Cognizant reports 7.3% revenue growth in Q3 and raises full-year expectations amid strong AI investments

US IT giant Cognizant, which has a significant number of employees in India, reported better-than-expected growth on Wednesday, with revenue rising 7.3 percent year-on-year to $5,415 million for the quarter ended September 2025.

In its latest quarter, the company had brought its third-quarter revenue to between $5.27 billion and $5.35 billion.

Cognizant – which follows a January-December fiscal year – had posted revenues of $5,044 million in the third quarter of 2024.

The Nasdaq-listed IT services company raised the lower end of its full-year revenue growth forecast, pegging it at $21.05 billion to $21.10 billion, up from $20.7 billion to $21.1 billion previously.

Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar S said this is the company’s fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year organic revenue growth, and the strongest consecutive organic growth since 2022.

“We maintained our large deal momentum and signed six large deals in the quarter, bringing our year-to-date total to 16, with 40 percent growth in TCV (Total Contract Value) for large deals year-to-date compared to the same period last year. “We believe our three-vector AI builder strategy is gaining momentum and we expect our early investments in AI-led platforms and IP on the edge will help drive growth in the coming years,” he said. Cognizant’s third quarter bookings include six deals of TCV USD 100 million or higher.

The company added 6,000 employees in the July-September period, bringing its total workforce to 349,800 at the end of the quarter.

Jatin Dalal, Chief Financial Officer, said the company is seeing broad-based growth across all segments and regions, including notable performance in North America.

“We raised our full-year revenue guidance to constant currency growth of 6-6.3 percent year-on-year, above our previous range, and deployed $1 billion through share buybacks in the third quarter, underscoring our confidence in our growth strategy,” he said.

The company repurchased 6.3 million shares for USD 450 million during the third quarter under its share buyback program. As of September 30, 2025, an amount of USD 2.2 billion remained under the share repurchase authorization.

In October 2025, the company announced a quarterly cash dividend of USD0.31 per share for shareholders of record as of November 18, 2025. This dividend will be payable on November 26, 2025.