Cognizant's Q4 Revenue Up 6.8% At $5 Bn
2025 revenue growth guidance of 3.5% to 6.0% in constant currency,
Ravi Kumar S, Chief Executive Officer.
FinTech BizNews Service
Mumbai, February 6, 2025: Cognizant (Nasdaq: CTSH), one of the world's leading professional services companies, today announced its fourth quarter and full-year 2024 financial results.
"I am deeply grateful to our employees for their commitment to our strategic priorities and rigorous execution, which drove fourth quarter revenue growth to the high end of our guidance range. We exited the year with momentum — closing a record 29 large deals during the year — highlighting the effectiveness of our strategy," said Ravi Kumar S, Chief Executive Officer. "In 2024, we accelerated investments in our AI-led platforms and added new capabilities with the acquisitions of Thirdera and Belcan, further strengthening and diversifying our portfolio. Our focus on client centricity, agility, and innovation is helping clients unlock the next wave of hyper productivity and enterprise-grade generative AI adoption."
$ in millions, except per share data | Q4 2024 |
| Q4 2023 |
|
| FY 2024 |
| FY 2023 |
Revenue | $5,082 |
| $4,758 |
|
| $19,736 |
| $19,353 |
Y/Y Change | 6.8 % |
| (1.7 %) |
|
| 2.0 % |
| (0.4 %) |
Y/Y Change CC1 | 6.7 % |
| (2.4 %) |
|
| 1.9 % |
| (0.3 %) |
GAAP Operating Margin | 14.8 % |
| 15.2 % |
|
| 14.7 % |
| 13.9 % |
Adjusted Operating Margin1 | 15.7 % |
| 16.1 % |
|
| 15.3 % |
| 15.1 % |
GAAP Diluted EPS | $1.10 |
| $1.11 |
|
| $4.51 |
| $4.21 |
Adjusted Diluted EPS1 | $1.21 |
| $1.18 |
|
| $4.75 |
| $4.55 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Operating cash flow | $920 |
| $737 |
|
| $2,124 |
| $2,330 |
Free cash flow1 | $837 |
| $659 |
|
| $1,827 |
| $2,013 |
For the full year 2024, our recently completed acquisitions contributed approximately 200 basis points to the year-over-year change in revenue.
"We ended the year strong, delivering Adjusted Operating Margin of 15.7% in the fourth quarter and 20 basis points expansion for the full year, above our guidance. Free cash flow represented more than 150% of net income, our highest quarter since Q3 2021," said Jatin Dalal, Chief Financial Officer. "We expect that our improved cost structure, achieved through the successful completion of our NextGen program, will help us sustain our pace of strategic investments in support of profitable growth. Our initial 2025 guidance calls for 3.5% to 6.0% constant currency revenue growth and 20 to 40 basis points of full-year Adjusted Operating Margin expansion."
Bookings
Bookings in the fourth quarter increased 11% year-over-year. On a trailing-twelve-month basis, bookings increased 3% year-over-year to $27.1 billion, which represented a book-to-bill of approximately 1.4x. During the quarter, Cognizant signed ten large deals, which are deals with total contract value of $100 million or greater.
Employee Metrics
Voluntary attrition - Tech Services on a trailing-twelve months basis was 15.9% as compared to 13.8% for the period ended December 31, 2023. Total headcount as of December 31, 2024 was 336,800.
Return of Capital to Shareholders
The Company repurchased 1.8 million shares for $140 million during the fourth quarter under its share repurchase program. As of December 31, 2024, there was $1.2 billion remaining under the share repurchase authorization. In February 2025, the Company declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.31 per share, a 3% increase year-over-year, for shareholders of record on February 18, 2025. This dividend will be payable on February 26, 2025.
First Quarter and Full-Year 2025 Guidance2
(all growth rates year-over-year)
- First quarter revenue is expected to be $5.0 - $5.1 billion, growth of 5.6% to 7.1%, or 6.5% to 8.0% in constant currency.
- Full-year 2025 revenue is expected to be $20.3 - $20.8 billion, growth of 2.6% to 5.1%, or 3.5% to 6.0% in constant currency.
- Full-year 2025 Adjusted Operating Margin3 is expected to be from 15.5% to 15.7%, or 20 to 40 basis points of expansion.
- Full-year 2025 Adjusted Diluted EPS3 is expected to be in the range of $4.90 to $5.06.
1 Constant currency ("CC") revenue growth, Adjusted Operating Margin, Adjusted Diluted Earnings Per Share ("Adjusted Diluted EPS") and free cash flow are not measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. A full reconciliation of Adjusted Operating Margin guidance to the corresponding GAAP measure on a forward-looking basis cannot be provided without unreasonable efforts. See "About Non-GAAP Financial Measures and Performance Metrics" for more information and a partial reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure at the end of this release. |
2 Guidance as of February 5, 2025 |
3 A full reconciliation of Adjusted Operating Margin and Adjusted Diluted EPS guidance to the corresponding GAAP measures on a forward-looking basis cannot be provided without unreasonable efforts. See "About Non-GAAP Financial Measures and Performance Metrics" for more information and a partial reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures at the end of this release. |
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 the following recent platform enhancements, partnerships and client wins:
Platform Enhancements and Partnerships
- Announced a new collaboration with Siemens Digital Industries Software to integrate Siemens' PAVE360™ into Cognizant's software-defined vehicle (SDV) solution accelerator. This enhanced accelerator, featuring Siemens' Simcenter™ Prescan for sensor modeling and scenario-based testing, aims to meet rising customer demands by accelerating the SDV development cycle.
- Launched Stores 360, a comprehensive retail solution designed to streamline store operations, enhance employee productivity and improve customer experiences. Developed in collaboration with ServiceNow, the solution leverages the Cognizant Neuro® AI platform and generative AI-powered Now Assist solution to support key touchpoints in the retail value chain, enabling frictionless and efficient operations. It is designed to elevate retail store operations and improve frontline employee productivity and customer experience with integrated, automated, predictive and gen AI capabilities.
- Announced Cognizant's Neuro® AI Multi-Agent Accelerator and Multi-Agent Service Suite. These new offerings accelerate the development and adoption of AI agents, helping empower businesses to transform their business processes using AI agents for adaptive operations, real-time decision-making, and personalized customer experiences to support all facets of business, from IT and finance to sales and marketing.
- Announced a strategic alliance with CrowdStrike, a global cybersecurity leader, to drive enterprise security transformation by delivering cybersecurity services, powered by the AI-native CrowdStrike Falcon® cybersecurity platform. Cognizant will work to enable organizations to streamline security operations and threat mitigation, consolidate fragmented legacy point products, reduce the complexity of managing cybersecurity programs, and strengthen cybersecurity posture, leveraging Falcon® Next-Gen SIEM and Falcon® Cloud Security.
- Announced an expanded partnership with Zscaler, a cloud security company, with the goal of helping enterprises across industries simplify and transform their security posture with an advanced, AI-enabled zero trust cloud security platform to address evolving cyber threats. Cognizant and Zscaler will offer coordinated solutions and services designed to reduce overall security complexity, maximize security posture, and deliver comprehensive, cost-effective outcomes rapidly and at scale.
- Announced a new FinOps1 Center of Excellence (CoE), built on IBM's leading FinOps software and Cognizant's cloud and developer platforms. Alongside the CoE announcement, Cognizant launched extensions of its Cognizant® Skygrade™ and Flowsource™ platforms that are designed to integrate with IBM Apptio, Turbonomic, watsonx.governance and watsonx Code Assistant for Z. The solutions bring together Cognizant's deep software engineering capabilities with IBM's powerful tools to help enterprise clients transition to modern architectures and streamline cloud management operations.
- Announced an expanded agreement with Medidata, a leader of clinical trial solutions to the life sciences industry, to provide support for Medidata's life sciences clients. As part of the multi-year renewal agreement, Cognizant is providing a dedicated team of Medidata Platform specialists to support their clients in pharmaceutical, biotech, medical device, contract research organizations, and patients using Medidata services.
Client Wins
- Renewed strategic partnership with McDonald's Corporation, the world's leading food service retailer. As part of the multi-year agreement, Cognizant will focus on leveraging cutting-edge technology to enhance McDonald's staff enablement, customer experience, and operational efficiency. Cognizant plans to continue supporting McDonald's in various important enterprise areas, including Global Finance Systems and Human Capital Management. Cognizant will leverage its platforms, including Neuro® IT Operations and Skygrade™, to drive better observability, reliability and agility at McDonald's.
- Expanded its longstanding relationship with biopharmaceutical leader Gilead Sciences. Cognizant will provide AI-driven solutions to enhance customer service, employee engagement, and business value. Gilead is expected to enhance its efficiency through leveraging Cognizant's expertise in AI and advanced technology applications.
- Extended collaboration with Savvas Learning Company, a leading K-12 learning solutions provider, to help optimize its back-office IT operations. A trusted Savvas partner since 2019, Cognizant has entered into a multi-year agreement with the company through which Cognizant Flowsource™ will aim to enhance platform engineering capabilities, improve efficiencies, and drive automation for Savvas. The collaboration also plans to focus on efficient order management, in an effort to ensure timely delivery of services to the company's diverse customer base.
- Announced a collaboration with Beyond Bank Australia, one of Australia's largest customer-owned banks, to help transform the digital banking experience. The collaboration aims to enhance operational resilience, streamline processes and improve customer experience through the implementation of innovative technology solutions. Additionally, this collaboration seeks to modernize the bank's IT infrastructure, establish a Security Operations Centre (SOC) and strengthen vendor assurance frameworks to help align with the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) standards.
