Cognizant Reports Second Quarter 2026 Results

Cognizant (Nasdaq: CTSH), a leading AI builder and technology services provider, today announced its second quarter 2026 financial results.

“Our organic revenue growth momentum continued in the second quarter and was at the high end of our expectations,” said Ravi Kumar S, Chief Executive Officer. “We are helping our clients close the AI velocity gap by pairing deep industry expertise with engineering, infrastructure and data modernization capabilities while safeguarding their data and IP. We are doing this by scaling our Frontier workforce and reskilling for the future. We are confident our strategy is resonating with clients, as reflected in a second consecutive quarter of double-digit year-over-year growth in Financial Services, our largest and most mature segment. As organizations shift from AI experimentation to enterprise-scale execution, we believe the market opportunity ahead is larger than ever, and we’re positioning Cognizant to lead in this next era.”

See “Revenue by Business Segment and Geography” section for additional revenue details and drivers of growth.

“Our second quarter results reflect disciplined execution and the resilience of our operating model. We delivered 4.1% constant currency revenue growth and 40 basis points of adjusted operating margin expansion year-over-year, despite a complex environment,” said Jatin Dalal, Chief Financial Officer. “In the first half of 2026, we deployed $1.6 billion on share repurchases and $1.3 billion on acquisitions aligned with our AI builder strategy. We remain focused on operational rigor and consistent margin expansion while funding growth investments and deploying capital strategically.”

Bookings

On a trailing-twelve-month basis, bookings increased 5% year-over-year to $29.1 billion, which represented a book-to-bill of approximately 1.3x. Bookings in the second quarter declined 6% year-over-year. Second quarter bookings included seven large deals, which are deals with total contract value of $100 million or greater.

Employee Metrics

On a trailing-twelve months basis, Voluntary Attrition – Tech Services was 13.0% for the period ended June 30, 2026, as compared to 12.3% and 12.6% for the periods ended March 31, 2026 and June 30, 2025, respectively. Total headcount as of June 30, 2026 was 356,700, a decrease of 900 from March 31, 2026 and an increase of 12,900 from June 30, 2025.

Capital Allocation

The Company repurchased 22.5 million shares for $1,153 million during the second quarter under its share repurchase program, including 9.7 million shares through its previously announced $500 million accelerated share repurchase (ASR) as well as another 12.8 million shares for $653 million through open market transactions. As of June 30, 2026, there was $2.3 billion remaining under the share repurchase authorization. In July 2026, the Company declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.33 per share for shareholders of record on August 18, 2026. This dividend will be payable on August 25, 2026.

During the second quarter of 2026, the company completed its acquisition of Astreya for a purchase price of $634 million, including contingent consideration of $25 million, net of cash acquired, while borrowing $1.0 billion under its revolving credit facility.

Third Quarter and Full-Year 2026 Guidance² 

(all growth rates year-over-year)

• Third quarter revenue is expected to be $5.60 to $5.68 billion, growth of 3.4% to 4.9%, or 3.8% to 5.3% in constant currency.

• Full-year 2026 revenue is expected to be $22.04 to $22.35 billion, growth of 4.4% to 5.9%, or 4.0% to 5.5% in constant currency.

• Full-year 2026 Adjusted Operating Margin³ is expected to be approximately 16.0% to 16.2%, or 20 to 40 basis points of expansion.

• Full-year 2026 Adjusted Diluted EPS³ is expected to be in the range of $5.70 to $5.82, growth of 8% to 10%.

Select Company, Client and Partnership Announcements

Cognizant is building a portfolio of capabilities combined with deep domain expertise to harness and advance an AI-led future. Cognizant’s progress has been accelerated through client agreements, platform enhancements, and partnerships. Recent announcements include:

Client Announcements

• Announced it is working with Travelport on a strategic AI transformation that will deploy Anthropic’s Claude to modernize the way Travelport builds, tests and maintains software across its travel retailing and distribution platforms. The work aims to accelerate the delivery of AI-led innovation to airlines, hoteliers, travel management companies and online travel agencies worldwide, while embedding AI features within Travelport’s platform.

• Named as Global AI Services Partner of the Aston Martin Aramco Formula One™ (AMF1) Team, marking an evolution of the collaboration to advance performance, innovation, and operational excellence across its Formula 1™ program. Under the new designation, Cognizant and the team will work to operationalize AI – bridging the gap between experimentation and sustained value. Cognizant will also help the team identify how context-enabled AI can manage, support, and define the team’s fan database.

• Selected by UK public service broadcaster Channel 4 to transform its advertising campaign delivery operations, which are responsible for booking, scheduling, and airing adverts across Channel 4 and its partner channels. As part of the project, Cognizant looks to enhance Channel 4’s account management hub, campaign operations and traffic functions, which are responsible for ensuring that advertising reaches the right audiences at the right time, meets advertisers’ objectives, and supports compliance with applicable regulations under Channel 4’s oversight.

• Chosen by JG Summit Holdings, Inc., one of the Philippines’ largest and more diversified conglomerates, for a ServiceNow implementation and managed services engagement supporting its IT modernization journey. Cognizant is expected to deploy ServiceNow IT Service Management (ITSM) Professional, IT Asset Management and Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) capabilities to establish a unified platform for helping automate IT service processes, track hardware and software assets, and govern project demand and portfolios.

• Selected by Snohomish County Public Utility District (PUD), a public utility in the state of Washington, to lead SAP S/4 HANA transformation to modernize utility operations. Cognizant is expected to migrate the PUD’s SAP on‑premise environment to SAP’s cloud platform, implement Cognizant’s Finance4U SAP S/4 HANA‑certified Asset Lifecycle Accounting solution and deploy SAP mobility capabilities to support field and warehouse operations.

• Selected by The Andover Companies, Inc., one of the longest-standing mutual property and casualty insurance groups in the Northeast, to scale its core and portal systems, unify its data and help lay the foundation for responsible AI adoption in underwriting and claims. Under the agreement, Cognizant will modernize integration of Andover’s core policy administration platform to its digital properties, build a new enterprise data platform and strengthen the security of Andover’s policyholder- and agent-facing digital portals.

Platform Enhancements and Partnerships

• Revealed new headless API model that treats AI agents as first-tier consumers of TriZetto Unify, Cognizant’s platform strategy that spans payer and provider workflows. Electronic Prior Authorization is the first solution to go live, following the rollout of TriZetto Assistant and TriZetto Autonomous Workflow Agents to existing customers.

• Announced an expanded partnership with Anthropic, with Cognizant becoming one of a small number of Global Premier Partners in the Claude Partner Network. Cognizant is embedding Claude across its own business and engineering platforms, while scaling a Claude-certified workforce as part of its new Frontier Certified workforce model. Cognizant is already applying Claude in client work spanning manufacturing, life sciences and insurance, delivering measurable results in production.

• Expanded its partnership with Google Cloud, broadening how the companies bring Gemini Enterprise to clients and deepening Cognizant’s own internal use of the technology. Through the expanded partnership, Cognizant and Google Cloud are bringing together jointly delivered solutions, a portfolio of reusable agents and certified Cognizant Frontier Certified Engineers who work directly within client environments to accelerate time to value on Gemini deployments.

• Announced it is applying OpenAI’s GPT-5.5 with Trusted Access for Cyber, through Cognizant’s Frontier AI Cyber Defense services, to help enterprises move faster from vulnerability discovery to validated, tested fixes. As a member of the OpenAI Daybreak Cyber Partner Program, Cognizant is putting frontier AI capability into its security experts’ hands, helping strengthen how clients defend the software they build and operate.

• Deepened its partnership with CrowdStrike by bringing the CrowdStrike Falcon® platform to Cognizant’s AI Factory and its Managed Cybersecurity Services, powered by the Cognizant Neuro® Cybersecurity platform.

• Expanded cross-platform agentic AI with new ServiceNow AI Agent interoperability. ServiceNow AI Agents now work with the Cognizant Neuro® AI Multi-Agent Accelerator, giving enterprises a unified environment to orchestrate AI agents across the platforms they already run. Enterprises can coordinate ServiceNow agents alongside custom-built systems and other third-party agent platforms.

• Announced the integration of Cognizant Neuro® AI Trust with ServiceNow, pairing ServiceNow’s visibility and governance with Cognizant’s agentic intelligence and control platform. The integration is designed to give organizations a single, interoperable environment in which AI governance is actively enforced through responsible AI agents operating across every stage of the AI lifecycle.

• Expanded its partnership with Snowflake, an AI data cloud company, through the Snowflake CoCo platform. As a Preferred Launch Partner for CoCo and Snowflake’s 2026 CoCo Catalyst Partner of the Year for Impactful Customer Story, Cognizant is deploying a growing portfolio of AI-powered intelligent agents that support and enhance data engineering, analytics and business decision workflows.

• Announced an expanded strategic alliance with Rubrik to help enterprises run autonomous AI safely at scale. As a launch partner for Rubrik’s Project Hourglass, an alliance with leading Global Systems Integrators (GSIs) to deliver agentic resilience for enterprise AI coding agents, Cognizant intends to be one of the first global systems integrators to operationalize the offering as a governance layer within its delivery platforms.

• Partnered with Domyn, a European leader in sovereign AI infrastructure for regulated industries, to bring sovereign AI capabilities to enterprises in highly regulated sectors across the EMEA region. Under the partnership, Domyn will provide the AI infrastructure layer, delivering LLMs that can be deployed within client environments, on-premise or in private cloud configurations, while Cognizant will serve as the application, integration, and domain execution layer.

• Launched Cognizant Neuro® AI Trust, a new platform designed to provide enterprises with continuous governance and real-time assurance across AI systems. As AI environments grow more autonomous and complex, Neuro AI Trust empowers enterprises to monitor, manage and help control AI behavior and performance in real time.

• Launched its sovereign Physical AI Platform-as-a-Service, an integrated capability that moves autonomous systems from experimentation into core enterprise infrastructure. Built on the Cognizant Intelligence Spine, the offering connects disparate physical systems, including industrial sensors, IoT devices, factory automation and energy infrastructure, into a single coherent intelligence fabric.

Select Company Announcements and Recognition

• Launched Cognizant Secure AI Services, a new integrated offering designed to help enterprises secure, govern and scale AI and agentic systems across their operations. The offering is designed to help enterprises move from assumed trust toward “provable trust” – an approach grounded in evidence, traceability and continuous assurance.

• Announced the creation of two new job categories; Frontier Certified Engineer and Frontier Business Operator, and announced plans to scale its Frontier-certified workforce, the human and operational infrastructure enterprises need to convert AI capability into measurable business results, to 5,000 Frontier Certified Engineers and 10,000 Frontier Business Operators. Cognizant expects its people investment will yield its first cohort by fourth quarter, 2026. Cognizant also plans to augment its own Frontier talent pipeline through annual direct hires of Frontier-native talent from American and global universities.

• Launched its Ace Team Program, a strategic initiative designed to build a cohort of top engineering minds who will deliver cutting-edge digital transformation for clients and play a central role in the company’s evolution into an AI builder organization. The Cognizant Ace Team is structured as a combination of a selective hiring program, an elite talent pathway and a centrally governed engineering community aligned to Cognizant’s advanced capability strategy.

• Completed its acquisition of Astreya, a global AI-first IT managed services and solutions provider, effective June 22, 2026. The combination is expected to strengthen Cognizant’s AI infrastructure and managed services capabilities by bringing together Cognizant’s global delivery model and AI builder approach with Astreya’s deep expertise supporting complex technology environments for many of the world’s largest technology companies, including six of the “Magnificent Seven” hyperscalers.

• Was named to TIME’s list of America’s Best Companies 2026 in the ranking’s inaugural edition. TIME and Statista evaluated America’s Best Companies 2026 across three dimensions: employee satisfaction, financial performance and sustainability transparency.

• Earned a place on the Fortune 500 list, marking its 16th consecutive year of recognition. The annual ranking by Fortune Magazine evaluates companies based on total revenues for their respective fiscal years. In the 2026 edition, Cognizant ranked 216 overall and third in the IT services industry.

• Released new research showing that AI’s real-world results depend less on the technology itself than on the maturity of a company’s tech infrastructure and where it directs its investment. The study, “Closing the AI Execution Gap: A $2 Billion Business Boost,” revealed $4.7 trillion in untapped AI value across Global 2000 companies.

• Unveiled a new report focused on India titled “Smarter IT spend: From cost control to cost intelligence.” The report revealed that while technology investments are rising across industries, only 12% of organizations have an enterprise-wide unified view of IT spend, limiting their ability to translate technology investments into measurable business outcomes.

• Revealed new findings from a joint study with Pearson, The AI Workforce Pulse, signaling that entry-level roles are being reimagined by AI, and work is evolving faster than organizations can redesign how they hire, develop and support talent.

• Released findings from a joint study with Pearson, The AI Workforce Pulse: The Adaptability Imperative, highlighting how AI is transforming India’s entry-level workforce at a faster pace than the global average, while simultaneously creating new career pathways and urgent skilling challenges.

• Recognized as a Leader by Everest Group® in:
  • Healthcare Payer Digital Services PEAK Matrix^® Assessment, 2026
  • Marketing Transformation Services PEAK Matrix^® Assessment, 2026
  • Guidewire Services PEAK Matrix^® Assessment, 2026
  • Agentic Process Automation (APA) Solutions PEAK Matrix^® Assessment, 2026
  • Oracle Cloud Applications Services PEAK Matrix^® Assessment, 2026
  • Healthcare Customer Experience Management (CXM) Intelligent Operations PEAK Matrix^® Assessment, 2026
  • Software Product Engineering Services PEAK Matrix^® Assessment, 2026 – Global
  • Google Cloud Services PEAK Matrix^® Assessment, 2026
  • Mainframe Modernization Services PEAK Matrix^® Assessment, 2026

• Market Leader in HFS Horizons:
  • Financial Crime Compliance (FCC) in Financial Services, 2026 Report
  • Data Modernization and AI, 2026 Report
  • HCP Service Providers, 2026 Report
  • SAP S/4HANA Transformation Services, 2026 Report
  • Global Capability Centers (GCC) Services, 2026 Report

• Leadership in Avasant’s RadarView:
  • Clinical and Care Management Services Business Process Transformation, 2026
  • Higher Education Digital Services, 2026
  • Advanced Network Services, 2026
  • High-Tech Digital Services, 2026
  • Airlines and Airports Digital Services, 2026
  • Manufacturing Digital Services, 2026
  • Banking Process Transformation, 2026
  • Healthcare Payer Business Process Transformation, 2026
  • Property and Casualty Insurance Digital Services, 2026
  • Banking Digital Services, 2026
  • Global Competency Center (GCC) Setup and Scale Services, 2026
  • Digital Commerce Services, 2026
  • Cybersecurity Services, 2026

• Leadership in ISG Provider Lens^® Global Capability Center (GCC) Services, 2026 – Global

• Named to the Leading Pack in TechMarketView’s Market Readiness Index 2026

Conference Call

Cognizant will host a conference call on July 29, 2026, at 8:30 a.m. (Eastern) to discuss the Company’s second quarter 2026 results. To listen to the conference call, please dial (877) 810-9510 (domestic) or +1 (201) 493-6778 (international) and provide the following conference passcode: “Cognizant Call.”

The conference call will also be available live on the Investor Relations section of the Cognizant website at http://investors.cognizant.com. An earnings supplement will also be available on the Cognizant website at the time of the conference call. For those who cannot access the live broadcast, a replay will be available. To listen to the replay, please dial (877) 660-6853 (domestically) or +1 (201) 612-7415 (internationally) and enter 13760925 beginning two hours after the end of the call until 11:59 p.m. (Eastern) on Wednesday, August 12, 2026. The replay will also be available at Cognizant’s website www.cognizant.com for 60 days following the call.