French IT group Atos, once the undisputed leader of the European technology sector, has officially closed one of the most difficult chapters in its history. Wednesday’s stock market announcement leaves no illusions about the scale of the challenges facing the company. The group’s revenues for 2025 fell to €8 billion, a severe organic decline of 13.8 per cent. While these figures are in line with management’s earlier revised forecasts, they illustrate the price the company is paying for months of financial uncertainty and deep debt restructuring.
CEO Philippe Salle, who took the helm at a sensitive time, took a realistic stance when speaking to the media, avoiding corporate powdering of reality. He openly admitted that the return of customer confidence is progressing more slowly than initially expected. For business partners and contractors, this is a key signal: Atos is still in a phase of stabilisation. The loss of contracts in the last quarter of the year suggests that the market is still cautious about long-term commitments to a supplier that was valued at more than €10 billion at its peak and today is capitalised at around €1 billion.
Salle’s strategy for the coming quarters is the classic ‘run to the front’ through downsizing. Not only is the company continuing to make redundancies and sell off assets in Scandinavia and Latin America, but it announces the exit of a further ten markets in 2026. The aim is to create a smaller but more profitable organisation, capable of generating cash. Importantly for investors, despite falling revenues, Atos expects to exceed its operating profitability targets for 2025. This means that draconian cost-cutting is starting to bear fruit on the balance sheet, even if the top-line is still bleeding.
For the IT industry, the case of Atos remains a cautionary tale, but also a test of whether ‘too big to fail’ as a technology issue holds true. The full picture and forecasts for 2026 will be known on 6 March. At that point, it remains to be seen whether the radical weight loss treatment will be enough to convince the market that the French giant really has the worst behind it.
