Financials

For the 12 months ending 30 June 2024, PwC firms around the world recorded gross revenues of US$55.4 billion, increasing by 3.7% in local currency and 4.3% in US dollars over the FY23 gross revenues of US$53.1 billion. A solid performance reflecting the quality of the work delivered by our 370,000 professionals in 149 countries around the world.

References to growth rates in the following text refer to growth in local currency terms unless otherwise stated.

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

• 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. 

_{The percentage changes at constant exchange rates reflect local currency growth without the impact of US dollar exchange rates.}

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 US$19.5 billion (FY23: US$18.7 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 US$1 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 US$23.3 billion (FY23: US$22.6 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 US$12.6 billion (FY23: US$11.8 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.

_{The percentage changes at constant exchange rates reflect local currency growth without the impact of US dollar exchange rates.}

FY24 revenues are the aggregated revenues of all PwC firms. They are expressed in US dollars at average FY24 exchange rates. FY23 aggregated revenues are shown at average FY23 exchange rates. Gross revenues are inclusive of expenses billed to clients. Interterritory revenues are not included in the aggregated figures.

Across the PwC network, we invested US$3.6 billion during FY24, following investments of more than US$3.7 billion in FY23.

In addition to investments in attracting experienced teams and people to PwC firms around the world, PwC firms completed eight acquisitions (FY23: 17) and seven strategic investments (FY23: 5) around the world in FY24, expanding our professional capabilities in a number of key areas from product engineering to supply chain to data governance. 

Investments are made by individual partnerships, or groups of partnerships collaborating together. These investments cover technology development, hiring of new partners and people, training and acquisitions.

Unlike companies, partnerships can generally only make investments from their current year’s income or from bank borrowings secured against future income. This means most investments are charged to the income statement in the period in which they occurred as an expense. The treatment of acquisitions is dependent upon the individual partnership and acquisition. It varies from holding the asset in the balance sheet to charging the costs of the acquisition to the income statement over a period ranging from one to ten years.

With economic growth remaining challenging, lower revenue growth and continued upward pressure on costs, in particular people costs, the growth in net income in FY24 was relatively modest, up by 1.0% in FY24 compared with 3.1% in FY23. 

Percentage change in net income

Each partnership has its own assets and liabilities on its balance sheet. These balance sheets are supported by capital contributed by individual partners. Equity partners may be required to contribute extra capital if their responsibilities change or if a partnership requires additional capital to support anticipated organic and inorganic growth in the future.

Assets are predominantly related to working capital (debtors and cash), technology and the fixed assets associated with our offices.

Adequate banking facilities are maintained by each partnership, both to manage working capital and to provide protection against eventualities that may be reasonably expected to occur.

Our economists predict that the global economy will grow by 2.8% during the course of 2024 and at the slightly lower level of 2.6% during 2025. 

So while economic growth remains relatively modest, and there are still some inflationary pressures, our focus on helping stakeholders to build trust and solve important problems means our services continue to be demanded by our stakeholders and our performance in the first three months of FY25 remains healthy. 

As detailed in the Governance section of this Global Transparency Report, each firm of the PwC network is owned and controlled by its own local partners, and is separate from other firms in the PwC network. We therefore cannot present consolidated financial information as envisaged by Generally Accepted Accounting Standards (GAAS). Accordingly, the information presented in this chapter is aggregated from each firm. 

The gross revenue figures show the recorded revenues earned on client projects. This involves a degree of estimation, considering for instance that individual projects are at varying stages of completion. Gross revenues also include disbursements incurred exclusively on behalf of clients.

Expenses are recognised as incurred, with accruals made for unpaid amounts at the end of the year. These expenses include, for example, property, administrative and employment expenses. Expenses do not include any payments to partners.

Revenue less expenses is a measure not included in Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). We call it ‘net income.’ This is not the same as ‘net profit before tax,’ which corporations sometimes report, because in some situations, partnership agreements specify that certain expenses should be paid by the individual partners and not the firm. An example is unfunded payments to retired partners. Such amounts are not included in expenses and are therefore excluded from net income. However, we believe this non-GAAP measure is useful in assessing the performance of the network consistently over time.