On November 27, Atento put an end to any related uncertainty about its continuity. Suffocated by a debt of US$750 million (more than R$3.85 billion in current conversion), the result of an unsuccessful hedge involving its debt, the call center company was forced to put operational execution aside to deal with this liability, at the risk of having to appeal for judicial recovery.
With the help of its creditors, the company managed to bring its accounts up to date and reduced its financial leverage, which was close to 8 times, to close to 0.8 times. It took almost two years of ordeal to reach the agreement, which also resulted in the injection of around US$113 million into cash.
With the financial part resolved, and with resources in hand, Atento once again focuses its attention on its activities. The company’s focus is on the strategy that involves growing in advanced markets and advancing on the technology front, in addition to recovering customers lost during the years of crisis.
“We have restructured the company, we no longer have any pending issues with bonds, swap and with banks”, says Dimitrius Oliveira, global CEO of Atento, to NeoFeed. “The year 2024 is the year of recovery, with 2025 being the year in which we accelerate our initiatives and 2026 will be the year of consolidation of the company, repositioned and transformed.”
In this three-year plan, the short term will be dedicated to diversifying the sources of its revenue, increasing its presence in the United States and European markets. Despite its Spanish origins, having been founded in 1999 by Telefónica, most of its operations are concentrated in Brazil.
The country represents 38% of Atento’s operations (Latin America accounts for 70%), while the USA and Europe represent 30%. “The ideal is that, of total revenue, the United States and Europe represent between 55% and 60%”, says Oliveira. In 2022, Atento’s revenue totaled US$1.45 billion – last year’s result has not yet been released.
Efforts will be focused on gaining space in the United States, with Oliveira estimating that this is a market worth around US$30 billion. “We have around 0.4%, 0.5% of share in the United States. If we go to 2%, 3%, this changes the level of the organization’s revenue composition”, he says.
Atento intends to invest in centers located in Latin America, specifically Peru and Colombia, and in the Philippines aimed at the American market, with service in English and Spanish, in addition to strengthening the sales team. Currently, the company has around 10 thousand people working in the call center for the United States and the idea is to reach 20 thousand.
In Europe, the plan involves establishing “points of presence” in Eastern European countries, Portugal and Greece, seeing opportunities to serve the markets of Italy, Germany and France, countries in which Atento has low penetration. The company has operations in Spain and Morocco to serve the Old Continent.
Oliveira says that Atento must maintain the investment levels of recent years to advance in these two markets. Atento invests between 3% and 5% of revenue per year in technology and generating new business.
As for Brazil, Atento assesses that it does not need to invest to expand its structure, as it understands that the operations are consolidated – the company has around 45 thousand people and 30 websites, down from the 34 it had before the restructuring.
In Atento’s plans, the country serves to develop initiatives on the fronts of data science, artificial intelligence and language. Atento has created everything from automated chats for customer service via WhatsApp with generative artificial intelligence to data science modules based on predictive analysis capable of, for example, anticipating employee behavior, measuring turnover and absenteeism. “Brazil is the company’s transformation and innovation hub”, says Oliveira.
Initially, the idea is that the applications developed by Atento serve its own needs and those of its customers, but Oliveira does not rule out the possibility of, later on, selling to third parties, creating another source of revenue. “We see that some of the solutions we are developing have commercial appeal,” he says.
From the point of view of call center operations, Oliveira says that the big challenge in Brazil is to resume sales. “The main focus is to regain all commercial strength, which was very robust two, three years ago, but due to our crisis we ended up getting distracted”, says Oliveira.
Regarding the possibility of being listed on the stock exchange again, after no longer having shares traded on the New York market last year, Oliveira says it is a possibility, but not in the near future.
