Cognizant's first acquisition under new CEO Brian Humphries is an Irish company that helps in manufacturing of drugs and medical devices

• The New Jersey-based technology major has acquired Cork, Ireland-based Zenith Technologies for an undisclosed amount.
• This is Cognizant's first acquisition since Brian Humphries took over as CEO in April.
• Zenith specializes in digital technologies to manage, control, and optimize drug and medical device production.

Cognizant has announced its first acquisition under the leadership of the new Chief Executive Officer Brian Humphries. The New Jersey-based technology major has acquired Cork, Ireland-based Zenith Technologies for an undisclosed amount.

Zenith specializes in digital technologies to manage, control, and optimize drug and medical device production, Cognizant said in a press release on Tuesday (June 18). "“In acquiring Zenith Technologies, we expand Cognizant’s IoT portfolio and extend our life sciences domain expertise by becoming a single-source provider of end-to-end smart factory capabilities," the statement added.

Zenith is privately-held company of about 800 engineers, and has units in 16 locations including Warrington (Cheshire, United Kingdom), Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) and Raleigh (North Carolina) in US, and Pune (Maharashtra, India), according to its LinkedIn page. The company is estimated to have an annual revenue of about $63 million, according to Owler.

These are testing times for Cognizant that is listed on Wall Street. The company’s newly appointed CEO Brian Humphries is reportedly looking to get the house in order after depleting fortunes forced the company to slash its growth forecast for 2019 from 7%-9% to 3.6%-5.1% in constant currency terms.

About two-thirds of the company’s slashed revenue forecast could be attributed to five healthcare clients — four of whom were going through mergers, while the fifth was insourcing its IT spend, according to company's chief financial officer(CFO) Karen McLoughlin.

The company has had two rounds of layoffs, or 'employee separation' as the company called it, in the last couple of years-- about 400 people in 2017 and another undisclosed number this year.


Most of the company's troubles were attributed to the 'bloated cost structure', according to a report by Nirmal Bang Institutional equities. "The new CEO – Brian Humphries - in our view would likely take at least 24 months to align the cost structure and delivery capabilities (the more difficult part) with its large Indian peers. In the mean time we expect CTS to lose share to players like TCS and Infosys which have built better delivery engines and would be in a position to bid aggressively for large contracts," the report said.

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