Focusing our attention to Australia after looking into the S&P 500 US auditors and FTSE 350 UK auditors in our previous posts.
Audit market share
ASX200 Index has the 200 largest companies in Australia by float adjusted market capitalization. We’ll now look at these 200 Companies to identify their auditors. EY leads with 60 audit clients followed by PwC with 57 clients. KPMG comes in third with 41 clients and Deloitte with 29 clients. Non big-4 firms collectively audit 11 companies.
Audit market share by sectors
Next looking at the break-down of the 200 companies by the various sectors and their auditors. All big-4 firms have share in all sectors except for utilities where Deloitte audits 3 of the 4 clients.
Big4 revenues
The revenues of the big4 audit firms across five years are provided below. PwC leads in total revenues followed by Deloitte, EY, and KPMG. PwC revenues for 2020 was AUD 2.6 billion while KPMG revenues for 2020 was AUD 1.9 billion. A difference of AUD 700 million between the top and last ranked firm.
Audit revenues of big4 firms
Looking at just the audit revenues for the big4 firms for FY20, PwC brings in audit fees of AUD 475 million, followed by EY with AUD 417 million, KPMG with AUD 363 million and Deloitte with AUD 305 million.
| Audit Revenue (AUD millions) | PwC | EY | KPMG | Deloitte |
| 2020 | 475 | 417 | 363 | 305 |
| 2019 | 443 | 390 | 356 | 288 |
| Growth | 7% | 7% | 2% | 6% |
ASIC Inspection firms
Looking into the Audit Inspection reports by ASIC (Australian Securities & Investments Commission) for FY20, EY has the least number of findings among the big4 firms. Only 14% of the areas reviewed for EY had findings while 35% of the areas reviewed for Deloitte had findings. Based on review of 55 financial reports of listed and public interest entities audited by EY, only 2 entities made material changes to their financial statements. The findings for other big4 firms are summarized in the table below.
| Audit Firms | Deloitte | KPMG | PwC | EY |
| Key audit areas reviewed | 26 | 39 | 35 | 35 |
| Findings identified | 9 | 10 | 8 | 5 |
| 2020 (%) | 35% | 26% | 12% | 14% |
| 2019 (%) | 32% | 33% | 18% | 22% |
| Financial reports reviewed | 45 | 47 | 36 | 55 |
| Material changes based on inquiries | 4 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| (%) | 9% | 2% | 6% | 2% |
The link to the reports for Deloitte, KPMG, EY, and PwC is provided in this link.
Look into our blog posts for additional information on the audit clients for the big4 firms:
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