Item 1. Business

Overview

Accenture is a leading global professional services company that helps the world’s leading organizations build their digital core, optimize their operations, accelerate revenue growth and enhance services—creating tangible value at speed and scale. We are a talent- and innovation-led company with approximately 774,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Technology is at the core of change today, and we are one of the world’s leaders in helping drive that change, with strong ecosystem relationships. We combine our strength in technology and leadership in cloud, data and AI with unmatched industry experience, functional expertise and global delivery capability. Our broad range of services, solutions and assets across Strategy & Consulting, Technology, Operations, Industry X and Song, together with our culture of shared success and commitment to creating 360° value, enable us to help our clients reinvent and build trusted, lasting relationships. We measure our success by the 360° value we create for our clients, each other, our shareholders, partners and communities.

						Fiscal 2024 Highlights
We serve clients and manage our business through three geographic markets: North America, EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) and Growth Markets. These markets bring together all of our capabilities across our services, industries and functions to deliver value to our clients. In the first quarter of fiscal 2025, our Latin America market unit will move from Growth Markets to North America. With this change, North America will become the Americas market and Growth Markets will become the Asia Pacific market. We go to market by industry, leveraging our deep expertise across our five industry groups—Communications, Media & Technology, Financial Services, Health & Public Service, Products and Resources. Our integrated service teams meet client needs rapidly and at scale, leveraging our network of more than 100 innovation hubs, our technology expertise and ecosystem relationships, and our global delivery capabilities.						$64.9B in revenues Our revenues are derived primarily from Forbes Global 2000 companies, governments and government agencies. We employed approximately 774,000 people as of August 31, 2024. We have long-term relationships and have partnered with our top 100 clients for more than 10 years.

Fiscal 2024 Investments
$6.6B						$1.2B						$1.1B
across 46 strategic acquisitions						in research and development						in learning and professional development

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During fiscal 2024, we continued to make significant investments—in strategic acquisitions, in research and development (R&D) in our assets, platforms and industry and functional solutions, in patents and pending patents and in attracting, retaining and developing people. These investments help us to further enhance our differentiation and competitiveness in the marketplace. Our disciplined acquisition strategy, which is an engine to fuel organic growth, is focused on scaling our business in high-growth areas; adding skills and capabilities in new areas; and deepening our industry and functional expertise. In fiscal 2024, we invested $6.6 billion across 46 strategic acquisitions, $1.2 billion in R&D, and $1.1 billion in learning and professional development, including 44 million training hours.

Our Strategy

The core of our growth strategy is to be our clients’ reinvention partner of choice, delivering 360° value to our clients, people, shareholders, partners and communities. Our strategy defines the areas in which we will drive growth, build differentiation and enable our clients to transform their organizations through technology, data and AI to create value every day. We aspire to be at the center of our clients’ business and help them reach new levels of performance and to set themselves apart as leaders in their industries.

We define 360° value as delivering the financial business case and unique value a client may be seeking, and striving to partner with our clients to achieve greater progress on inclusion and diversity, reskill and upskill our clients’ employees, help our clients achieve their sustainability goals, and create meaningful experiences, both with Accenture and for the customers and employees of our clients.

We bring industry specific solutions and services as well as cross industry expertise and leverage our scale and global footprint, innovation capabilities, and strong ecosystem partnerships together with our assets and platforms including myWizard, myNav, SynOps and AI Navigator for Enterprise to deliver tangible value for our clients.

We help our clients use technology to drive enterprise-wide transformation, which includes:

• **building their digital core—**such as moving them to the cloud, leveraging data and AI, and embedding security across the enterprise;

• **optimizing their operations—**such as helping our clients digitize faster, access digital talent and reduce costs as well as through digitizing engineering and manufacturing; and

• **accelerating their revenue growth—**such as through using technology and creativity to create personalized connections, experiences and targeted sales at scale, leveraging data and AI, transforming content supply chains and marketing and commerce models and helping create new digital services and business models.

Our clients turn to us to help them drive reinvention with our unique combination of services across Strategy & Consulting, Technology, Operations, Industry X and Song. Our strategists and deep industry, functional, customer and technology consultants work hand-in-hand with our clients and across services to shape and deliver these reinventions.

At the same time, we see AI as the new digital. Like digital, AI is both a technology and a new way of working, and its full value will only come from strategies built on both productivity and growth. And we believe it will be used in every part of the enterprise. We also believe the introduction of generative AI signifies a transformative era that is set to drive growth for us and our clients.

To accomplish reinvention and take advantage of AI, businesses need to focus on talent, which includes: accessing the best people at the right time, place and cost; being a talent creator to keep people market-relevant; and unlocking the potential of talent.

Our managed services are strategic for our clients as companies seek to move faster, embrace AI and automation and leverage our digital platforms and talent as well as reduce costs.

As clients reinvent, we believe that trends such as sustainability will continue to be forces behind their need to reinvent and the outcomes of their reinventions.

We believe our strategy to deliver 360° value makes us an attractive destination for top talent, a trusted partner to our clients and ecosystem, and a respected member of our communities.

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			Key enablers of our growth strategy include:
			**Our People—**As a talent- and innovation-led organization, across our entire business our people have highly specialized skills that drive our differentiation and competitiveness. We care deeply for our people, and are committed to a culture of shared success, to investing in our people to provide them with boundaryless opportunities to learn and grow in their careers through their work experience and continued development, training and reskilling, and to helping them achieve their aspirations both professionally and personally. We have an unwavering commitment to inclusion and diversity.
			**Our Commitment—**We are a purpose-driven company, committed to delivering on the promise of technology and human ingenuity by continuously innovating and developing leading-edge ideas and leveraging emerging technologies in anticipation of our clients’ needs. Our culture is underpinned by our core values and Code of Business Ethics, which are key drivers of the trust our clients and partners place in us.
			**Our Foundation—**Our Leadership Essentials set the standard for what we expect from our people. Our growth model, which leverages our global sales, client experience and innovation, while organizing around geographic markets and industry groups within those markets, enables us to be close to our clients, people and partners to scale efficiently. Our enduring shareholder value proposition is also a key element of the foundation that enables us to execute on our growth strategy through the financial value it creates.

Geographic Markets

Our geographic markets—North America, EMEA and Growth Markets—bring together integrated service teams, which typically consist of industry and functional experts, technology and capability specialists and professionals with local market knowledge and experience, to meet client needs. The geographic markets have primary responsibility for building and sustaining long-term client relationships; bringing together our expertise from around the globe and collaborating across our business to sell and deliver our full range of services and capabilities; ensuring client satisfaction; and achieving revenue and profitability objectives.

While we serve clients in locally relevant ways, our global footprint and scale in every major country give us the ability to leverage our experience and people from around the world to accelerate outcomes for our clients.

Our three geographic markets are our reporting segments. The percent of our revenues represented by each market is shown at right.

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Services

We bring together skills, capabilities, industry experience and functional expertise to help our clients achieve tangible outcomes and create 360° value.

Strategy & Consulting

We work with C-suite executives, leaders and boards of the world’s leading organizations, helping them reinvent every part of their enterprise to drive greater growth, enhance competitiveness, implement operational improvements, reduce cost, deliver sustainable 360° stakeholder value, and set a new performance frontier for themselves and the industry in which they operate. Our deep industry and functional expertise is supported by proprietary assets and solutions that help organizations transform faster and become more resilient. Underpinned by technology, data, analytics, AI, change management, talent, learning and sustainability capabilities, our Strategy & Consulting services help architect and accelerate all aspects of an organization’s reinvention.

Technology

We provide innovative and comprehensive services and solutions that span cloud; systems integration and application management; security; intelligent platform services; infrastructure services; software engineering services; data and AI; automation; and global delivery through our Advanced Technology Centers. We continuously innovate our services, capabilities and platforms through early adoption of new technologies such as generative AI, blockchain, robotics, 5G, edge computing, metaverse and quantum computing. We provide a range of capabilities that addresses the challenges faced by organizations today, including how to achieve reinvention, manage change and develop new growth opportunities.

We are continuously innovating and investing in R&D for both existing and new forms of technology. Our focus in our Accenture Labs includes furthering innovation beyond traditional boundaries, such as science and space technologies. Our innovation hubs around the world help clients innovate at unmatched speed, scope and scale. We have strong relationships with the world’s leading technology companies, as well as emerging start-ups, which enable us to enhance our service offerings, augment our capabilities and deliver distinctive business value to our clients. Our strong ecosystem relationships provide a significant competitive advantage, and we are a key partner of a broad range of technology providers, including Adobe, Alibaba, Amazon Web Services, Blue Yonder, Cisco, Databricks, Dell, Google, HPE, IBM RedHat, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Oracle, Palo Alto Networks, Pegasystems, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow, Snowflake, VMware, Workday and many others. In addition to our mature partners, we invest in emerging technologies through Accenture Ventures. We push the boundaries of what technology can enable and help clients get the most value and best capabilities out of platforms.

Operations

We operate business processes on behalf of clients for specific enterprise functions, including finance and accounting, sourcing and procurement, supply chain, marketing and sales, and human resources, as well as industry-specific services, such as platform trust and safety, banking, insurance, network and health services. We help organizations to reinvent themselves through intelligent operations, enabled by SynOps, our cloud enabled platform that empowers people with data, processes, automation, generative AI and a broad ecosystem of technology partners to transform enterprise operations at speed and scale.

Industry X

We combine our digital capabilities with deep engineering and manufacturing expertise. By using the combined power of digital and data we help our clients to reinvent and reimagine the products they make and how they make them. This includes helping our clients to digitally transform how their capital projects are planned, managed and executed, from plant and asset construction to public infrastructure, power grids and data centers. We collaborate closely with our platform and software partners to help our clients achieve compressed transformations by redefining how their products are designed and engineered, tested, sourced and supplied, manufactured, and serviced, returned and renewed. We also design, manufacture, and assemble our own advanced automation equipment, robotics and other specialized commercial hardware to support our clients’ operations. Through the use of data and transformative technologies such as AI and generative AI, Internet of Things, artificial reality/virtual reality, advanced robotics, digital twins and metaverse, we help our clients reinvent to achieve greater resilience, productivity and sustainability in their core operations and design and engineer intelligent products faster and more cost effectively. And in doing so, we help them create new, hyper-personalized experiences and intelligent products and services.

Song

We help our clients create new, hyper-personalized experiences and services that are intelligently designed to foster loyalty and drive growth by making customer interactions more compelling, useful, and simple from initial interaction through ongoing customer service. Our suite of services spans design, digital products, marketing, commerce, and customer service. We create products and experiences that resonate deeply with users across multiple channels. We help brands amplify their value, by making their propositions clear and inspiring to stand out in a crowded marketplace. Our commerce strategies are designed to enhance sales effectiveness and create seamless buying experiences. Our customer service innovations help make support more responsive and accessible. We bring cross industry expertise, underpinning these services with

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technology. We leverage the combined power of strategy, data and AI (including generative AI), ecosystem partnerships, and our ability to scale and manage programs on behalf of our clients. By doing so, we enhance our creative processes, solve client challenges more effectively, and provide solutions that are designed to be advanced, ethically sound and sustainable to help our clients reinvent how they engage with their customers.

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Industry Groups

We believe the depth and breadth of our industry expertise is a key competitive advantage which allows us to bring client-specific industry solutions to our clients to accelerate value creation. Our industry focus gives us an understanding of industry evolution, business issues and trends, industry operating models, capabilities and processes and new and emerging technologies. The breadth of our industry expertise enables us to create solutions that are informed by cross industry experience. We go to market through the following five industry groups within our geographic markets.

Communications, Media & Technology
FY24 Revenues of $10.8B
Percent of Group’s FY24 Revenue
40%			18%			42%
Communications & Media			High Tech			Software & Platforms
B2C and B2B communications service providers (both fixed and mobile), MVNO (mobile virtual network operators) and network infrastructure companies inclusive of edge and IOT connectivity infrastructure, cable and satellite communications, broadcasters and TV networks, gaming, print, online and traditional publishing, entertainment, sports, content producers (including studios), content aggregators and streaming live events (sports) and media infrastructure providers, integrated advertising agencies and creative			Enterprise technology, hardware, and associated manufacturing; consumer technology, electronics, batteries, and associated manufacturing; network equipment and device providers and manufacturers, data centers; semiconductor including silicon design and development, foundries, capital equipment, and manufacturing; medical equipment companies and manufacturers			Cloud-based enterprise and consumer software companies, large language model owners; both subscription and ad-driven consumer platforms spanning ecommerce, social, media, advertising and gaming

Financial Services
FY24 Revenues of $11.6B
Percent of Group’s FY24 Revenue
69%			31%
Banking & Capital Markets			Insurance
Retail and commercial banks, mortgage lenders, payment providers, corporate and investment banks, private equity firms, market infrastructure providers, wealth and asset management firms, broker/dealers, depositories, exchanges, clearing and settlement organizations, retirement services providers and other diversified financial enterprises			Property and casualty, life and annuities and group benefits insurers, reinsurance firms and insurance brokers

Health & Public Service
FY24 Revenues of $13.8B
Percent of Group’s FY24 Revenue
31%			69%
Health			Public Service
Healthcare providers, such as hospitals, public health systems, policy-making authorities, health insurers (payers), and industry organizations and associations			Defense departments and military forces; public safety authorities; justice departments; human and social services agencies; educational institutions; non-profit organizations; cities; transportation agencies; and postal, customs, revenue and tax agencies

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Our work with clients in the U.S. federal government is delivered through Accenture Federal Services, a U.S. company and a wholly owned subsidiary of Accenture LLP, and represented approximately 37% of our Health & Public Service industry group’s revenues and 17% of our North America revenues in fiscal 2024.

Products
FY24 Revenues of $19.6B
Percent of Group’s FY24 Revenue
46%			34%			20%
Consumer Goods, Retail & Travel Services			Industrial			Life Sciences
Food and beverage, household goods, personal care, tobacco, fashion/apparel, agribusiness and consumer health companies; supermarkets, hardline retailers, mass-merchandise discounters, department, quickserve and convenience stores and specialty retailers; aviation; and hospitality and travel services companies			Industrial & electrical equipment manufacturers and industrial suppliers; and construction, heavy equipment, consumer durables, engineering services, real estate, freight & logistics, aerospace & defense, automotive & mobility and public transportation companies			Biopharmaceutical, medical technology and distributors

Resources
FY24 Revenues of $9.1B
Percent of Group’s FY24 Revenue
29%			25%			46%
Chemicals & Natural Resources			Energy			Utilities
Petrochemicals, specialty chemicals, polymers and plastics, gases and agricultural chemicals companies, as well as the metals, mining, forest products and building materials industries			Oil and gas industries, including upstream, midstream, downstream, oilfield services, clean energy and energy trading companies			Power generators and developers, including nuclear, renewables and other conventional generators; electric and gas transmission and distribution operators, energy and energy service retailers; water, waste and recycling service providers

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People

Overview

We are a talent- and innovation-led organization with approximately 774,000 people as of August 31, 2024, whose skills and specialization are a significant source of competitive differentiation.

We serve clients at any given time in more than 120 countries, with offices and operations in 52 countries. The majority of our people are in India, the Philippines and the U.S.

We have a culture of shared success, which is defined as success for our clients, our people, our shareholders, our partners and our communities. That culture is built upon four tangible building blocks—our beliefs, our behaviors, the way we develop and reward our people and the way we do business.

Our Beliefs and Behaviors

Our leadership essentials set the standard for what we expect of all our people:

**•**always do the right thing, in every decision and action; **•**lead with excellence, confidence and humility, as demonstrated by being a learner, building great teams and being naturally collaborative; **•**exemplify client-centricity and a commitment to client value creation; **•**act as a true partner, to each other, our clients, our ecosystem and our communities—committed to shared success; **•**care deeply for all our people to help them achieve their aspirations professionally and personally;			**•**live our unwavering commitment to inclusion, diversity and equality, as demonstrated by personal impact and overall results; **•**have the courage to change and the ability to bring our people along the journey; and **•actively innovate—**seeking new answers, applying a tech, AI and data first mindset, looking internally across Accenture and outside—to partners, competitors, start-ups, clients, academia and analysts—to learn, respectfully challenge our assumptions and apply the innovation, and cultivate and reward our people for doing the same.

Listening to the voices of our people provides the input to ensure that they have the tools and resources to do their jobs and the right learning opportunities, and that they experience a positive, respectful and inclusive work environment. We do this on an ongoing basis across various channels, including surveys and forums. Among our people who participated in the Great Place To Work® Trust Index Survey™, 78% agreed that “Taking everything into account, I would say this is a great place to work.” Additionally, we are recognized as a top 10 place to work in 11 countries, representing more than 70% of our people.

Our purpose is to deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity. Our strategy is to deliver 360° value for all our stakeholders by helping them continuously reinvent. To drive reinvention, innovation must be at the forefront, which requires us to attract, develop and inspire top talent. Talent is one of our most important areas of competitive differentiation. As part of our talent strategy, we hire and develop people who have different backgrounds, different perspectives, and different lived experiences. These differences ensure that we have and attract the cognitive diversity to deliver a variety of perspectives, observations, and insights which are essential to drive the innovation needed to reinvent. To help achieve this diversity we set goals, share them publicly, and collect data to measure our progress, continuously improve, and hold our leaders accountable for ensuring we have the most innovative and talented people in our industry. This approach is a key driver of our progress.

We recognize that some people come to Accenture having faced obstacles as an aspect of their identity or lived experience. At Accenture, we are committed to harness these perspectives and ensure that all of our people have the opportunity to thrive and unlock their full potential. We are a meritocracy. Our intention is to foster a culture and a workplace in which all of our people feel a sense of belonging and are respected and empowered to do their best work and to create 360° value for all our stakeholders.

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We are 48% women, compared to our gender parity goal by 2025. And, we are currently 30% women managing directors, in line with our 2025 goal. We are also working toward our total workforce 2025 race and ethnicity goals in the U.S., the U.K., and South Africa, which we announced in 2020. •In the U.S., African American and Black colleagues represent 12% of our workforce, in line with our goal. Additionally, Hispanic American and Latinx colleagues represent 10% of our workforce, compared to our goal of 13%. •In the U.K., Black colleagues represent 6% of our workforce compared to our goal of 7%. •In South Africa, African Black colleagues represent 47% of our workforce compared to our goal of 68%. Coloured colleagues represent 10% of our workforce, in line with our goal. We are committed to pay equity and have processes in place to compensate our people fairly—across gender, race and ethnicity. Pay equity at Accenture means that our people receive pay that is fair and consistent when considering similarity of work, location and tenure at career level. We conduct an annual pay equity review. As of our last review, which reflected pay changes effective December 1, 2023, we had dollar-for-dollar, 100% pay equity for women compared to men in every country where we operate (certain subsidiaries, recent acquisitions, countries with de minimis headcount and temporary employees were excluded from the analysis). By race and ethnicity, we likewise had dollar-for-dollar, 100% pay equity in the U.S., the U.K. and South Africa, which are the locations where we currently have the data available to use for this purpose.												We are 48% Women compared to our goal of 50% by 2025.
			We are now 30% Women managing directors in line with our goal of 30% by 2025.

The Way We Develop and Reward Our People

Our focus is to create talent and unlock the potential of our people, to create strong leaders, and to help them achieve their professional and personal aspirations, while continuously pivoting to meet new client demands.

During fiscal 2024, we invested $1.1 billion in learning and professional development. With our digital learning platform, we delivered approximately 44 million training hours, an increase of 10% compared with fiscal 2023, predominantly due to generative AI training.

We have skills data for our people, enabling us to flexibly respond to shifting client needs while also recommending skill-specific training based on an individual’s interests. We upskill people at scale, while proactively defining new skills and roles in anticipation of client needs. We also continue to steadily increase our Data & AI workforce, reaching approximately 57,000 skilled Data & AI practitioners at the end of fiscal 2024, against our goal of doubling our Data & AI workforce to 80,000 by the end of fiscal 2026.

We are focused on rigorous, job-specific training through key industry certifications and partnerships with leading universities around the globe. We also train our people on inclusion and mitigating unconscious bias.

We promoted approximately 97,000 people in fiscal 2024, demonstrating our continued commitment to creating vibrant careers and opportunities for our people.

We balance our supply of skills with changes in client demand. We do this through adjusting levels of new hiring and managing our attrition (both voluntary and involuntary). We believe people are drawn to our strong purpose, values and reputation. For fiscal 2024, attrition, excluding involuntary terminations, was 13%, consistent with fiscal 2023. For the fourth quarter of fiscal 2024, annualized attrition, excluding involuntary terminations, was 14%, consistent with the third quarter of fiscal 2024.

Accenture’s total rewards consist of cash compensation, equity and a wide range of benefits. Our total rewards program is designed to recognize our people’s skills, contributions and career progression. Base salary, bonus and equity are tailored to the market where our people work and live. Certain rewards, like equity and bonuses, are opportunities for our people to share in the overall success of our company. As our people advance in their careers, they have greater opportunities to be rewarded. Accenture’s equitable rewards go beyond financial rewards and include health and well-being programs that care for our people.

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The Way We Do Business

At Accenture, our people care deeply about doing the right thing. Together, we have proven that we can succeed—providing value to our clients and shareholders and opportunities for our people—while being a powerful force for good. Our shared commitment to operating with the highest ethical standard and making a positive difference in everything we do is what we believe differentiates Accenture. We believe in transparency, that transparency builds trust, and that we must earn the trust of our clients, our people, our partners and our communities each and every day.

Our Code of Business Ethics is organized into six fundamental behaviors: Make Your Conduct Count; Comply with Laws; Deliver for Our Clients; Protect People, Information and Our Business; Run Our Business Responsibly; and Be a Good Corporate Citizen. It applies to all our people—regardless of their title or location. With our Code of Business Ethics, we want to help our people make ethical behavior a natural part of what we do every day—with each other, our clients, our partners and our communities.

Accenture’s commitment to and focus on our people and culture has generated significant recognition, including No. 1 on the FTSE (formerly Refinitiv) Diversity and Inclusion Index for the fifth time in seven years; Ethisphere’s World’s Most Ethical Companies for 17 consecutive years; and ranking No. 10 among 25 companies on Great Place To Work® World's Best Workplaces™.

Our Health, Safety and Well-Being

We are committed to creating a place where people can be successful both professionally and personally. We take a holistic view of well-being—including physical, mental, emotional and financial well-being—providing specially defined programs and practices to meet our people’s fundamental human needs.

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Environmental Sustainability

We help our clients together with our ecosystem partners, to define, measure and achieve their environmental, social and governance goals by connecting sustainability with their transformation agendas across their strategy and operations to make their value chains more sustainable.

We have a strong commitment to environmental sustainability in how we operate our business, and we hold ourselves accountable to clear and measurable objectives. For example, in 2020, we established a 2025 carbon removal goal—previously referred to as our 2025 net-zero emissions goal—and we are on track to achieve this goal.

Our environment goals discussed below span three areas: reducing and removing our carbon emissions, moving toward zero waste and planning for water risk.

Our Goals to Reduce and Remove our Carbon Emissions

Our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions primarily result from business travel and purchased goods and services, since we have 100% renewable electricity in our facilities. We continue to work toward our 2025 carbon removal goal by first focusing on reductions across our Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions and then removing any remaining emissions through nature-based carbon removal projects. We are a signatory to the UN Global Compact Business Ambition for 1.5°C Pledge, committing to do our part to keep global warming below 1.5° Celsius in alignment with the Paris Agreement and the criteria and recommendations of the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi). In 2018, we established a SBTi 2025 near-term emissions reduction target, which we have surpassed. During fiscal 2024, we received SBTi approval for net-zero GHG emissions targets aligned with SBTi's Corporate Net-Zero Standard, including new near-term and long-term reduction targets.												We are on track to achieve our 2025 carbon removal goal and we set new goals for the future...
			SBTi-Approved Net-Zero Targets
			Fiscal 2030 Near-term Targets
			80% reduction of absolute Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions from fiscal 2019 base year.			55% reduction of Scope 3 GHG emissions per unit of revenue from fiscal 2019 base year.
			Fiscal 2040 Long-term Targets
			90% reduction of absolute Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions from fiscal 2019 base year.			90% reduction of absolute Scope 3 GHG emissions from fiscal 2019 base year.

Our Actions to Reduce Carbon Emissions

Our approach to carbon reduction in support of our goals includes:

• Maintaining 100% renewable electricity. In 2023, we achieved our goal of 100% renewable electricity in our facilities and we maintained this in fiscal 2024. As we do not own our facilities and procure most of our energy from the grid, we purchase renewable electricity contracts equivalent to the amount of electricity we consume. Going forward, we plan to maintain 100% renewable electricity in our facilities. As we purchase renewable electricity, we also support the generation of more renewable sources of electricity.

• Enabling low carbon business travel. We continue to use technology to facilitate more cost and carbon-efficient delivery for our clients and our business and have implemented an internal carbon price on travel to encourage climate smart travel decisions. In addition, we have developed analytics and reporting focused on our business travel emissions so that we can share emissions data with our clients as part of our delivery activities.

• Engaging our suppliers. We are working with our suppliers to reduce our Scope 3 emissions. Our goal is that 90% of our key suppliers disclose their environmental targets and the actions being taken to reduce emissions by the end of 2025. We are on track to meet this goal, with 89% of key suppliers disclosing their targets and 96% disclosing the actions they are taking to reduce their emissions. Key suppliers are defined as vendors that represent a significant portion of our 2019 Scope 3 emissions.

Carbon Removal

• Nature-based carbon removal. To address our remaining emissions, we are investing in nature-based carbon removal projects to remove carbon from the atmosphere. We plan to begin applying carbon removal credits in fiscal 2025. Our

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nature-based carbon removal projects will also support and respect the universal principles of the UNGC in the relevant areas of human rights, labor, environment, anticorruption and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Moving Toward Zero Waste

• Addressing e-waste and office furniture. We have a goal of reusing or recycling 100% of our e-waste, such as computers and servers, as well as all our office furniture, by the end of 2025. During fiscal 2024, we reused or recycled nearly 100% of our e-waste relating to computers, servers and uninterruptible power supply devices. We continue to refine our processes, leverage our asset tracking system and work with vendors to help us extend the life cycle of our furniture, including through refurbishment and reuse or recycling.

• Eliminate single-use plastics in our office locations. During fiscal 2024, we continued to meet our goal of eliminating single-use plastics in our office locations by purchasing reusable and plastic-free items.

Planning for Water Risk

• Mitigating the potential impacts of climate change-related water risk. Although Accenture is not a water-intensive company, to safeguard our people and operations we are developing water resiliency action plans to reduce the impact of climate-related flooding, drought and water scarcity on our business and our people in high-risk areas. We have completed plans for approximately 90% of our facilities in high-risk areas.

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Global Delivery Capability

A key differentiator is our global delivery capability. We have one of the world’s largest networks of centers with deep capabilities in Strategy & Consulting, Technology, Operations, Industry X and Song, that allows us to help our clients create exceptional business value. It brings the right people at the right time to our clients from anywhere in the world—both in physical and virtual working environments—a capability that is particularly crucial as business needs and conditions change rapidly. Our global approach provides scalable innovation; standardized processes, methods and tools; automation and AI; industry expertise and specialized capabilities; cost advantages; foreign language fluency; proximity to clients; and time zone advantages—to deliver high-quality solutions. Emphasizing quality, productivity, reduced risk, speed-to-market and predictability, our global delivery model supports all parts of our business to provide clients with price-competitive services and solutions.

Innovation and Intellectual Property

We are committed to developing leading-edge ideas and leveraging emerging technologies and we see innovation as a source of competitive advantage. We use our investment in R&D—on which we spent $1.2 billion, $1.3 billion and $1.1 billion in fiscal 2024, 2023 and 2022, respectively—to help clients address new realities in the marketplace and to face the future with confidence.

Our innovation experts work with clients across the world to imagine their future, build and co-create innovative business strategies and technology solutions, and then scale those solutions to sustain innovation. We harness our unique intellectual property to deliver these innovation services.

We have a global portfolio of patents and pending patent applications covering various technology areas, including AI, cloud, metaverse, cybersecurity, blockchain, automation, extended reality, analytics and quantum. We leverage patent, trade secret and copyright laws as well as contractual arrangements and confidentiality procedures to protect the intellectual property in our innovative services and solutions. These include our proprietary platforms, software, reusable knowledge capital, and other innovations. We also have policies to respect the intellectual property rights of third parties, such as our clients, partners, vendors and others.

We believe our combination of people, assets and capabilities, including our global network of more than 100 innovation hubs, makes Accenture one of the leading strategic innovation partners for our clients. We have deep expertise in innovation consulting including strategy, culture change and building new business models through to long-term technology innovation, which creates the products and markets of the future.

This is all supported by our innovation approach, which includes Accenture Research, Accenture Ventures and Accenture Labs as well as our Studios, Innovation Centers and Delivery Centers. Our research and thought leadership teams help identify market, technology and industry trends. Accenture Ventures partners with and invests in growth-stage companies that create innovative enterprise technologies. Accenture Labs incubate and prototype new concepts through applied research and development projects. Within this, we incubate and apply emerging technology innovation to business architectures, including blockchain, metaverse, extended reality and quantum.

To protect Accenture’s brands, we rely on intellectual property laws and trademark registrations held around the world. Trademarks appearing in this report are the trademarks or registered trademarks of Accenture Global Services Limited, Accenture Global Solutions Limited, or third parties, as applicable.

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Competition

Accenture operates in a highly competitive and rapidly changing global marketplace. We compete with a variety of organizations that offer services and solutions competitive with those we offer—but we believe no other company offers the full range of services at scale that Accenture does, which uniquely positions us in a highly competitive market. Our clients typically retain us on a non-exclusive basis.

Our competitors include large multinational IT service providers, including the services arms of large global technology providers; off-shore IT service providers in lower-cost locations, particularly in India; accounting firms and consultancies that provide consulting, managed services and other IT services and solutions; solution or service providers that compete with us in a specific geographic market, industry or service area, including advertising agency holding companies, engineering services providers and technology start-ups; and in-house IT departments of large corporations that use their own resources rather than engage an outside firm, such as global capability centers ( “GCC’s”).

We believe Accenture competes successfully in the marketplace because:

**•**We are focused on creating 360° value, which we define as delivering the financial business case and unique value a client may be seeking, and striving to partner with our clients to achieve greater progress on inclusion and diversity, reskill and upskill our clients’ employees, help our clients achieve their sustainability goals, and create meaningful experiences, both with Accenture and for the customers and employees of our clients; **•**We are a trusted partner with long-term client relationships and a proven track record for delivering from strategy to execution, on large, complex programs at speed that drive outcomes and tangible value; **•**We provide a broad range of services bringing together our capabilities at scale and have a significant presence in every major geographic market, enabling us to leverage our global expertise in a local context to deliver the best solutions, and our managed services help companies move faster by leveraging our digital platform and talent and reduce costs; **•**The breadth and scale of our technology capabilities, combined with our strong relationships with our technology ecosystem partners, enable us to help clients transform and re-platform in a sustainable way at speed; •We have deep industry and cross-industry expertise, which enable us to accelerate value as clients transform their products, customer experiences and optimize their operations;			**•**We continuously invest in advanced tools, methods and platforms, and the highly specialized skills of our people, to create repeatable industry and cross industry solutions and assets, that can scale at speed, leveraging our deep experience, knowledge and insights across industries, functions and services, often with our ecosystem partners; **•**Our industry-leading innovation approach—including Accenture Research, Accenture Ventures and Accenture Labs as well as our Studios, Innovation Centers and Delivery Centers—reflects our commitment to continuous innovation and enables us to rapidly identify, incubate, and scale emerging technology solutions for our clients; **•**We have deep experience in AI, having embedded AI across our worldwide service delivery approach for more than a decade, and are making significant investments in solutions at scale to help our clients responsibly advance and use AI, and generative AI, to develop new strategies, operating models, business cases and digital core architecture, enabling them to achieve greater growth, efficiency, and resiliency, while accelerating value; and **•**Our goal is to recruit the most talented people in our markets, and we have an unwavering commitment to inclusion and diversity, which creates an environment that unleashes innovation, and a world-class learning organization that helps us continuously invest in the development of our people, and we believe our strategy to deliver 360° value makes us an attractive destination for top talent, a trusted partner to our clients and ecosystem, and a respected member of our communities.

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Information About Our Executive Officers

Our executive officers as of October 10, 2024 are as follows:

			Angela Beatty, 53, became our chief leadership and human resources officer in September 2024. From April 2022 to September 2024, Ms. Beatty was our global lead for talent, rewards and employee experience. From 2015 to 2022, she served in a variety of other leadership roles in human resources at Accenture, including as the lead for total rewards. Prior to joining Accenture, Ms. Beatty spent 15 years with Towers Watson (now Willis Towers Watson) as a consultant and ultimately practice leader for the rewards, talent and change business. Ms. Beatty has been with Accenture for 9 years.
			Melissa Burgum, 52, became our chief accounting officer in September 2022 and has served as our corporate controller since September 2021. Prior to that, Ms. Burgum served as our assistant corporate controller from December 2016 to September 2021 and as controller for Accenture Federal Services from May 2013 to December 2016. Prior to joining Accenture, Ms. Burgum held controllership roles at two public companies and was previously an auditor and consultant for Arthur Andersen. Ms. Burgum has been with Accenture for 11 years.
			Atsushi Egawa, 59, became our co-chief executive officer—Asia Pacific and chief executive officer —Japan in September 2024. Since September 2015, Mr. Egawa has served as our market unit lead in Japan. Prior to September 2015, Mr. Egawa led our Products industry group in Japan. Prior to that role, he led our Consumer Goods business in Japan. He has partnered closely with numerous global clients on their digital transformations and was integral in the opening of Accenture’s Innovation Hub in Tokyo. Mr. Egawa has been with Accenture for 35 years.
			Mauro Macchi, 59, became our chief executive officer—EMEA in September 2024. From September 2021 to September 2024, Mr. Macchi served as our market unit lead for Italy, Central Europe and Greece. From March 2020 to September 2021, Mr. Macchi served as the Strategy & Consulting lead for Europe. Previously, he served as our Financial Services lead for Europe from November 2019 to March 2020, Financial Services lead for Italy, Central Europe and Greece from October 2017 to October 2019 and global Banking industry lead for Strategy from March 2015 to September 2017. Mr. Macchi has been with Accenture for 34 years.
			KC McClure, 59, became our chief financial officer in January 2019. From June 2018 to January 2019, she served as managing director—Finance Operations, where she led our finance operations across the entirety of our businesses. From December 2016 to May 2018, she served as our finance director—Communications, Media & Technology. Prior to assuming that role, she served as our head of investor relations from September 2010 to November 2016, and from March 2002 to August 2010, she served as our finance director—Health & Public Service. Ms. McClure has been with Accenture for 36 years.
			Ryoji Sekido, 57, became our co-chief executive officer—Asia Pacific and chief executive officer—Asia Oceania in September 2024. From April 2023 to September 2024, Mr. Sekido served as our Technology lead for Growth Markets. Prior to March 2023, Mr. Sekido served as the Technology and Cloud First lead for Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. In his earlier roles, he led several industry and technology teams and served as the Financial Services client service group lead and the Financial Services technology consulting lead for APAC. Mr. Sekido has been with Accenture for 32 years.

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			Manish Sharma, 56, became our chief executive officer—North America in September 2023 and our chief executive officer—the Americas in September 2024. Prior to that, Mr. Sharma served as our chief operating officer from March 2022 to September 2023. From March 2020 to March 2022, Mr. Sharma served as our group chief executive—Operations. From September 2016 to March 2020, Mr. Sharma served as the group operating officer for Operations. From January 2009 to September 2016, Mr. Sharma was our senior managing director for Accenture Operations Global Delivery and Solution Development and global sales lead for Accenture Operations Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). Previously, he led our BPO operations in the Asia Pacific region. Mr. Sharma has been with Accenture for 29 years.
			Julie Sweet, 57, became chair of our Board of Directors in September 2021 and has served as our chief executive officer since September 2019. From June 2015 to September 2019, she served as our chief executive officer—North America. From March 2010 to June 2015, she served as our general counsel, secretary and chief compliance officer. Prior to joining Accenture in 2010, Ms. Sweet was a partner for 10 years in the law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, which she joined as an associate in 1992. Ms. Sweet has been with Accenture for 14 years and has served as a director since September 2019.
			Joel Unruch, 46, became our general counsel in September 2019 and has served as our corporate secretary since June 2015. Mr. Unruch also served as our chief compliance officer from September 2019 to January 2020. Mr. Unruch joined Accenture in 2011 as our assistant general counsel and assistant secretary and also oversaw ventures & acquisitions and alliances & ecosystems practices for our legal group. Prior to joining Accenture, Mr. Unruch was corporate counsel at Amazon.com and previously an associate in the corporate department of the law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP. Mr. Unruch has been with Accenture for 13 years.
			John Walsh, 60, became our chief operating officer in September 2023. From March 2020 to September 2023, Mr. Walsh served as our chief strategic accounts and global sales officer. From November 2019 to March 2020, he served as our group chief executive—Communications, Media & Technology. He served as senior managing director—Communications, Media & Technology in North America, from 2013 to 2019. Mr. Walsh has been with Accenture for 38 years.

Organizational Structure

Accenture plc was incorporated in Ireland on June 10, 2009 as a public limited company. We operate our business through subsidiaries of Accenture plc.

The Consolidated Financial Statements reflect the ownership interests in Accenture Canada Holdings Inc. held by certain current and former members of Accenture Leadership as noncontrolling interests. The noncontrolling ownership interests were less than 1% as of August 31, 2024. “Accenture Leadership” is comprised of members of our global management committee (our primary management and leadership team, which consists of approximately 50 of our most senior leaders), senior managing directors and managing directors.

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