(By Anthony Miller – Thursday, 16th April 2009 9:00am). Atos Origin UK showed other country units a clean pair of heels in Q109, with revenues up 8% like-for-like to €211m, now 16% of the Group. In stark contrast, Atos NL revenues fell 8.5%, with a performance from other markets somewhere in between. Overall, Atos group revenues fell just under 1% LFL to €1.3bn.Once again, it was outsourcing that was the star, up 5.5% at group level and up over 11% in the UK with growth in both public and private sectors. UK SI revenues grew over 6% (mostly public sector) whereas at group level, SI revenues fell by 6%. The only 'blot on the UK landscape' was that consulting revenues fell by €1m mainly due to a drop in demand in financial services. Management called out pricing pressure affecting almost all markets, with NL and Spain worst affected. This ties in with Infosys observations yesterday (see Infosys signals 5% revenue decline this year), which saw a 3% decline in average pricing last quarter with no expectation of recovery this year.
There were some pleasing wins in the quarter for Atos UK CEO, Keith Wilman, including a contract extension in the utilities sector, a BPO deal with a supermarket to manage its fuel card, and an offshore AD&M contract with an insurance player.
But it's Atos' offshore strategy that still worries me. Once again, management reiterated its Group objective to boost offshoring in current and future projects. Yet headcount in Asia-Pacific fell slightly, which just doesn't seem to tally. Is this a case of management 'talking the talk' but not 'walking the walk'?
We will be speaking with Keith Wilman next week.
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