Accenture pushes towards $3 billion in annual revenues in Australia
Accenture’s Australian revenues are pushing towards the $3 billion mark on the back of recent growth of almost 20 percent, although it’s a different story for the global giant in New Zealand.
While a drop in the ocean compared to the $70 billion Accenture generates worldwide, the global consultancy’s Australian practice has grown by around $1 billion over the past five or so years since the onset of Covid-19, adding a third of its current take.
The growth spurt – stated to be close to 20 percent in the back half of its 2025 financial year to September and continuing into this one – is in stark contrast to Accenture’s business in New Zealand, which last year dropped by over 10 percent to under $230 million.
The latest results also belie the struggles being experienced by other big names in the local consulting market, with all of the Big Four down over their past financial year, including Deloitte, which previously posted revenues greater than Accenture’s but dropped a further 8 percent last year to $2.55 billion (while acknowledging here the uneven comparison between reporting periods).
Still, while each of the Big Four also indicated an expected rebound over the current period due to recent investments and restructuring, Accenture’s Australian operations were already being noted alongside Japan as the two primary growth-drivers of the global firm’s $10 billion Asia Pacific geography in its last annual report for the twelve months to September.
Investment here may be the key, with surging demand for services around AI given as the impetus for Accenture’s local revenue spike and the firm being one of the first out of the blocks to focus on the then-emerging technology courtesy of a global three-year $3 billion cash-splash announced in mid-2023, with some of that sum since spent on setting up a generative AI studio in Australia.
According to the local corporate regulatory filings accessed by the Australian Financial Review, Accenture’s post-tax Australian profits also rose by 20 percent last year to $124 million, with the telecom, public, and financial services sectors cited as among those most currently in demand, including AI and tech projects as per the latter for all of Westpac, NAB and ANZ.
Accenture’s A/NZ chief executive, Peter Burns, told the publication that clients in those sectors were now ready to start adopting some of the newer capabilities and technologies on offer such agentic AI, with the local results tracking at a double-digit gain over the firm’s full financial year, despite excluding the $100 million business of globally-acquired Partners in Performance.
Acquisitions
The reported $1 billion-plus purchase of local cybersecurity provider CyberCX also remains off the books, with the deal still apparently awaiting approval from Australia’s Foreign Investment Review Board. Earlier purchases documented within the filings though revealed Accenture paid over $100 million to buy Sydney-based market research consultancy Fiftyfive5 in late 2022.
Things look a little different across the ditch though. Another of the firm’s acquisitions, the 2020 purchase of SAP consultancy Zag, had seen its local revenues rocket from $65-odd million to above $200 million in the space of two years. Those salad days now appear to be over however, with a further 10 percent-plus downturn bringing it back down to a three-year low of below $230 million.
Accenture has also been shedding staff around the world (with those remaining now known as ‘reinventors.’) According to various sources, the firm recently slashed more than 10,000 workers around the world deemed incapable of adjusting to AI, including one tenth of its Australian headcount, or more than 1,200 people since peaking at almost 6,600 back in 2023.
