PwC global revenues rise to USD55.4 billion

For the 12 months ending 30 June 2024, PwC firms around the world reported record gross revenues of USD55.4 billion, growing by 3.7% in local currency and 4.3% in US dollars over the FY23 gross revenues of USD53.1 billion.

Mohamed Kande, Global Chairman, PwC said:

"It's been a year full of successes and challenges, in which we've supported our clients and made meaningful contributions to our stakeholders in the regions and communities where we live and work. Despite a backdrop of economic headwinds, we've seen revenue growth across all of our lines of business, deepened our strategic alliances, and invested USD1.5 billion to expand and scale our AI capabilities.

"As a network, we are focused on building trust and delivering quality services that our clients need to prosper today and to reinvent their businesses for tomorrow. We are focused on collaboration and innovation to help our stakeholders navigate an increasingly complex global environment, and I am proud of what our 370,000 people have accomplished this year."

Revenues grow across the world

While economic growth remains sluggish in a number of countries and political uncertainty dampened demand in some markets, overall revenues continued to grow year-on-year across the PwC network.

• Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) revenues were up by 8.6%. The consolidated revenue of the UK and Middle East rose strongly reflecting increasing demand for services in the Middle East. Germany had a steady year of growth, while there were particularly strong performances from Sweden and France. Across Africa overall, revenues declined due to ongoing tough economic conditions, however in South Africa business was buoyant. Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) had another solid year of growth.
• Some difficult market conditions in Asia Pacific meant revenues were down overall by 5.6%. Demand was particularly slow in China where revenues fell, and in Australia economic and business headwinds, as well as the divestment of the firm's government consulting business, contributed to a decline in revenue over last year. India continued to perform very well with a strong increase in revenues.
• Across the Americas revenues were up by 3.4% reflecting difficult market conditions in the US. Demand for services continues to be strong in Brazil.

Strong results across all lines of business

Each of our lines of business - Assurance, Advisory, and Tax and Legal Services - saw revenues grow in FY24.

Assurance

Revenues from our assurance operations grew by 3.4% to USD19.5 billion (FY23: USD18.7 billion). In our 175th year our assurance business remains the foundation of our operations. Demand for our newer services such as risk and broader assurance in areas such as environmental impact continues to grow and we continue to invest in the development of these newer services to meet the growing and changing needs of our stakeholders.

Despite a very competitive market and the impact of audit firm rotation, our core audit business grew as stakeholders continue to see the value of our commitment to audit quality and investment in the audit of the future. Audit revenues account for three quarters of our total assurance revenues.

In FY24, working with leading technology companies, we continued our multi-year programme of investing USD1 billion to develop our Next Generation Audit platform for our assurance services on financial and broader impact reporting.

Advisory

Revenues from our advisory operations were up by 2.6% to USD23.3 billion (FY23: USD22.6 billion). A continuing slow market for mergers and acquisitions, sluggish economic growth in a number of key markets and political uncertainty holding back investment in some key projects meant that the growth of our advisory operations slowed over the last twelve months.

We have continued to invest in the work that we undertake with our key technology alliance partners as we help our clients with the ongoing digital transformation of their operations. Wins with our alliance partners grew by 24.5% in FY24. Our investment in alliances will continue in the coming years and we see this as an increasingly important segment of our advisory business.

In the past 12 months we also saw healthy and growing demand for our Managed Services business which now employs 58,000 people across the world. Our work helping organisations in financial difficulty and facing liquidation also continued to grow with wins from this segment of our business up by 30% in FY24.

Tax and Legal Services

Revenues from our Tax, Legal and Workforce businesses were up by 6.3% to USD12.6 billion (FY23: USD11.8 billion).

Regulatory uncertainty and technological disruption continued to fuel our largest growth area in tax, Connected Tax Compliance. This includes both Pillar Two and Sustainability which have increasingly complex reporting requirements.

Demand for our Legal and Workforce services grew strongly in FY24. We focused on supporting clients as they undergo mergers and acquisitions, business transformation and workforce planning efforts - all underpinned by an assessment of the impact of artificial intelligence on their people, processes and business.

Investing in the PwC of tomorrow

Across the PwC network, we invested USD3.6 billion during FY24, following investments of more than USD3.7 billion in FY23.

In addition to investments in attracting experienced teams and people to PwC firms around the world, PwC firms completed eight acquisitions and seven strategic investments in FY24, expanding our professional capabilities in a number of key areas from product engineering to supply chain to data governance.

The PwC network continues to make significant investments in our audit tools, technologies and methodologies globally to further standardise, simplify, and automate our work to drive quality and enable our teams to deliver a faster and better experience for our clients. AI, including Generative AI, is a strategic priority for our network, reflected in our USD1.5 billion investment in AI initiatives and in May 2024, our US and UK firms signed an agreement with OpenAI making PwC OpenAI's first reseller for ChatGPT Enterprise and the largest user of the product.

Carol Stubbings, Global Chief Commercial Officer, PwC UK said:

"At PwC, delivering quality is at the core of everything we do. It's the foundation of our stakeholder relationships and the key to our success. Our quality-driven decisions and commitments are all about consistently striving to improve and delivering results that stand the test of time. The significant investments we made last year, including in our AI capabilities and Next Generation Audit platform, position us to deliver meaningful outcomes for our clients, people and wider stakeholders."

Building the workforce of the future

In 2021 we committed to creating over 100,000 net new jobs over a five-year period, with a clear emphasis on hiring specialists in increasingly critical areas such as cybersecurity, cloud, climate, transformation, and supply chain. We have reached three quarters of our target in just three years, adding 6,161 jobs in FY24 and 68,681 over the prior two years, taking our workforce to over 370,000 people around the world.

Training and upskilling our people and giving them the skills to build successful careers as part of a community of solvers, is key to the current and future success of PwC. We invested in our people's capabilities to help address the challenges of the 21st century with over 198,000 active PwC employees completing sustainability upskilling and over 50,000 active PwC employees have undertaken Inclusive Mindset training.

We have continued to invest nearly USD1.5 billion to expand and scale our AI capabilities across our network, and rolled out the AI platform 'ChatPwC' to over 200,000 people in member firms across the PwC network, enabling our people to use ChatGPT technology in a secure environment and always with human oversight.

While there is always more to do in making PwC the best place to work for our colleagues, last year our people said: PwC is a great place to work (84%), a place where they 'belong' (76%) and a place where their personal values align with the values demonstrated at PwC (82%).

Playing our part in the societies and communities where we live and work

For the second year in a row, we are separately publishing a Global Transparency Report that includes how we are performing against the 55 World Economic Forum's (WEF) Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics, along with our Network Environment Report. Reporting on the broader impact we have as an organisation allows our stakeholders to evaluate us not just on the revenues we generate, but on our impact on people, society and the planet.

Of the 39 WEF metrics that are relevant to our business, we fully or partially comply with 35. We have made progress on our reporting against these metrics in recent years and will continue to look at ways we can increase our transparency in future years.

We believe strongly in the value of robust disclosures of companies' impact on society. We supported the World Economic Forum to develop its Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics, a rigorous way for companies to measure their impact on people and the planet. We were an early adopter of the metrics, and our latest report is here. We believe the metrics heighten transparency and accountability, helping to build stronger communities and a healthier environment.

We have continued to make progress toward achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions in line with 2030 goals. For example, we have already reduced our scope 1 & 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 71% compared to FY19 (our goal is a 50% reduction by FY30). In addition, we already use 95% renewable electricity in our territories.

Supporting and helping the communities in which we live and work is very important to our people all around the world. We contribute to our local communities by volunteering and offering our services on a pro-bono or discounted basis. Last year, more than 54,000 PwC people contributed more than 860,000 hours to activities supporting charities, NGOs and local organisations, reaching over 1.5 million beneficiaries and providing over USD220 million of community investment.

Pisit Thangtanagul, CEO of PwC Thailand, added:

"This year, PwC Thailand again contributed to the growth of the PwC network. Despite 2024 being challenging for Thai businesses, with a sluggish economy and geopolitical uncertainty, we remained committed to delivering quality services to our clients. Our revenue in Thailand grew strongly as a result of this commitment. Next year, PwC Thailand will continue to support our global drive for innovation and collaboration. We'll keep adopting new technology and upskilling our people with digital skills to improve the quality of services we deliver to our clients. What's more, we'll stay committed to corporate social responsibility and work together with our clients to achieve sustained outcomes for our society and the environment."