Cognizant Q2 revenue rises 4.5% to $5.48B
The IT services major saw strong momentum in financial services and North America, but lowered its full-year revenue growth outlook. The company continues to invest in AI-led solutions to drive future growth.
Cognizant, the New Jersey-headquartered technology services company with a large employee presence in India, registered a 4.5% rise in revenue for the second quarter of the year with a marginal drop in net profit even as it sounded confident about future growth prospects.
Cognizant reported a revenue of $5.48 billion for the second quarter of 2026 (April-June period) as compared to $5.24 billion in the similar period a year ago. The net profit for the period was $636 million, which was 1.3% lower when compared to $645 million recorded a year ago.
“Our organic revenue growth momentum continued in the second quarter and was at the high end of our expectations,” said Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar on the performance of the company.
The CEO highlighted that the company continues to focus on the artificial intelligence (AI) segment as it brings solutions that combine domain expertise with software engineering capabilities. “As organisations 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.”
In the second quarter, the financial services segment put out a strong performance for Cognizant as it recorded 12% year on year (YoY) growth. This segment accounts for 31.6% of the company’s revenues and is the largest. Even its largest market - North America registered 5.5% growth in the second quarter.
The company said it is expecting revenue to be in the range of $5.60-5.68 billion for the third quarter, which is a 3.4-4.9% growth. For the full year of 2026, it has projected a revenue in the range of $22.04-22.35 billion indicating a growth of 4.4-5.9%.
This revised guidance is lower than the one it had given during the first quarter where it had projected an annual growth 4.8-7.3%.
On the headcount front, the employee base of Cognizant touched 356,700 at the end of second quarter which was a decrease of 900 when compared to the first quarter of the year. However, compared to the second quarter of 2025, the employee headcount increased by 12,900.
Cognizant CFO Jatin Dalal said, “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.”
Edited by Megha Reddy