Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation (CTSH) Presents at Citi's 2026 Global TMT Conference Transcript

Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation ( CTSH ) Citi's 2026 Global TMT Conference September 8, 2026 10:10 AM EDT

Welcome. I'm Bryan Keane. I cover IT services here at Citi. And we're excited to have Cognizant here for a fireside chat. We've got Jatin Dalal, who's the CFO. We're going to run through a list of questions, and if you have any in the audience, feel free to raise your hand and we'll run a mic or I'll repeat the question for you. But first, Jatin, thanks for coming and thanks for being here.

No, thank you. Thank you for hosting us. I appreciate the opportunity.

Yes. So I wanted to start kind of high level thinking about the IT services industry. It's growing revenue well below its historical norms. How much do you think can be explained by the geopolitical turmoil versus the secular industry pressures from AI?

I think it's an interesting question to start. If you see, there is -- the industry has seen now more than a few years or 2 or 3 years of slow growth. In our assessment, it is partially the secular pressure, but it's also the lack of discretionary spend. Because for example, in BFSI, Cognizant grew double-digit in quarter 2. And that was notwithstanding the secular pressure because of AI-led productivity and everything else that is going sort of around the world. So I think it is some amount of secular pressure, but it is also largely the lack of discretionary spend in the rest of the sector which is sort of