Atos: $2.7B In Write-Downs; Fresh Start for IT Consulting Firm?

Atos took $2.7 billion in write-downs in the second half of 2021. New CEO Rodolphe Belmer said the move will give the global IT consulting firm a fresh start. The write-downs involved goodwill for an infrastructure acquisition and various data center assets.

At the same time, Atos reinforced that its BDS cybersecurity unit was not for sale. Rumors swirled last week that Thales was looking to potentially acquire the unit.

Atos announced Belmer as CEO and completed the Cloudreach acquisition in January 2022. The moves reinforced an Atos effort to accelerate a shift towards monthly recurring revenues (MRR), managed cloud services, and SaaS-oriented application migrations.

Atos Business Challenges

Among the challenges facing Belmer: The company has 107,000 employees and worldwide scale. But revenue growth has been inconsistent — especially compared to cloud-centric MSPs and MSSPs that are riding the managed services and cybersecurity market waves.

Amid that market reality, Atos has been acquiring various cloud-centric MSPs, MSSPs and IT consulting firms.