Cognizant Q4 net profit rises 19%, to hire more freshers this year

US-listed IT major beats growth guidance for 2025 on strong deal wins, margin expansion and rising financial services demand

Nasdaq-listed Cognizant on Wednesday reported a 19 per cent rise in net profit to $648 million in the fourth quarter of calendar year 2025 (CY25). Revenue rose 4.9 per cent to $5.3 billion while on a constant currency basis, which discounts the impact of currency fluctuations, growth was 3.8 per cent.

 

The growth numbers were way better than most of its Indian counterparts. Only HCLTech fared better than Cognizant with a constant currency growth of 4.8 per cent and reported growth of 7.4 per cent.

 

Cognizant, which follows the January-December calendar year, expects to grow at 4-6.5 per cent in the full year of 2026 after beating its own guidance in 2025. For 2025, it grew at 6.4 per cent on constant currency, slightly above its estimates of 6-6.3 per cent.

 

 

“The macro continues to be uncertain with geopolitics and inflation, and that will make the spends in favour of the cost takeout, but if those go down, the spends will be in the newer area,” Cognizant Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Ravi Kumar said.

 

And, even while technology spends remain muted or get redirected, financial services spends in the US – the largest market – are picking up. For the three months ending December 31, financial services vertical was up 9.3 per cent on constant currency. North America, which contributes three-fourths to the top line, was up 4.2 per cent.

 

Winning large deals, worth $100 million and above, has been a key priority for Kumar in this uncertain macroeconomic environment. In 2025, Cognizant won 28 large deals with total contract value (TCV) growth up almost 50 per cent compared to 2024. Total bookings for the fourth quarter was $28.4 billion.

 

Operating margins jumped 120 basis points (bps) to 16 per cent sequentially. “In 2025, we outperformed the high end of our guidance ranges, combining top-tier revenue growth with 50 bps of expanded adjusted operating margin and 11 per cent adjusted EPS (earnings per share) growth,” Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Jatin Dalal said.

 

The company, whose majority of employees are based in India, saw its tech services attrition climb down to 13.9 per cent from 14.5 per cent, sequentially. As of December, it had 351,600 employees and net hiring during the year was 14,800 people.

 

Going ahead, Cognizant will continue to hire at the bottom end of the pyramid, which refers to new engineering graduates. It hired about 20,000 such graduates last year, of which 16,000 are already working on live projects. The target is to hire about 25,000 this year, Dalal added.