Oct 28, 2026 earnings call — Agentic AI growth and iMerit acquisition
EXL raised its 2026 revenue outlook to $2.43 billion-$2.44 billion and raised adjusted EPS guidance to $2.34-$2.36.
Revenue $0.6B (est $0.6B) · EPS $0.62 (est $0.56) · Next-quarter revenue outlook $2.4B–$2.4B
Key quotes
"Notable launches included our Agentic Suite for finance, along with enhancements to LifePRO Agentic Suite for life and annuities, and Payment Integrity with AI for healthcare payers."
"In the two months since closing, iMerit contributed $15.3 million of revenue to the quarter, with notable growth across high tech and healthcare, combined with continued momentum with frontier AI labs."
"We now expect 2026 revenue to be in the range of $2.43 billion-$2.44 billion."
Analyst Q&A 7
Growth sustainability and international expansion
Q (Bryan Bergin · TD Cowen): Analyst asked how sustainable the company's strong growth is versus last year, and whether international investments can become a growth leader.
A: Management said momentum remains strong and the Data and AI-led part of the business is accelerating. They said pipeline is growing faster and decision times are shorter, improving deal velocity. They also said International Growth Markets are still small but a large opportunity, and acquisitions there could help accelerate growth.
"Today, what we see is that we are adding new pipeline, which is growing at a faster pace." — Rohit Kapoor (CEO·CHAIR)
Drivers of recent growth acceleration
Q (Puneet Jain · JPMorgan): Analyst asked whether recent upside is from clients embracing AI/data services or from company-specific drivers like international expansion, and how iMerit helps with enterprise and frontier labs.
A: Management said growth is broad-based across all segments but the Data and AI-led portfolio has driven the recent outperformance. They said iMerit is a strategic acquisition that gives EXL capabilities across the full AI stack and helps work with frontier labs, but it's early and will play out over a longer period.
"The big reason for that has been the outperformance in our Data and AI-led part of the portfolio, where we've seen an acceleration of growth and we've seen a lot of business momentum." — Rohit Kapoor (CEO·CHAIR)
Margin impact from moving to AI
Q (Maggie Nolan · William Blair): Analyst asked how moving clients from traditional operations to Data and AI-led work affects margins at different transition stages, and how sustainable Payment Integrity growth is.
A: Management said embedding AI makes relationships more valuable but the margin picture is unclear now because commercial terms with clients have not yet shifted to reflect the new value. On Payment Integrity, they said EXL has a leadership position, expects AI to expand the opportunity (including moving work from post-payment to pre-payment), and sees growth potential extending into insurance.
"Payment Integrity for us has been a great business, and we are really proud of having a leadership position in Payment Integrity." — Rohit Kapoor (CEO·CHAIR)
Margins and iMerit contribution
Q (David Koning · Robert W. Baird & Co. Incorporated): Analyst asked about margin outlook given employee cost leverage and rising infrastructure/pass-through costs, and how much of sequential employee growth came from iMerit versus organic.
A: Management reiterated guidance for roughly flat margins year-over-year and said they will keep investing in employees, infrastructure, and technology as Data and AI work increases. They said organic headcount growth was 11% year-over-year and the rest of the headcount increase in the quarter came from the iMerit acquisition; iMerit revenue may be lumpy month-to-month.
"Look, we have guided margins to be fairly flat on a year-over-year basis." — Maurizio Nicolelli (CFO)
Capturing AI cost savings
Q (Vincent Colicchio · Barrington): Analyst asked how much of declining AI model costs EXL can capture in margin versus how much will be passed to clients.
A: Management said AI compute costs are falling but some costs (guardrails, agentic harness, assurance) may rise, creating volatility in the cost base. They said their focus is to drive incremental business value for clients and to earn a fair return while investing and maintaining margins.
"our entire effort is to be able to drive incremental business value to our clients and to be able to make a fair return on that value that we deliver to our clients." — Rohit Kapoor (CEO·CHAIR)
Banking gross margin decline reasons
Q (Vincent Colicchio · Barrington): Analyst asked why year-over-year gross margin fell in Banking, Capital Markets, and Diversified Industries and whether that pressure will persist.
A: Management said the decline mainly reflects investments and future hiring for expected new business in Q3, including ramping analytics and AI services in banking and diversified industries. They noted the quarter showed about an 80 basis point decline from Q2 to Q3 in that area tied to these investments.
"When you look at the Banking, Capital Markets, and Diversified Industries, especially in Q3, we have been making a lot of investment in terms of future hiring for business that is coming on board." — Maurizio Nicolelli (CFO)
Visibility into 2027 and healthcare
Q (David Grossman · Stifel): Analyst asked about cadence of bookings through 2026, visibility into 2027 versus prior years, and a call-out on the healthcare vertical's slower growth.
A: Management said the pipeline is healthy, pipeline creation is growing double digits and consistent with revenue growth, and they are seeing larger integrated deals that combine Total Operations and Data/AI. They noted 75% of revenue is recurring, said visibility into next year is as strong as last year, and that the healthcare slowdown in Q3 appears to be quarterly lumpiness rather than a trend.
"The pipeline is healthy, and like we said, the pipeline creation is growing double digits, pretty much consistent with the revenue growth rate that we have." — Rohit Kapoor (CEO·CHAIR)