Thierry Breton, Chairman and CEO said: “During the first half of the year we confirmed a strong commercial dynamic consolidating our strategy to accompany our customers all along their digital transformation. By leveraging the strengths of all our Divisions in our Digital Transformation Factory, we signed very large transformation contracts translating in a strong book to bill ratio in each Division and 117% for the Group. The commercial activity was particularly high in North America in Q2 with a book to bill ratio at 190%. In the meantime we continued to closely monitor our operational efficiency, improving the Group profitability and increasing EPS by circa 8 %. In this context, we confirm all our objectives for 2018 towards our 2019 Ambition.

After the transformational acquisition of SIX Payment Services by Worldline to be closed this year-end, I am proud with the announcement of another strategic move for the Group with the project to acquire Syntel, a US leading company in digital services, listed on Nasdaq. It represents a major step in Business & Platform Solutions as it will significantly enhance the Division growth and profitability profile through an extended digital services offering, cutting-edge India based delivery platforms, as well as revenue and cost synergies.

The highly complementary portfolio, customer basis, and geographical presence of the combination between Atos and Syntel will significantly enhance our footprint, in particular in the North American market and accelerate the digital transformation of Atos’ customers.

All these strategic achievements make me fully confident in the strong potential of our Group to continue delivering together with Syntel and SIX Payment employees and their very strong management highest value to our clients and shareholders. I am looking forward to welcoming all of them.”

Revenue was € 6,005 million, up +3.4% at constant exchange rates restated from IFRS 15 and +1.7% organically, deriving from the demand of large organizations implementing their digital transformation. This particularly benefitted to Business & Platform Solutions, Big Data & Cybersecurity, and Worldline. The Group grew by +2.8% excluding North America which is expected to go back to growth by year-end. Operating margin was € 545 million, representing 9.1% of revenue.