Cognizant

Cognizant

Cognizant said on Tuesday that its revenue rose 34.4% to $1.49 billion in the quarter ended June, and in the process displaced Wipro Technologies as India's No. 3 IT firm in terms of revenue. Wipro reported a revenue of $1.41 billion in the quarter.

Cognizant said it is expecting a revenue of $1.57 billion in the September quarter. Wipro's guidance for the quarter lies in the range of $1.39-1 .42 billion. Cognizant has also narrowed the revenue gap with Infosys to less than $200 million. Infosys earned $1.671 billion in June quarter, and its guidance is $1.73 billion for September quarter.
Cognizant's net profit jumped 20.83% to $208.04 million in the April-June 2011 quarter, up from $172.17 million in the year-ago period.

The NASDAQ-listed firm, which has more than 70% of its software developers in India, has also been aggressive on the recruitment front. In the June quarter, Cognizant net added 7,200 professionals as against Wipro's 2,894 and Infosys' 3,041. Only TCS recruited more, with a net addition of 11,700 people in the quarter.

Cognizant ended the quarter with over 1,18,300 employees globally. The company added 76 new clients and closed the quarter with 721 active clients.

Geographic composition of revenues shows Cognizant earned 77.8% from North America, 18.6% from Europe and 3.6% from Asia Pacific, West Asia and Latin America.

Analysts had expected profit earnings of 66 cents a share, on revenue of $1.46 billion. The company reported profit earnings of 67 cents a share on revenues of $1.49 billion.

"We believe that our ability to attract the world's best talent and our unique global delivery model infused with deep consulting and domain expertise are among the reasons why we see continued demand for our services that deliver both topline and bottomline value to our clients, and continued industry-leading growth for Cognizant ," president and CEO Francisco D'Souza said.

The company forecast a strong third quarter (July-September ) at a time when rival Indian IT services exporters have warned of slowing technology spending. Infosys reported quarterly profit that missed expectations and warned it could face slow client spending. TCS flagged concerns about economic uncertainty , and Wipro said the uncertain economic environment had resulted in volatility in business, but it was not seeing delays in the IT spending decision-making process by customers.

Cognizant has projected third-quarter earnings of at least 76 cents a share, on revenue of at least $1.57 billion. Cognizant has also revised the guidance upwards to at least 32% for the full calendar year 2011 (from at least 29% announced last quarter and at least 26% at the start of the year).

"We continue to see stronger than anticipated demand for our increasing range of services across the industries we serve. Over this past year, we have seen clients seeking our services not just to drive operational efficiencies, but also to transform their businesses to adapt to next generation technologies and to a new generation of 'born digital' workers and consumers," D'Souza said.