Ricardo announced in September its priorities for the years to come: further client diversification, a focus on Asia and North America, a continued refresh of its service portfolio, and sustainability in all its forms. These priorities are very much in line with Ricardo’s strategy in the past few years.
Nuclear engineering remains promising for Assystem. Revenues of nuclear engineering proved slightly more resilient during 2020 (with a 4.2% revenue decline at cc/cs) than the company itself (-5.3%). In H1 2020, the activity was impacted by the lockdown in Europe, as nuclear engineering requires a higher level of onsite work than ER&D services. Revenues bounced back in H2, reaching a slight organic growth.
Jacobs surprised us with its intention to acquire a 65% stake in PA Consulting for USD 1.8bn (enterprise value of the stake). For those of us that have been in the industry, we know that consulting acquisitions can be risky. Think of EDS and AT Kearney, Capgemini and Ernst & Young Consulting, or IBM and PwC Consulting.
Globallogics made an acquisition in IT services with ECS. ECS brings precious digital capabilities including cloud and agile/DevOps.