The Atos shareholder rebellion is not over. A hundred of them plan to file a complaint against the president of the IT group, Bertrand Meunier, after the disappointing half-year results published at the end of July.
An association is being created, called “Angry Atos Shareholders Union” (Udac), headed by Hervé Lecesne who personally owns 1% of the capital of Atos. “We are thinking with our lawyers about filing a complaint that has as its objective the financial communication of the group,” he explains to BFM Business.
“Insincere”, “misleading”, “misleading”? He still doubts but with other investors they cannot digest that the stock price was cut in half in a few days, at the beginning of August, after the presentation of the results, on July 28.
Two days before the closing of accounts
Atos burned nearly a billion euros in cash, partly due to restructuring costs and tight cash flow, with customers paying later and suppliers demanding to be paid sooner. However, during the general meeting on June 28, Atos management had insisted on improving results. What was seen in the accounts with the tripling of the margin. President Bertrand Meunier was playing his role when a series of shareholders, dragged by the Sycomore fund, had called for his dismissal.
Why was Atos’ financial communication upbeat on June 28 while the accounts were much less so on June 30? The management refers to the “sustained pace of execution of the transformation actions” to justify this cash “hole”.
The shareholders of Atos, around Hervé Lecesne, also complain about the “gift” made to Daniel Kretinsky who bought the historic IT services branch. The Czech businessman has not taken over one euro of the group’s strong debt, which amounts to 2,300 million euros. The slingers, however, lost one of their pillars. Its former leader Sycomore, according to our information, sold all of his Atos shares.
Source: BFM TV
