"Companies flexed a few levers to defend margins. These include raising utilization rates, increasing productivity measures, lowering the average cost of resources, further cutting subcon costs (sufficiently optimized by now), and managing SG&A," said Kotak's Kawaljeet Saluja. Analysts are building in 60-110 bps margin expansion over FY2024-26E for TCS, Infosys, and HCL Tech.