ExlService Holdings Inc.: iMerit Acquisition: Positive on Expanding Enterprise AI Delivery and Model Capabilities

Research evidence excerpt

ExlService Holdings Inc.: iMerit Acquisition: Positive on Expanding Enterprise AI Delivery and Model Capabilities

J P M O R G A N North America Equity Research

24 June 2026

ExlService Holdings Inc. Overweight

EXLS, EXLS US

iMerit Acquisition: Positive on Expanding Enterprise AI Price (23 Jun 26):$26.16

Delivery and Model Capabilities

Payments, Processors & IT Services

This morning, ExlService (EXLS) announced a definitive agreement to acquire Puneet Jain AC

iMerit, a provider of AI data training plus model improvement services spanning (1-212) 622-1436

evaluation and reinforcement learning for large language and multimodal models. puneet.x.jain@jpmorgan.com

The deal is valued at up to $310M of upfront and future consideration, including Tien-tsin Huang, CFA

$170M upfront plus up to $140M of incentives and earnouts over two years tied (1-212) 622-6632

to specified milestones, and is expected to close in 3Q26. Strategically, we view tien-tsin.huang@jpmorgan.com

the transaction as anchored on two growth areas: (1) improving inferencing Abbey Hochreiner

outcomes via scaled evaluation and reinforcement learning as customers prioritize (1-212) 270-5798

abbey.hochreiner@jpmchase.com

token economics, latency, and accuracy; and (2) bringing those capabilities into the

Brendan Biles

enterprise by combining iMerit’s model capabilities with EXLS’s enterprise reach, (1-212) 270-0880

which should drive mix and productivity uplift over time. By our math, we expect brendan.biles@jpmorgan.com

EPS impact to be essentially neutral but estimate the deal could add ~50-100bps J.P. Morgan Securities LLC

to revenue growth with a ~20-30bps margin impact in first year post close, with

synergies and mix shift opportunity over time. We expected EXLS to pursue data