Good morning, and welcome to the 2024 Annual Meeting of Shareholders of Cognizant Technology Solutions Corporation. I am John Kim, Executive Vice President, Chief Legal Officer, Chief Administrative Officer, and Corporate Secretary of the company. I will be acting as secretary of today's meeting. Joining me today is Ravi Kumar, Chief Executive Officer, and a director of the company. Mr. Kumar will be the chairman of this meeting. I would like to remind you that some of the comments made during today's meeting and some of the responses to your questions may contain forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to the risks and uncertainties described in the company's earnings, releases, and filings with the SEC. Additionally, in response to your questions, we may reference certain non-GAAP financial measures that we believe provide useful information for our investors.
Where appropriate, reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to the corresponding GAAP measures can be found in the company's earnings releases and other filings with the SEC, which may be found on our website at investors.cognizant.com. I'd like to now turn the floor over to Ravi.
Thank you, John. Good morning. I now call the meeting to order. At this time, I would like to introduce to you the directors of the company, all of whom are participating in the meeting. They are Chair of the Board, Steve Rohleder, Zein Abdalla, Vinita Bali, Eric Branderiz, Archana Deskus, John Dineen, Leo Mackay, Michael Patsalos-Fox, Bram Schot, Joe Velli, Sandra Wijnberg. I would also like to introduce you to certain other officers of the company. In addition to John Kim, we are joined today by Jatin Dalal, Chief Financial Officer, and Tyler Scott, VP and Head of Investor Relations. Before beginning today's official business, I would like to give you an update on how we have executed against our strategic plan since we were last together.
In 2024, we celebrated our 30th year as a digital and technology services business that is built on industry expertise, collaboration, and innovation. Cognizant's strong roots have allowed us to help our clients through inflection points over these three decades, from the emergence of cloud to digital platforms and now to Generative AI. Our 345,000 associates around the world keep me inspired, knowing that our clients are in good hands. As I mentioned last year, it's my belief that we can create a virtuous cycle of growth when happy employees drive positive client engagement. Over time, it drives up our client satisfaction, feeds relationships, and enhances the possibility to win more opportunities with clients. On this account, I believe we are headed in the right direction as we improved our net promoter scores with clients in 2023 and quarter one of 2024.
Midway through my second year as CEO, I see us in a far stronger position than last year. We've invested in talent, platforms, and innovation to strengthen our capabilities at the intersection of technology and industry, and to help our clients navigate uncertainty and embrace the opportunities ahead. As we continue driving to win, we understand that maintaining momentum requires that we keep executing against our three strategic priorities, which I outlined for you last year. One, accelerating revenue growth, two, becoming an employer of choice in our industry, and three, simplifying our operations. A quick update on each of these strategic priorities. First, in 2023, we pivoted our strategy and operations towards the goal of recapturing our place as a market leader in revenue growth.
And while the demand environment remains uncertain and geopolitical risks continue, in the first quarter of 2024, we delivered revenue above the high end of our guidance range. Last year, I mentioned our focus on winning large deals. In the first quarter of this year, that strategy helped us accelerate our large deal momentum from last year as we signed eight deals with a total contract value or TCV of at least $100 million, compared to our only four in the year-ago period. We have also seen early returns from our efforts to diversify large deals outside of North America, as two of these eight large deals are in the Asia Pacific and Japan region. This growth is a result of our intentionally reorienting our teams to a large deal demand generation and execution across all service lines.
We have made progress in industrializing delivery with automation and productivity tools to create repeatable solutions. This enables a consistent and efficient delivery operating model designed for large deals. Our second strategic priority is to become an employer of choice in our industry. Our value proposition to our teams includes the prospect of internal mobility, the opportunity to work on cutting-edge technology, and access to lifelong learning. This opportunity to learn and develop was one of the highest-scoring engagement drivers in Cognizant's 2023 people engagement survey, confirming our commitment to continuous training and reskilling for our employees. In 2023, 90% of our global workforce invested in learning, with 270,000 of our employees acquiring at least one skill or proficiency. 88,000 completed courses on AI and Generative AI. Innovation is in our DNA, and we believe it lives in every one of our associates.
To harness that homegrown power, one year ago, we launched Blueb olt, a grassroots innovation program. Blueb olt is open to all our 345,000 associates. As of April, Cognizant associates have submitted more than 130,000 ideas through Blueb olt, and it has driven more than $150 million in estimated annualized cost savings for our clients across more than 1,100 implementations. This is how we are preparing our teams for a future of work shaped by this new era of technology. In the first quarter of 2024, voluntary attrition improved further. We ended the quarter with trailing 12 months voluntary attrition for our technology services business at 13.1%, a decline of 10 percentage points year-over-year. We're also looking to the future of work for Cognizant and our clients.
In our view, the traditional skilling model is not keeping pace with the evolving workforce of tomorrow's jobs. So since we were last together, we launched a new program called Synapse. Synapse aims to train one million individuals, including in our client and employee communities around the world, with technology skills that can support gainful employment by 2026. Overall, I think the cultural renewal at Cognizant has produced a new, higher level of teamwork, responsiveness, and confidence. Our third strategic priority is to simplify our operations. During 2023, we executed well on our NextGen program, which aims to simplify our operating model, optimize corporate functions, and consolidate and realign office space to reflect the post-pandemic work environment. Our cost management enabled us to achieve an adjusted operating margin performance in 2023 that exceeded our expectations from earlier in the year.
And today, this work continues, helping us expand our Q1 2024 adjusted operating margin by 50 basis points year-over-year to 15.1%. We remain focused on driving further efficiencies in our business model by improving utilization, increasing our operational discipline, and automating more of our tools and processes. In my opening, I mentioned GenAI and how Cognizant's strong roots allow us to help our clients navigate through technological inflection points like these. We have a realistic view of the opportunity AI brings and our role in helping to make it real for our clients and preparing them for an AI-enabled future. We continue following and participating in the innovation cycles of AI. We partner with the providers, and a newly launched advanced AI lab is helping us sense what's coming next.
We're also investing in last mile platform infrastructure to get the raw power of AI to enterprise grade. In the last 12 months, our AI platforms gained significant traction as we onboarded clients to our Neuro, Skygrade, and Flowsource platforms to cover various phases of the AI deployment cycles. We're investing in productivity studies, which dissect the anatomy of skills and occupations and map how a job could change due to AI. We have a custom GenAI assessment that uses exposure scores in client organizations as a basis to prioritize use cases. We have done this work internally as well, treating ourselves as client zero. We're looking first at how the roles inside Cognizant can change, and then we are showing clients how to realize value and drive the scaled embrace of newer AI use cases. We'll continue to expand this work throughout the year.
In closing, I would like to share that our clients' desire and need to drive innovation is apparent in all our interactions. As such, we plan to continue our investments in people, platforms, and innovation, and in enhancing our capabilities. We are also continuing our work aimed at accelerating revenue growth, and we plan to keep pushing to be our industry's employer of choice and to further simplify our operations. I deeply appreciate the board's guidance and support throughout the year, and I'm grateful for our associates who keep delivering for our clients. Thank you for the opportunity to continue earning your confidence and trust. With that, I would like to move to today's official business. We'll conduct the business portion of our meeting first. After the formal portion of the meeting, we'll provide time for questions.
Only validated shareholders may ask questions in the designated field on the web portal. You can submit your questions before the question and answer portion of the meeting begins. Only questions that are relevant to the meeting and consistent with the rules of conduct will be considered. Please note that this meeting is being recorded, and a replay will be made available after the conclusion of the meeting on our website for approximately one year. We do not authorize any other recording of this meeting. During the question and answer session, we will answer questions submitted during the meeting as time permits. The time now is 9:42 A.M. EST on 4th of June, 2024, and the polls are now open for voting on all matters. John will now discuss some of the procedural matters in connection with this meeting.
Thank you, Ravi. Today's meeting is being held pursuant to a notice included in the Cognizant Proxy Statement and sent to Cognizant shareholders on or about April 23rd, 2024. The company has designated Linda Piscadlo of American Election Services LLC to serve as the Inspector of Election. The Inspector of Election has advised that a majority of the total outstanding shares are represented here today. As we have a quorum, we may now carry out the official business of the meeting. I would now like to outline the voting procedures. Only Cognizant shareholders, as of the record date for this annual meeting, who have logged into the meeting using their 16-digit control number, are entitled to vote. Shareholders who voted by proxy need not cast ballots in the voting today unless they wish to change their vote.
If you have not yet submitted a proxy or you would like to change your vote, you may do so now by clicking the Vote Here button on your screen. Once all items of business have been addressed and shareholders have been provided an opportunity to submit their votes online, the chairman will close the polls for voting. The preliminary voting results will be outlined at the end of this meeting, and the final vote totals will not be known until the Inspector of Election certifies the tabulation after the meeting. Those final results will be reported by the company in a current report in Form 8-K, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The rules of conduct for this annual meeting, available on the web portal, provide rules for the question and answer session, as well as for the presentation of shareholder proposals.
When presenting their shareholder proposal, each proponent must limit the time of his or her presentation to three minutes and must limit the substance of their presentation to the subject matter of the shareholder proposal being addressed. Any proponent who would like to ask questions or provide their views on matters other than their proposal may do so during the question and answer portion of the meeting. I will now cover the matters to be considered by shareholders at this meeting. There are four company matters and one shareholder matter to be considered by the shareholders at this meeting. The Proxy Statement describes each of these matters in detail, so I'll only outline them here. If any shareholder would like to make a comment or ask a question regarding any of the proposals, please submit your comment or question through the questions section of the web portal.
The first voting item concerns the election of the following 12 director nominees to serve until the 2025 Annual Meeting of Shareholders, or until their respective successors have been duly elected and qualified. Zein Abdalla, Vinita Bali, Eric Branderiz, Archana Deskus, John Dineen, Ravi Kumar, Leo Mackay Jr., Michael Patsalos-Fox, Stephen Rohleder, Abraham Schot, Joseph Velli, and Sandra Wijnberg. Additional information about each nominee is contained in your proxy materials. The second item is an advisory vote on the company's executive compensation. The third item is a proposal to adopt the company's amended and restated certificate of incorporation to limit the liability of certain officers as permitted by Delaware law, remove obsolete provisions, make other technical and administrative updates.
The fourth item is a proposal to ratify the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year ending December 31st, 2024. Scott Davis of PwC is with us today and is available to respond to any questions you may have during the question and answer session. The fifth item, if properly presented at the meeting, is a shareholder proposal requesting that the Board of Directors take action as necessary to adopt and disclose a policy relating to treating shareholders board nominees equitably and without certain unnecessary requirements. At this time, Mr. James McRitchie will present this proposal. Operator, please allow the proponent's statement to be read.
Thank you. In its opposition statement, Cognizant notes the Governance and Sustainability Committee uses the same criteria for evaluating director candidates, regardless of the source of referral. Yet elsewhere, the opposition statement claims director nominees selected by Cognizant undergo a rigorous vetting process, while shareholder nominees need only comply with the requirements set forth in our bylaws. Which is it? Are shareholder nominees judged using the same criteria as board candidates or not? The company's position is unclear. I filed similar proposals at more than a dozen companies. Cognizant is the only company that did not accept our simple request to judge shareholder nominees based on legal requirements, not their suitability or desirability. I offered to withdraw the proposal if the board agreed to add two sentences, something like the following, to their governance policy and announce it in an SEC filing.
Here's the draft language I offered: "For the purposes of SEC Rule 14a-19, Universal Proxy Rule, the board's role in terms of including a shareholder nominee on the proxy card is to ensure the shareholder nominee is qualified based on requirements specified in the charter or bylaws. It is not to ensure their suitability to serve on the board." In other words, in determining which shareholder candidates appear on the ballot, the board's job is to determine if they meet the legal requirements. The board can recommend for or against, but if they meet those legal requirements, it's up to the shareholders to determine their suitability. Cognizant refused to make that simple clarification. That's the only reason this measure is here before you today. Additionally, I would point out that Diligent rates Cognizant's vulnerability to activism at 85%, meaning only 15% of companies are more vulnerable....
A dollar invested in Nasdaq five years ago is worth $1.85. If you invested in Cognizant at the same time, it's worth only $1.16. Cognizant could face an activist shareholder. If it does, do you want the ballot to be fair? If so, vote for proposal number five, Fair Treatment of Shareholder Nominees. Thank you.
Thank you. I would like to note that the Board of Directors has recommended that shareholders vote against the shareholder proposal for the reasons set forth in the company's Proxy Statement. We will now pause to address any shareholder questions we received relating to these proposals. At this time, the window to submit questions on the proposals is closed. We will now check to see if any questions on the proposals or any other appropriate topics were submitted in the queue. There are no questions in the queue. This concludes all items on the agenda for shareholder action at the meeting. Any shareholders who have not yet voted or who wish to change their vote should do so now by clicking on the Vote Here button on the web portal and following the instructions provided.
Shareholders who have sent in proxies or voted via the telephone or internet and do not wish to change their vote, do not need to take any further action. We will pause for an additional 1 minute to allow shareholders to submit their votes.
Thank you, John. The time is 9:51 A.M. EST on Tuesday, June 4th, and the polls are now officially closed.
Thank you, Ravi. We have received a preliminary report of the results of voting from the Inspector of Election. The report of the Inspector of Election indicates that each of Zein Abdalla, Vinita Bali, Eric Branderiz, Archana Deskus, John Dineen, Ravi Kumar , Leo Mackay Jr., Michael Patsalos-Fox, Stephen Rohleder, Abraham Schot, Joseph Velli, and Sandra Wijnberg have been duly elected as directors of the company to serve until the 2025 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. The shareholders have approved, on an advisory basis, the company's executive compensation as disclosed in the company's Proxy Statement. The shareholders have adopted the company's amended and restated certificate of incorporation to limit the liability of certain officers as permitted by Delaware law, remove obsolete provisions, and make other technical and administrative updates.
The shareholders have ratified the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for fiscal year 2024, and the shareholders have rejected the shareholder proposal requesting that the Board of Directors adopt and disclose a policy relating to treating shareholders' board nominees equitably without certain unnecessary requirements.
Thank you, John. As there is no further business, the business portion of the meeting is now adjourned. We will now begin the question and answer session.
For those of you participating via the web portal, you can submit a question by typing a question in the Ask a Question field on your screen and submitting... and clicking Submit. Please note, we will answer as many questions as time permits. In accordance with the rules of conduct of the meeting, we ask that you limit your questions to matters relevant to the business of the company. So we have our first question: The company has in place a director resignation bylaw that provides the board post-election discretion to determine whether to accept or reject the resignation of an incumbent director who fails to be reelected. Does the bylaw undermine the voting rights of shareholders by allowing the board to have the final say on the unelected director's status? I refer this question to Zein Abdalla, the Chair of our Governance Committee.
Okay. Well, look, thank you for the question. Our director resignation policy applies only if an incumbent director does not receive support from a majority of votes cast in an uncontested election. In which case, state law provides that the director remains in office to promote continuity. Now, we believe our policy prudently balances the state law concerns over stability and continuity at the board level, with the rights of shareholders to express their views through the vote. Moreover, our policy, which I think is fair to say, most investors view as good governance, is consistent with the overwhelming majority of policies adopted at other companies.
Thank you, Zein. Are there any other questions? We'll wait, we'll wait one more minute to see if there's any other additional questions. If not, we'll close this meeting. Mr. Chairman, as there are no further questions, this concludes our question-and-answer session.
Thank you, John, and thank you to all our shareholders for attending. The conference is now concluded. You may now disconnect.
This now concludes the meeting. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day.