PwC Reports Un-Chadly Revenue For FY24

PwC has announced global revenue numbers for FY24 (unaudited) and like their compadres at Deloitte and EY, they had a relatively ass year compared to the golden days of the Covid-and-everything-after consulting boom. For the 12 months ending 30 June 2024, PwC firms around the world reported record gross revenues of $55.4 billion USD, up from $53.1 billion for FY23.

By the numbers:

• Revenues grew by 3.7% in local currency and 4.3% in US dollars
• Workforce grew to over 370,000 people in 149 countries

That’s a significant drop from last year’s growth of 9.9% in local currency and 5.6% in freedom bucks.

PwC says they added 6,161 jobs in FY24 and 68,681 over the prior two years. Since the fiscal year ended on June 30, that doesn’t include losses from recent PwC US layoffs obviously.

In his first revenue announcement since taking the big chair at PwC last year, PwC Global Chairman Mohamed Kande 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 $1.5 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.”

The firm chose to use the words “economic and business headwinds” to describe the hits the firm has taken in Australia due to that whole tax scandal thing because it would be weird to say “we fucked up and lost business” in an official revenue announcement. See also: PwC Australia flags revenue hole, partner profit cut due to tax scandal legacy published by Reuters in August of 2023.

But let’s see the rest of the good and bad of their year around 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

Revenue and growth by service line:

• Assurance: $19.5 billion, growth of 3.4% (FY23: US$18.7 billion)
• Advisory: $23.3 billion, growth of 2.6% (FY23: US$22.6 billion)
• Tax: $12.6 billion, growth of 6.3% (FY23: US$11.8 billion)

A few areas in which advisory won in FY24:

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. [Ed. note: PwC announced in May that it became the first reseller for ChatGPT Enterprise ever, giving us an opportunity to use a very dated Hair Club for Men reference as they’re also an OpenAI customer.]

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.

It seems clear at this point that Deloitte is winning this year’s revenue contest (again) although their overall growth lagged behind PwC at just 3.9% in US currency.

• Deloitte: $67.2 billion
• PwC: $55.4 billion
• EY: $51.2 billion
• KPMG: TBD, last to report

Wouldn’t it be funny if KPMG ends up announcing double-digit growth? Ha-ha!