Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation (NASDAQ:CTSH) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

In This Article:

Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation (NASDAQ:CTSH) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript November 1, 2023

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Cognizant Technology Solutions Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Tyler Scott, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Tyler Scott: Thank you, operator and good afternoon, everyone. By now, you should have received a copy of the earnings release and investor supplement for the company's third quarter 2023 results. If you have not, copies are available on our website, cognizant.com. The speakers we have on today's call are Ravi Kumar, Chief Executive Officer; and Jan Siegmund, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that some of the comments made on today's call and some of the responses to your questions may contain forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to the risks and uncertainties as described in the company's earnings release and other filings with the SEC. Additionally, during our call today, we will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures that we believe provide useful information for our investors.

A team of Information Technology professionals creating complicated algorithms at their desks.

Reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures where appropriate to the corresponding GAAP measures can be found in the company's earnings release and other filings with the SEC. With that, I'd like to now turn the call over to Ravi. Please go ahead.

Ravi Kumar: Thank you, Tyler. Good afternoon, everyone. Today, I would like to cover 3 topics: our third quarter results, the demand environment and a brief update on our strategic priorities. We are pleased with the company's continued progress in the third quarter, during which clients remained cautious amid economic uncertainty and discretionary spend was under pressure. Q3 revenue came in at $4.9 billion, within our guidance range. We saw sequential revenue growth of 20 basis points year-over-year. Revenue grew 0.8% as reported or a modest decline of 20 basis points in constant currency. Our adjusted operating margin of 15.5% exceeded our expectations, mostly reflecting savings from our next generation program which remains on track as well as from our operational discipline and the timing of spend on investment opportunities.

We recorded another quarter of bookings growth, up approximately 9% year-over-year. We ended Q3 with a record trailing 12-month bookings growth of $26.9 billion, up 16% year-over-year and a strong book-to-bill of 1.4x. We have sustained our large deal momentum through Q3. Approximately 30% of our in-quarter Q3 bookings were large deals and 3 of these deals exceeded $100 million each. I believe we are getting progressively better at building a creative deal generation engine and solutioning large deals. I am especially encouraged to see our continued decline in attrition. Trailing 12-month voluntary attrition for our tech services business declined to 16.2%, down about 4 percentage points sequentially and down 13 points year-over-year. This decline in attrition was a positive factor in our just completed annual client Net Promoter Score survey which showed significant improvement year-over-year and hit a historic high for Cognizant.