Cognizant cuts 2026 shareholder payouts to fund AI and acquisitions
Cognizant is cutting its shareholder payouts for 2026 to $1.6 billion (down from $1.99 billion last year) so it can put more money into artificial intelligence and buying other companies.
Of that, $1 billion goes to stock buybacks and $600 million to dividends, while half of the company's yearly free cash flow will now be used for mergers and acquisitions.
Ravi Kumar Singisetti touts M&A opportunities
Lately, Cognizant has spent big (like $700 million on data engineering firm 3Cloud and $600 million acquisition of IT services provider Astreya) and brought in $21.1 billion in revenue last year.
CEO Ravi Kumar Singisetti called this an "This is a phenomenal time to create value from M&A in line with our reforged first principles, which is about having a platform play, managing our business on outcomes versus effort, and AI-enabling our offerings. So if you put all that together, we have some exceptional opportunities in the market," for growth, but experts say making it work will come down to how well they execute the plan.