PwC Australia reports revenue growth of 17% to $3 billion for FY22

PwC Australia today announced its full year results to 30 June 2022, delivering total revenue of $3.0 billion, reflecting underlying revenue growth of 17% and profit growth of 21%.

PwC Chief Executive Tom Seymour said, “The dedication of our partners and teams has allowed us to deliver record revenue and profit growth and make record investments in our people’s professional and personal development.

“While FY22 has been an incredibly successful year for our firm, it was also a year of continued challenges. The pandemic, geopolitical strains, supply chain disruption, skills and workforce shortages, inflation, energy transition complexities and the ongoing need to digitise are just a sample of the challenges and opportunities we are all faced with.

“Against this backdrop, I could not be prouder of the efforts of my fellow partners and our wonderful team of people for the way they have served our clients and stakeholders, looked after each other and invested in team and individual growth.”

This year’s result has supported a record 108% increase in total incentive payments to PwC Australia’s people of $75 million, up from $36 million excluding special COVID-19 ‘thank you’ payments made in FY21. There was also an average uplift for PwC Australia’s people of 9% ($75m) in fixed total remuneration.

This profit growth supported a record 148 new partner admissions. The result has meant partners who have remained on the same grade experienced an income uplift of approximately 10%.

PwC Australia achieved double digit growth across its three businesses. Assurance was up year on year, delivering revenue growth of 11%. The firm’s Consulting business grew by 21% and Financial Advisory followed closely behind, up 20% year on year.

Revenue

Growth came from organic sources rather than acquisitions, leading to high profitability. Revenue growth from businesses acquired (inorganic revenue growth) was 0.1% of total revenue growth for the firm.

Mr Seymour said, “Through our focus on organic growth, we have invested in our people right across our business, from our core services such as audit, tax, deals and consulting, to growth areas such as infrastructure, cybersecurity and energy transition.

“We have invested in Australian skills of the future with our Skilled Service Hubs in Western Sydney and Adelaide where we are on track to employing 2,000 people in the coming years in the skills of the future that will drive Australia.

“Our recently launched Energy Transition business is just one such investment we are incredibly proud of. We have brought together end to end skills in one team to seamlessly assist our clients deliver Australia’s energy transition. We are also on our own journey, with a commitment to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Our targets and progress are outlined in this report.”

Business performance

Assurance delivered a strong result this year, achieving double digit growth through its continued focus on quality and people across both its core assurance services, and the significant investment and growth in other risk and trust-based assurance services. Growth in PwC Australia’s Assurance business was 11%, growing to $730 million.

Consulting grew significantly in FY22 across all of the business’ industry sectors, delivering $740 million in revenue and recording growth of 21%. Much of this success has been underpinned by a focus on delivering value at the intersection of where human meets digital, with continued delivery of large scale programs of work across front office, corporate function and cloud transformation. The Consulting business has also focused on building its Industry Platforms to help deliver sustainable change by being a value integrator to clients, as well as its Alliance Strategy and strengthening the digital ecosystem through its alliance partner relationships.

Financial Advisory comprising Deals, PwC Private, Legal, Tax, and Integrated Infrastructure delivered over $1 billion and 20% revenue growth overall, with all five businesses achieving strong double digit growth. The Deals practice and Integrated Infrastructure were standouts, delivering close to 40% revenue growth respectively. During the year, the Tax business welcomed 16 partners and their teams who were formerly with Greenwoods. Financial Advisory's new Energy Transition business launched on 1 July 2022 which comprises over 130 professionals.

People at our core

The firm’s considerable organic growth and strong profit performance further enabled PwC Australia to make record investments in its people which included the market-leading PwC Academy Signature Experience - ‘The Outside’ event, a unique learning opportunity for senior associates and managers - an investment of $15 million. The Outside was held over five weeks in May 2022 with each event running over four days and three nights on Wonnarua Country, in the Hunter Valley, NSW. Over 2,700 PwC people attended the program. There were increased and tailored opportunities for people to grow and develop through the PwC Academy, a total investment of $28 million (including The Outside), with teams completing 393,461 hours of training.

PwC Australia also refreshed its People Value Proposition - The Deal Reimagined, which encompasses New Ways of Working, Total Reward, PwC Academy, and Workplace Experience. The firm launched mobility program Together Anywhere in December 2021, a policy that allows people to work up to four weeks remotely in Australia or overseas in certain countries if they have working rights. The firm also increased its commitment to workplace health and safety, and mental wellbeing, as well as equity in remuneration and commitment to pay transparency.

Mr Seymour said, “At PwC, our people are at the core of everything we do and drive our success. We want to provide purposeful and challenging work that our people enjoy, flexibility that helps them thrive in both work and life, and opportunities for genuine personal development and career growth, while continuing to build a diverse and inclusive workforce. As we shape the future of work at PwC, we will continue to develop the capability of leaders and all of our people, to continue to focus on creating an environment where our people can thrive.

“We also recognise the wellbeing of our people has been challenged during the COVID-19 pandemic and acknowledge that mental health will continue to be a priority issue for our people as we navigate hybrid work and transitions that are happening in ways of working. We know our people's wellbeing experience is impacted by a number of complex factors, and the workplace plays an important role. During FY22, over 3,400 of our people accessed Pandemic Leave, a policy we introduced that allows our people to take up to five days of paid leave for vaccination purposes or if they had a confirmed case of COVID-19.

“Our priority for the year ahead is to continue creating meaningful opportunities for our people to connect and collaborate at the office, as well as continue the flexibility that the new ways of working allow. Personal connection in meaningful teams, with clients, in person development opportunities and fun social events will continue to be our focus.”

Building a culture of transparency and trust

Expanding on last year, and in line with the firm’s ongoing commitment to transparency, PwC Australia has increased its reporting on economic performance this year. PwC Australia’s second Transparency Report, to be released in full on Friday, has been prepared based on the World Economic Forum International Business Council (WEF IBC) Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics to demonstrate the firm’s ongoing commitment to transparency, accountability, and sustainable performance. It details commitments and progress across Principles of Governance, People, Prosperity and Planet.

As part of the firm’s everyday activities, PwC Australia engages regularly with key stakeholder groups to understand their expectations and their views on how well the firm is meeting them. This includes its people as the firm’s primary audience for the Transparency Report. Through surveys, consultation and feedback from its people, including the firm’s People Council, PwC Australia has identified a list of topics which have been covered in the report including:

• Reward including pay transparency
• Investment in people
• Diversity, inclusion and wellbeing
• Reconciliation
• Net zero / climate change
• Community investment

Mr Seymour said, “Responding to our people’s feedback, we made advancements to financial and non-financial rewards, including delivering on our commitment to pay transparency. We’ve also disclosed specific non-financial information about our firm including our audit quality balanced scorecard, our gender pay gap and the average effective tax rate of our partners.

“Our organisation is highly diverse and we continue to grow through inclusion. We accelerated efforts to identify solutions to create an equitable and inclusive firm for all of our people, regardless of their cultural background. We’ve also continued to focus on the diversity of our partnership in line with our targets on gender and people from a non-European diverse cultural background, while also improving the gender diversity of our governance bodies. Effective 1 July 2022, our newly elected Chair of the Board of Partners, Tracey Kennair, became the first female Chair of PwC Australia’s Governance Board and our Executive Board is 50:50 gender balanced.

“In collaboration with PwC’s Indigenous Consulting, our Elevate Reconciliation Action Plan is key to our commitment to support real change in the lives of First Nations peoples. We now have a team of First Nations employees leading our First Nations employment and retention strategy, which will enable us to recruit many more talented First Nations people and build a pipeline of candidates for leadership.

“We achieved 100% renewable electricity in all Australian offices as part of our net zero commitment and have made a commitment to reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. We are well on our way to achieving this, having reduced our total greenhouse emissions by 84% this year, from our base year of FY19, and we are proud to have continued our Climate Active certification as a carbon neutral organisation. We also support Australia’s social and economic prosperity, not only through our work with clients, but through charitable donations, collaborations, thought leadership, advocacy and a seat at the table on national discussions.

“Building trust through our commitment to transparency and accountability is embedded in our day-to-day decision making. This report contains our approach to strong governance and accountability, including how we aim to ensure our oversight bodies are representative of the firm from a diversity perspective and that our people have a voice in the decisions that affect them.”

Additional quotes

Kristin Stubbins, Assurance Managing Partner at PwC Australia said, “The economic uncertainty of the past couple of years has reinforced the need within the community to seek trust and confidence from independent sources. As geopolitical and economic forces across the world continue to shift, so will the expectations that shareholders, consumers and the community have of our largest companies. With that, we've seen a continued strong demand to provide assurance over financial statements and internal controls, sustainability practices, cybersecurity and data privacy and protection, supply chain integrity, and diversity and inclusion amongst others. Our Assurance business performed strongly in FY22 achieving solid growth results and we see that demand for our services continuing through the next year. Where communities need trust, boards and executive teams need assurance.”

David McKeering, Consulting Managing Partner at PwC Australia said, “I’m really proud of the inclusive environment we’ve continued to foster this year in our ever changing market. Bringing our clients and our people's diverse skills, mindsets, and digital assets and tools together to solve some of our communities most important agendas has been a significant part of our growth story and what drives our success. We will continue to use this momentum to invest in our data, cloud and digital capabilities as we look to our future.”

Pete Calleja, Financial Advisory Managing Partner at PwC Australia said, “The economic disruption of COVID-19 created an incredibly strong transactions market and with significant investment in infrastructure and energy transition projects, Financial Advisory brought its integrated offering to clients. This generated strong double digit growth across all five businesses, with significant results in Deals and Integrated Infrastructure.

“Greenwoods joining PwC Australia has also reinforced the firm’s tax advisory capabilities in M&A, infrastructure, real estate, high net wealth and financial services. Our Energy Transition business, which is focused on accelerating Australia’s successful transition to a decarbonised economy, will continue to build on a very strong base of existing client work, including Sun Cable’s Australia-Asia PowerLink.”

_{* FY21 revenue has been restated from $2,200 to $2,220 to include PNG but excluding disbursements and other overseas entities where PwC has an equity interest
** Revenue - Overseas represents Australia’s interest in PwC’s ASEANZ Consulting business which is controlled and is consolidated in accordance with AIFRS
*** Disbursements represent out of pocket expenses and third party sub-consultant fees that are directly reimbursed from clients}