WASHINGTON: Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu’s global revenues were $35.2 billion in the latest fiscal year, up 2.9% in U.S. dollar terms from the previous year, the Big Four accounting firm said Tuesday.
Revenues for fiscal 2015, which ended May 31, rose 7.6% in local-currency terms, as Deloitte prefers to measure its growth. The two growth figures were significantly different in the latest year because of the strength of the U.S. dollar, Deloitte said.
The 2.9% growth in U.S. dollars was slower than the 5.7% growth the firm posted in the previous year, though the 7.6% local-currency growth was above the previous year’s 6.5%.
Deloitte’s growth has accelerated since the end of the latest fiscal year, said Punit Renjen, Deloitte’s global chief executive. In the fiscal 2016 first quarter, which ended in August, “we have experienced tremendous growth, higher than what we did last year,” Mr. Renjen said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.
Deloitte and the other major accounting firms are international networks of private partnerships, and they disclose only their annual revenues, not their earnings.
As it has for the last several years at all the major firms, revenues continued to shift toward consulting, which is growing much faster than Deloitte’s core auditing business. Consulting revenues rose 7.2% in U.S. dollar terms in fiscal 2015, while audit revenues fell 3.5%. (In local-currency terms, consulting revenues rose 10.3% and audit revenues rose 2.9%.) Consulting now comprises 34.7% of the firm’s revenue, compared to 27.8% for audit.
But “audit is central to who were are and will remain central to who we are, period.” Mr. Renjen said.
Geographically, North American revenue grew 6.3% in U.S. dollar terms. The Middle East region had the strongest growth, up 11.7%.
Deloitte is the second of the Big Four firms to announce its fiscal 2015 revenues. Last week, Ernst & Young said its revenues rose 4.7% in U.S. dollar terms and 11.6% in local-currency terms. PricewaterhouseCoopers is expected to announce revenues in the coming weeks, and KPMG, which has a later fiscal year-end, will do so in December.
