Aniket PujariCognizant Technology Solutions Corp. grew the fastest among large Indian and Indian-heritage IT services firms in calendar year 2025, reporting a 6.95% dollar revenue expansion to $21.12 billion—its best show since 2021 and a sharp turnaround from 2023, when it saw its revenue decline.
A Bloomberg poll of 26 analysts had expected it to end the year with a revenue of $21.09 billion. With this, the company also exceeded its own guidance of 6.6-6.9% full-year growth, set in October 2025.
A little over a third of its growth—higher than the 5.1% reported by HCL Technologies Ltd, the highest among the country’s big five IT firms—came from the sale of products and resources, which account for about a quarter of its total revenue.
The Teaneck, New Jersey-headquartered firm even trumped three of its largest Indian peers. While Infosys Ltd ended 2025 with a revenue of $19.85 billion, up 3.85% year-on-year, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd and Wipro Ltd ended the year with revenues of $29.86 billion and $10.42 billion, respectively, down 0.72% and 1.41% on-year.
Cognizant follows a January-December financial calendar, whereas Indian IT services companies follow an April-March fiscal year.
The company’s growth can also be attributed to the mega deals it signed in 2025. The company signed three contracts valued at more than a billion dollars last year, the latest reportedly a $1 billion IT modernization contract with Swiss pharma giant Novartis AG.
Note of caution
Still, its management expressed cautious views on the demand environment.
“The environment remains complex. Traditional discretionary spending cycles continue to evolve as clients re-baseline expectations for productivity gains. However, we view this as an opportunity to capture wallet share in large deals and help clients reinvest savings into innovation,” said Jatin Dalal, Cognizant’s chief financial officer, during the post-earnings analyst call on 4 February.
This is in line with larger peer Accenture Plc, which stated that macroeconomic demand remains unchanged.
“The pace of overall spending and discretionary spending in our market is at the same level we have seen over the last year. We are delivering strong results and taking market share in this environment, because reinvention is critical for our clients,” said Julie Sweet, Accenture’s chief executive, during the post-earnings analyst call on 18 December.
For now, Cognizant is confident of faster growth, expecting to end 2026 with revenue between $22.14 billion and $22.66 billion. This translates to a revenue growth rate of 4.9-7.4% on an annual basis.
However, the company expects 150 basis points, or 1.5%, of growth to come from acquisitions, with a third of this coming from future acquisitions. A basis point is a hundredth of a percentage point.
This comes in the backdrop of its plans to list its shares in India. Mint reported on 30 October 2025 about the possibility of the company listing its shares on Indian stock exchanges, which experts attributed to a drive for better valuations.
The management said it is progressing on its India listing plans, but did not divulge much.
“At this juncture, we are still thinking through the decision, the regulatory framework, and, therefore, the decision on the primary offering and secondary listing. And at some point, we should be able to come back and tell you more about this. But at this juncture, I think it’s a continued progress that would be what I would suggest, as an update from the previous quarter to this quarter,” said Dalal.
It also refrained from spelling out revenue from Gen AI, but said the new technology would continue to drive non-essential spending.
“I would say, if the AI advances have to trickle, drift to the businesses, I would actually believe that that is actually going to support the discretionary to come back. It’s going to be a catalyst. It’s going to trigger a capex cycle on enterprises to drift that value, and it will flow through to us,” said S. Ravi Kumar, chief executive of Cognizant, during the analyst call.
On the other hand, the company’s profitability was another bright spot in its report card, as it jumped 140 basis points on-year to 16.1%.
But concerns were raised about its net profit, which fell 0.45% on-year to $2.23 billion.
Shareholders cheer
The Indian-heritage company—which has more than two-thirds of its employees based in India—ended the December quarter with 351,600 employees, 14,800 more than the year ago and 1,800 more than the preceding three months. The increase in headcount comes even as peer TCS cut its headcount by almost 20,000.
Shareholders cheered the results and pulled out of the bloodbath in IT stocks as Cognizant’s shares rose 2.71% to $76.52 on the Nasdaq during pre-market trading hours. It announced the results before market hours in the US.
At least one expert gave the company’s results a thumbs-up.
“Cognizant’s growth this year is less about a sudden demand rebound and more about execution catching up with opportunity. This is the fastest growth in four years because Cognizant has been sharper on deal conversion, more focused on large client mining, and more disciplined on costs,” said Phil Fersht, chief executive of HFS Research.
