas rentables pour le fonds qui financera ce recours. Soyez assuré qu’il ne s’agit pas de snobisme, mais réellement de contraintes financières.
