Cognizant raises 2025 revenue growth guidance; says 30% of code written by AI

Bengaluru: Nasdaq-listed Cognizant on Wednesday posted a 7.4 per cent y-o-y increase in its revenue for the quarter ended September 2025, at $5.42 billion, which was above the high end of its guidance range. The company had posted $5.04 billion revenue in the year-ago period.

The IT firm had expected its third quarter revenue to be $5.27 - $5.35 billion, growth of 4.6 per cent to 6.1 per cent.

Cognizant, which follows a January to December fiscal, raised its 2025 constant currency revenue growth guidance to 6.0 per cent to 6.3 per cent, and its 2025 Adjusted Operating Margin guidance is now about 15.7 per cent, expansion of 40 basis points y-o-y.

During an earnings conference call, Ravi Kumar S, CEO, Cognizant, said in the third quarter, all the industry segments (Health Sciences, Financial Services, Products and Resources, and Communications, Media and Technology) have grown organically.

He also said that they are going to be an AI builder company. "We are excited about the fact that 30 per cent of our code is written by machines, and that number will keep going up, and we will keep leveraging that to improve productivity," he added.

During the September quarter, the company's operating margin stood at 16 per cent, an increase of 140 basis points y-o-y. Its trailing 12-month bookings stood at $27.5 billion.

"We maintained our large deal momentum, signing six large deals in the quarter, bringing our year-to-date total to 16 with 40 per cent growth in large deal TCV (total contract value) year-to-date compared to the same period last year," the CEO said.

"We believe our three vector AI builder strategy is gaining traction and we expect our early investments in AI-led platforms and IP on the edge will help power growth in the years ahead," he further added.

On H-1B visa fee hike, Jatin Dalal, CFO, said that they have significantly reduced the company's dependency on H-1B visas by increasing local hiring. "We have also stepped up our investments in automation and AI, as well as fresher hiring in the US. We believe that the impact of this change (H-1B hike) would not be material at all to our operations or financial," he said.

On a trailing-twelve months basis, the company's voluntary attrition - Tech Services was 14.5 per cent for the period ended September 30, 2025. Its total headcount as of September 30, 2025 was 3,49,800, an increase of 6,000 from June 30, 2025. The company is on track to hire 20,000 freshers this year and also wage hike will be implemented in November.

"We feel good about the freshers hiring we have done so far this year and we remain equally ambitious for next year. We have not given any number for 2026, but we remain very bullish on continuing to expand our pyramid with freshers," the CFO added.