EY reports record global revenues of US$36.4b in 2019

- Strong revenue growth in FY19 across all service lines, geographies and key industries contribute to nine consecutive years of strong growth  

- Focus on high-quality, digital audit services sparked a high number of significant audit mandates at major global corporations like Bosch, Deutsche Bank, Zurich Insurance and others

- Revenue growth of automation and blockchain projects generated from US$1b technology investment plan over two years

- 20 acquisitions and eight new alliances in 2019 expanded global resources and capabilities in supply chain automation, robotics and cybersecurity

- Continued global focus with 10.7% growth in emerging markets

- Created more than 100,000 jobs since 2013

LONDON, Sept. 5, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- EY today announces record combined global revenues of US$36.4b for the financial year ended June 2019. Overall, financial year (FY) 2019 revenues grew by 8.0% in local currency (versus 7.4% in FY18). Over the last six years, EY has recorded strong 8.3% compound annual growth and at local currency rates has added nearly US$15b in combined revenue and more than 100,000 EY people.

Carmine Di Sibio, EY Global Chairman and CEO, says:

"While the past year has seen a number of strains in the global economy – from trade tensions, protectionism and recession fears – we have achieved strong growth from our continued focus on long-term value creation using technology to transform traditional EY services and to launch new, innovative solutions. As a result, more EY clients are turning to us for both traditional and a newer range of services. EY clients see us as a strategic part of their wider ecosystem enabling their success in today's marketplace.

"As I begin my first year as the new EY Global Chairman and CEO, we will be launching the next phase of our strategy to make even greater use of our biggest strengths: EY people, client-centric approach, use of technology and global footprint. I am looking forward to working with the immensely talented and diverse EY people to deliver this strategy."

Technology transforming traditional EY services and creating new opportunities

As part of its plan for combined investment of US$1b over two years in new technology solutions and capabilities, EY has been transforming traditional services and launching new offerings with technology. With the agile and intelligent use of technology and digital solutions, EY Assurance teams are delivering new and enhanced services to provide a new level of trust for investor confidence and help organizations meet regulatory responsibilities, manage risk and support long-term, sustainable economic growth. In FY19, EY achieved a threefold increase in the number blockchain activities and nearly 80% of the EY revenue generating technology is on the cloud. For example:

• Using artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing, EY Document Intelligence is helping EY teams to analyze business documents and contracts more efficiently and effectively. In FY19, this solution has been moved to the cloud and successfully piloted with Assurance teams globally on lease accounting change and audit engagements, reducing processing time up to 90% and increasing accuracy by up to 25%. It is now being rolled-out on a wider scale.
• There are several EY projects in the wine industry using blockchain to help assure the quality, provenance and authenticity of new and vintage wines and to help reduce the significant issue of wine fraud in the wine industry. So far, 11 million bottles of wine are being tracked using the EY OpsChain platform.
• The EY and Microsoft blockchain solution for content rights and royalties management, launched in FY19, now processes 25,000 transactions daily supporting a wide range of complex agreements, streaming rights and royalties management.
• A multi-million-dollar investment in EY Blockchain Analyzer is delivering new upgrades for blockchain and cryptocurrency audit and tax services and is being rolled out to a selection of more than 100 EY Assurance clients that hold or trade cryptocurrencies or operate in the blockchain ecosystem.
• More than 120,000 EY professionals and more than 250,000 clients using the global audit platform, EY Canvas, are being migrated to the cloud to connect and work more efficiently and collaboratively.

In FY19, there were 20 acquisitions in EY, expanding the organization's professional skills and capabilities in areas like digital, strategy, operations and technology. The Pangea3 and Riverview Law acquisitions strengthened its focus on legal services. Eight new alliance agreements with Anaplan, Blue Prism, Kinaxis, Oliver Wight, SailPoint Technologies, Stratio Big Data, Symantec and Thomson Reuters extended the range of services for EY clients in areas like tax technology transformation, supply chain automation, robotics and cybersecurity.

With its design studios, labs, workshops and pop-up environments, EY wavespace™ expanded to 35 locations worldwide, helping more EY clients address their pressing issues. For example, there are numerous EY engagements building out custom wavespaces or running workshops to help businesses meet digital needs, develop new mobility services and run market-test pilots.

Andy Baldwin, EY Global Managing Partner – Client Service, says:

"As technological disruption reshapes economies, businesses and the future of work, the demand for the tech-driven compliance and consulting services we provide is changing. We are fully focused on using leading-edge technology, delivering high-quality services, making greater use of our strong portfolio of alliances and on developing our talented EY people to be the world's most trusted, distinctive professional services organization. Over the coming financial year, we will continue to extract maximum value from our US$1b technology investment plan, ultimately delivering our purpose of building a better working world in this digital economy."

Attracting exceptional and diverse people

Given the potential impact technology may have on roles and careers, EY continues to upskill and help EY people develop "hot skills." This year, more than 50,000 externally validated and industry-recognized credentials known as EY Badges have been initiated and more than 10,000 earned, with data visualization and RPA (robotic process automation) among the most earned badges to date.

Overall, approximately US$530m has been invested and more than 14m formal hours of learning have been completed annually, on top of experiential development and structured mentoring.

In FY19, headcount increased by 8.6% to more than 284,000 people globally. Also, 1,163 people were promoted to partner or admitted into EY member firms. Partner promotions continue to reflect key priorities, as Assurance accounted for 33% of the FY19 promoted partner class, emerging markets accounted for 33% and women represented nearly 30%. The gender diversity on the EY Global Executive, the highest governance body in EY, also increased, with women now representing more than 31%.

Growth across all service lines, geographies and key industries

All EY service lines delivered strong growth in FY19: in local currency Assurance grew 4.4%; Advisory 9.2%; Tax 8.6%; and Transaction Advisory Services (TAS) 15.5%. Revenue also increased across all four of the EY geographic areas: the Americas 8.5%; Europe, Middle East, India and Africa (EMEIA) 7.1%; Asia-Pacific 9.1%; and Japan more than doubled its growth to 7.5%.

Across the developed markets, the US achieved another impressive year, with US$15.3b in revenue, a 9.1% increase over FY18 (up from 7.3% in FY18). Growth was led by TAS due to a strong US capital and M&A market. The US Advisory business also had double-digit growth supported by performance improvement services. Strong demand for transaction tax and international tax services and a steady flow of new audit engagements also contributed to revenue growth. 

In the developed markets, EY also saw strong growth in Germany, Japan, France and Canada.  

The emerging markets continue their strong growth trend, delivering 10.7% revenue growth (vs 10% in FY18). Greater China recorded its fourth year of double-digit growth, up by 13.2% (vs 11.6% in FY18), led by strong growth across all EY service lines. India continues its ninth consecutive year of double-digit growth, up by 19.1% (vs 16.3% in FY18). Brazil and Mexico also delivered strong growth.  

EY recorded double-digit revenue growth across the Consumer, Government & Public Sector, Insurance and Mobility sectors. Consumer growth was led by strong demand for digital transformation and emerging technologies to enable them to respond fast to mounting consumer expectations. Demand for digital government services, public financial management and defense engagements across the developed and emerging markets led growth for Government & Public Sector. In Insurance, high demand for business transformation, innovation, technology and accounting change across all service lines and geographies drove growth. Finally, in Mobility, overall business transformation, innovation and a strong transactional environment led growth.  

Investments and growth in the business

• Assurance: With its unrelenting focus on providing high-quality audit services, Assurance continued to transform its service delivery model through digital and innovation and achieved 4.4% growth. EY Digital Audit, its connected data-driven audit, is helping to provide enhanced insights, depth and responsiveness to audit work. In the past 12 months, its audit analytics platform EY Helix powered the analysis of more than 400b lines of financial data. New innovations include Document Intelligence, which uses AI and natural language processing to analyze the thousands of documents reviewed during an audit engagement; it is also seeing demand for the EY Blockchain Analyzer which performs enhanced analytics on an organization's entire transaction data from multiple blockchain ledgers. New audit engagements include Bosch, China Construction Bank, Deutsche Bank, Hertz, Intesa Sanpaolo, Lufthansa Group, Telecom Italia, Vodafone, Volkswagen and Zurich Insurance Group. The Financial Accounting Advisory Services business once again delivered impressive double-digit growth by supporting clients with the adoption of numerous accounting standard changes and providing accounting support to clients with transactions (IPOs, divestitures and more).
• Advisory: Significant technology-driven client demand continued – particularly in blockchain, AI, cybersecurity, data analytics, risk management and intelligent automation – contributing to its strong 9.2% growth. In FY19, newly introduced services like the EY Trusted AI Platform, the first offering designed to help enterprises gauge the impact and trustworthiness of AI systems, supported revenue growth. Alliances and acquisitions also played an important role in revenue growth. For example, EY announced two new solutions with Microsoft – in the digital tax and finance and in intellectual property and content rights arenas. EY was also among the first to develop an intelligent automation-focused tool to help organizations using SAP solutions streamline their migration to the SAP S/4HANA Business Suite. Separately, new alliances, like those with SailPoint and Symantec in cybersecurity; Anaplan, Kinaxis and Oliver Wight for strategic planning across organizations; and Blue Prism and Stratio Big Data are helping enterprises better use AI and other technologies to transform their organizations.
• Tax: International Tax & Transactions Services and Global Tax Policy helped drive its strong 8.6% revenue growth. Additionally, it saw more demand for digital tax services as EY clients transform their business models, so they can react faster to the changing tax laws. In FY19, EY invested in technology solutions including Payroll Operate and Agile Tax; it also launched the EY Advanced Technology Tax Lab, dedicated to solving complex tax issues through the application of advanced technologies, including blockchain to AI-based services. EY also grew its range of managed services offerings to directly support multinational companies on their transformation journey. The acquisitions of Pangea3 from Thomson Reuters and Riverview Law significantly expanded the EY Legal Managed Services offerings, bringing the total number of EY Law professionals across the globe to 3,500. EY Tax is also disrupting the way it serves EY clients through the new EY Global Tax Platform, which serves as one scalable shared work environment for clients and EY professionals.
• Transaction Advisory Services: In FY19, TAS shifted its focus from individual services offerings to five integrated Connected Capital Solutions. These solutions – strategy realized, buy and integrate, sell and separate, reshaping results and corporate finance – helped to fuel a fifth consecutive year of double-digit growth (15.5%). The Connected Capital Solutions focus played a big role in propelling EY to advise on six of the top ten deals globally in FY19 and contributed towards further building its stature as the trusted, globally integrated advisor for transformational transactions and capital events.

Supporting long-term growth of societies around the world

The EY purpose of building a better working world guides the work the global organization does for governments, businesses and communities. Its purpose also inspires EY people to use their knowledge, skills and experiences to support the communities in which they live and work around the world. In FY19, there was EY investment of nearly US$113m in projects dedicated to strengthening its communities and EY people contributed 745k hours of time to a variety of initiatives and value-in-kind projects. For example, EY is:

• Working to help the next generation be resilient, adaptable and life-long learners with Junior Achievement now in 19 countries (up from 9).
• Helping 100m low-income people in Africa and Asia gain access to life-enhancing goods and services by 2025 through TRANSFORM – in association with Unilever, the UK Department for International Development and Mastercard.
• More than 60 EY people delivered immersive project support to more than 30 impact entrepreneurs in approximately 25 countries, positively affecting the lives of more than 3m people. This included supporting female participation in Middle Eastern labor markets with Tarjama; bringing safe water, clean hands and toilets to children in Asia with Splash; and boosting agricultural livelihoods in West Africa with Hello Tractor.

As part of its purpose to build a better working world, EY is focused on supporting the move to long-term value creation and inclusive growth. To demonstrate how it is creating long-term value for its stakeholders including clients, communities and people, EY publishes a broader range of financial and non-financial metrics. These metrics will be published in October in the annual EY Global Review 2019.

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Notes to editors

About EY

EY is a global leader in assurance, tax, transaction and advisory services. The insights and quality services we deliver help build trust and confidence in the capital markets and in economies the world over. We develop outstanding leaders who team to deliver on our promises to all of our stakeholders. In so doing, we play a critical role in building a better working world for our people, for our clients and for our communities.

EY refers to the global organization, and may refer to one or more, of the member firms of Ernst & Young Global Limited, each of which is a separate legal entity. Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients. Information about how EY collects and uses personal data and a description of the rights individuals have under data protection legislation is available via ey.com/privacy. For more information about our organization, please visit ey.com.

This news release has been issued by EYGM Limited, a member of the global EY organization that also does not provide any services to clients.

B-roll footage

To watch EY Global Chairman and CEO Carmine Di Sibio discuss its FY19 results, please visit here. For broadcast quality, downloadable b-roll video, please contact yvonne.diaz@uk.ey.com. 

EY FY19 global revenues and headcount

Basis of presentation: Revenues are aggregated revenues of the individual EY member firms that have been combined for presentation purposes and include expenses billed to clients. For purposes of reporting combined global revenues, revenues between member firms have been eliminated. Headcount numbers reflect personnel as at the end of June of each financial year.

Yvonne Diaz
EY Global Media Relations
+44 20 7980 0612
yvonne.diaz@uk.ey.com

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