ExlService NASDAQ: EXLS executives used the company’s 2026 Investor Day to outline a strategy centered on enterprise adoption of artificial intelligence, arguing that the company’s mix of data management, domain expertise and operations experience positions it for continued double-digit growth.
Chairman and CEO Rohit Kapoor said EXL aims to be a “strategic trusted partner” for enterprise clients as they adopt and implement AI. He said the company’s shareholder objective is to deliver “sustained market-leading growth of revenue and profit.”
Kapoor said AI is creating both excitement and uncertainty, but cautioned that enterprise clients will not generate significant business value from AI through plug-and-play deployments alone. He said clients need organized data, business context, model fine-tuning, monitoring, governance and risk mitigation.
“Unless and until you apply the knowledge and mastery on data and you bring together the data and make it ready for AI,” Kapoor said, companies cannot get to desired outcomes. He added that AI will eliminate some roles but will also augment human work and expand the total addressable market by moving human involvement toward more complex and judgment-based tasks.
Executives Emphasize Data, Context and AI
Vikas Bhalla, president and head of the AI Services and Operations Strategic Growth Unit, said enterprise AI adoption has moved from experimentation toward production-grade use in core business operations. He said clients are focused on whether AI can create measurable customer and business impact, scale in select workflows and provide trust through audit trails and evidence for decisions.
Bhalla said EXL’s approach is built around three elements: data, context and AI. He said data must be accessible, able to handle structured and unstructured sources, and supported by lineage, knowledge graphs, governance and quality controls. He also said context includes both industry domain knowledge and client-specific workflows, systems, policies and customer preferences.
Bhalla said EXL has created agentic platforms to accelerate deployment, including EXLdata.ai, EXLdecision.ai and EXLerate.ai. He said the company’s operations and data-and-AI businesses are increasingly reinforcing each other, using the example of claims work where operational knowledge informs AI models and analytics insights improve operating workflows.
Client Examples Highlight AI Use Cases
Vivek Jetley, president and head of analytics, insurance, healthcare and life sciences, said EXL has 115 clients in the Fortune 2000, more than 400 clients using its data and AI work, average client tenure of more than 10 years and a 94% AI deployment success rate.
Jetley said EXL is seeing client demand in four areas:
- Preparing data for AI;
- Providing AI services to redesign workflows;
- Running operations in an AI-led model;
- Delivering integrated solutions using EXL proprietary technology and outcome-based pricing.
He cited a top 20 global insurer where EXL helped build data pipelines for underwriting and claims work, which expanded a 10-year operational relationship into work with the client’s chief information and data teams. He also described a mid-sized client where EXL shifted a potential small outsourcing opportunity into a multi-year AI-first business transformation program.
Jetley said EXL’s Smart Agent Assist product helped a large U.K. retailer increase agent productivity, leading the client to adopt EXL’s AI more broadly. He said EXL’s revenue from that client rose 20% despite some reduction in manual work because the company gained a larger scope.
In collections, Jetley said EXL built an end-to-end digital platform that uses analytics to determine outreach and treatment strategies. He said the platform has produced a 20% reduction in charge-offs for a client and is now used with more than 20 clients. In Payment Integrity, he said EXL identified $3.2 billion of claims for clients last year and runs a prepay and post-pay program for one large client that is delivering more than $600 million in annual savings.
Financial Model and Guidance
Chief Financial Officer Maurizio Nicolelli said EXL has outgrown peers over the last nine quarters, including nearly 14% revenue growth in the first quarter of 2026 compared with peers at about 6%. He said the company’s goal remains to grow adjusted earnings per share faster than revenue.
Nicolelli said EXL’s gross margin expanded 350 basis points from 2020 to 2025, adjusted operating margin expanded 360 basis points and return on invested capital increased by more than 1,100 basis points. He said the company’s data-and-AI-led business grew 21% over that five-year period, excluding AI-embedded operations, while total operations grew 14%.
According to Nicolelli, data-and-AI-led revenue represented 55% of total revenue in 2025, up from 38% in 2020, and increased to 60% in the first quarter of 2026. He said more than three-quarters of revenue is recurring, defined as contracted for one year or more, and that net revenue retention was greater than 1.1 in 2025 and the first quarter of 2026.
EXL reiterated that it raised 2026 revenue growth guidance after the first quarter to 10% to 12%, up from an initial 9% to 11%. The company also raised adjusted EPS growth guidance to 12% to 14%, from 10% to 12%. Nicolelli said EXL expects double-digit year-over-year revenue growth through its medium-term target period, which he defined as 2026 and 2027.
Capital Allocation and AI Investment
Nicolelli said EXL generated nearly $300 million of free cash flow in 2025, up 34% from the prior year, and ended the first quarter with leverage below 1x. He said the company expects a more balanced capital allocation approach between M&A and stock repurchases, after leaning more toward buybacks in recent years.
Kapoor said EXL has increased investments by almost four times and will continue to pursue strategic acquisitions to build capability. He also announced that Bhupender Singh joined the company as president and head of international growth markets, saying international expansion is a key priority.
During the question-and-answer session, executives said more than 30% of EXL’s revenue is outcome-based. They also said AI-related changes have shortened internal planning cycles from three years reviewed annually to quarterly reviews, reflecting the rapid pace of technology change.
About ExlService NASDAQ: EXLS
ExlService Holdings, Inc NASDAQ: EXLS is a global operations management and analytics company that partners with clients in insurance, healthcare, banking, and financial services to drive digital transformation and operational excellence. The firm delivers analytics-driven solutions and business process outsourcing services, including claims adjudication, finance and accounting, data management, and customer service support. ExlService combines domain expertise with advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, and automation technologies to help organizations optimize processes, enhance customer experiences, and manage risk.
Founded in 1999 and headquartered in New York City, ExlService has grown through a mix of organic expansion and strategic acquisitions, earning recognition for its data analytics capabilities and industry-specific knowledge.
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