The power of

Annual Report
2020
Delivering Value
in Fiscal 2020
Fiscal 2020 will be remembered as the year of COVID-19. For
Accenture, it was a tale of two halves from a financial perspective, but
a single story of our market leadership throughout the year. We closed
the first half of our year with outstanding momentum—very strong
demand for our services, leading the industry in digital, cloud and
security, and we entered the second half with a new growth model
put in place on March 1, 2020.

Days later, the global pandemic was declared, triggering a global health
and financial crisis. Our ability to rapidly pivot in the second half of
fiscal 2020 demonstrates the unique value we bring to our clients, our
strong client and ecosystem partner relationships, the resilience of
our diversified business across industries, geographies and services, our
strength in digital, cloud and security, and the importance of scale.

We are proud that during fiscal 2020, Accenture’s team of approximately

506,000 people continued to deliver on our commitments to our
shareholders, with strong financial results, and to deliver on our
commitments to create value for our clients, our people, our partners
and our communities. And at one of the most challenging times in
world history, we have emerged stronger. We enter fiscal 2021 with
an even more durable foundation and an exciting future.

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Delivering on Our Commitments Turning to our clients. Our clients are the
world’s leading companies, including more than
Starting with our commitment to our three-quarters of the Fortune Global 500, and
shareholders, Accenture shares provided 97 of our top 100 clients have been with us for
a 23 percent total return for the year ended over 10 years. We ended fiscal 2020 with 216
August 31—again outperforming the S&P 500 Diamond Clients, our largest client relationships,
Index—and also provided a 23 percent com- representing a net increase of 15 from fiscal 2019.
pound annual total return to shareholders over
the last five years, compared with 14 percent Our clients rely on us for mission-critical work and

for the S&P 500 Index. We did so as a leader the breadth, depth and scale of our capabilities to

in responsible business, making a positive help build their digital core, transform operations

difference for all our stakeholders. and accelerate revenue growth. During the crisis,
we deepened their trust by delivering seamlessly
and enabling them to quickly adjust to the new
Among the financial highlights
demands. For example, we continued closing the
in fiscal 2020:
books on time for more than 70 public companies
• We delivered record new bookings of and going live with around-the-clock new tech-
$50 billion for the year. nology releases for our clients every 15 minutes,
• With revenue growth of 4 percent in on average. Immediately after COVID-19 struck,
local currency, we continued to grow we worked with Microsoft to implement Teams
well ahead of the market. for numerous clients, including the U.K.’s National
Health Service—where we enabled 1.2 million
• We delivered strong profitability,
people to connect and better communicate with
expanding operating margin 10 basis
each other in just seven days. We also built an
points while continuing to invest at
AI-driven virtual agent for India’s MyGov platform
scale in our business and our people.
that empowered 1.3 billion people with accurate,
• GAAP diluted earnings per share of up-to-date information about COVID-19.
$7.89 increased 7 percent from fiscal 2019;
excluding $0.43 in gains on an investment, We drive outcomes at speed for our clients with
adjusted EPS of $7.46 rose 1 percent. our powerful ecosystem relationships, such as
Adobe, Alibaba, Amazon Web Services, Blue
• Free cash flow was a record $7.6 billion
Yonder, Cisco, Dell, Google, HPE, IBM RedHat,
and we returned $5 billion in cash to
Microsoft, Oracle, Pegasystems, Salesforce, SAP,
shareholders, continuing to deliver on our
ServiceNow, VMWare, Workday and many others.
disciplined capital allocation model.

• Shortly after year-end, the Board increased On March 1, we implemented our new growth
our quarterly dividend 10 percent to model to simplify our organizational structure and
$0.88 per share and approved $5 billion in increase our agility to better serve clients at scale.
additional share repurchase authority. Our teams can now move even more seamlessly

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between our global and local capabilities, lever- letter our latest reporting on a number of these
aging our network of more than 100 innovation goals because the actions we take to meet these
hubs and our Advanced Technology and goals are an important part of our commitment
Intelligent Operations Centers, while driving to being a responsible business and to our market
value for clients in locally relevant ways. leadership as a trusted partner. While today a
common, core set of metrics to report against
Throughout the year, we continued to deliver on
does not exist, we are part of the World Economic
our commitments to our people. We increased
Forum’s International Business Council, which is
training hours by 6 percent while reducing training
working to develop them.
costs by 11 percent to $866 million with our digital
learning platforms. Since March 1, 2020, in our
Technology services alone, we trained over
70,000 people in the hot skills needed by our
clients, including cloud and remote collaboration
tools. As part of our unwavering commitment to
inclusion and diversity, Accenture is now 45 percent
women, and we remain on track to meet our
gender-balanced workforce goal by 2025.

Our commitment to our communities includes

creating jobs and investing in innovation, as well
as our robust corporate citizenship program. For
example, together with Lincoln Financial Group,
On our current schedule, we update our reporting
ServiceNow and Verizon, in just 14 business days
for the prior fiscal year in March of the next year.
we created People + Work Connect, which brings
Accordingly, our Corporate Citizenship Report
together companies laying off or furloughing
from March 2020 is our latest, and reflects our
people with companies in urgent need of workers.
fiscal 2019 progress, which will be updated in
Today, more than 400,000 jobs are available
March 2021 for fiscal 2020. We are particularly
on the platform. Through our Skills to Succeed
proud that in fiscal 2019, we became the largest
initiative with our network of strategic partners,
professional services company to date to have a
we have equipped nearly 3.6 million people to
target for emissions reduction approved by the
date with the skills to get a job or build a business,
Science Based Targets Initiative, which aligns with
surpassing our goal of 3 million by 2020.
the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to
We also have a longstanding partnership with 1.5 degrees Celsius.
the UN Global Compact, championing the UN
Sustainable Development Goals. This year, for
the first time, we have incorporated in this annual

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Emerging Stronger from the Crisis • We captured new growth opportunities in
cloud, security, supply chain and digital
Our formula for market leadership is enduring: manufacturing, as well as work in the health
We continually transform our business and and public sector that includes contact tracing
embrace change to create more value for our for 10 state, provincial and local governments.
clients with incredibly talented people. We view
fiscal 2021 as turning a page—we are no longer • We continued to invest significantly in our

navigating a crisis—we are facing a new reality, people and in our business. In addition to

and we are ready. the training described above, we created

the capacity to promote and pay meaningful
We emerged from the second half of fiscal bonuses for fiscal 2020 performance. We are
2020 stronger than when we entered, which planning for a significant level of promotions
was our strategy. We set five measures of what in our upcoming December cycle and remain
stronger means and have met each of them. deeply committed to pay equity.
• We grew at approximately four times the We also continued to increase our investments
market (our basket of publicly traded companies) for the future, at scale, including $1.5 billion in
compared to two times the market in the first acquisitions, which fuel organic growth. Among
half of the year, growing market share faster the most strategically significant is Symantec
than pre-COVID. Cyber Security Services—making us one of the
• We had more clients with over $100 million largest global providers of managed security
of bookings in our second half than in the services, which are critical to digital transformation.
first half of the year, reinforcing our role as In addition, we invested $871 million in R&D
a trusted transformation partner. in our assets, platforms and solutions, to accel-
erate adoption of new technologies such as
blockchain, robotics, 5G, quantum computing

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 and Edge computing. Today, we have a we announced in October Accenture’s new
global portfolio of more than 7,900 patents purpose: to deliver on the promise of technology
and pending patent applications. and human ingenuity. We do this by embracing
change and leveraging collaboration to help clients
• We delivered on our shareholder commitments.
accelerate their digital journeys and create lasting,
We also reduced structural costs through our
360-degree value for all stakeholders across their
new growth model, and accelerated our usual
enterprises—as well as our own.
level of annual performance management
transitions to preserve our talented workforce We define 360-degree value as delivering the
for the future while positioning ourselves for financial business case and unique value a client
modest margin expansion and continued may be seeking, and striving where possible, to
investment in our business in fiscal 2021. partner with our clients to achieve greater prog-
ress on inclusion and diversity with our diverse
teams, reskill our clients’ employees, help our
Looking Ahead
clients achieve their sustainability goals, and bring
We serve our clients through our close proximity meaningful experiences, both with Accenture and
to their businesses and ability to anticipate their for the customers and employees of our clients.
needs, and then invest with speed and scale to
To support our new purpose and approach,
help them succeed. As COVID-19 and the related
we recently launched our biggest brand campaign
changes in business and society have accelerated
in a decade, “Let there be change.” The campaign
the need for digital transformation, it became
both reflects the depth and breadth of Accenture’s
clear that companies would need to move to the
expertise and is an inspiration to our people and
cloud much faster. We announced the creation
our clients to embrace change for the benefit of all.
of Accenture Cloud First in September and a
$3 billion investment over three years, building We believe today’s rapid acceleration to digital
on our approximately $12 billion in cloud revenue presents us with a breakthrough opportunity
for fiscal 2020. We are helping clients across all to create a better future for all. Our strategy is to
industries accelerate their transformation in what embed responsible business into our services
we believe is a once-in-a-digital-era, massive for our clients as well as to operate Accenture
re-platforming of global business over the as a responsible business. To help implement
next five years. this strategy, we recently appointed a Chief
Responsibility Officer and Global Sustainability
Our culture is differentiated by shared success—
Services Lead who will be part of Accenture’s
our commitment to making a positive difference
Global Management Committee.
together with our clients, our people, our share-
holders, our partners and our communities
To better reflect our role in today’s world,

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With respect to caring for the environment Throughout our history, the
through our own actions, we are building on our
people of Accenture have
earlier goals for emissions reduction and recently
announced three additional, industry-leading
embraced constant change.
goals: to achieve net-zero emissions, move to Today is no different. I want to
zero waste and plan for water risk by 2025. For thank all our Accenture people
our clients, we recently launched our myNav
for their incredible dedication,
Green Cloud Advisor to enable sustainable
migration to the cloud.
perseverance and commitment
both in fiscal 2020 and as we
We have an unwavering commitment to
inclusion and diversity and a culture of equality,
face our new reality. I also want
which is core to our values as a company and to thank all our shareholders for
critical to our success and continued innovation. their continued trust and support.
We recently announced new goals for increased As a company, we have never
race and ethnicity representation in our workforce
been more committed to creating
overall and among managing directors in
the U.S., the U.K. and South Africa.
shared success for all.
I am incredibly proud of the swift response
by our people to stand together against racism
and inequality in the face of more tragic losses
of African American and Black lives in the U.S.
We launched new mandatory training in the
U.S.—and will roll it out in other markets—to
support our people in identifying and speaking
up about racism and reinforcing what we expect
of our people. We also pledged to increase
community investments to support economic
inclusion, such as our new Black Founders Julie Sweet
Chief Executive Officer
Development Program. October 22, 2020

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We delivered strong performance in
fiscal 2020, reflecting continued growth
ahead of the market, strong profitability
and record free cash flow, driving
superior shareholder value.

Twelve months ended August 31, 2020

REVENUES NEW BOOKINGS

$
44.3B $
49.6B
An increase of 4% in Record bookings, an
local currency and increase of 10% in local
3% in U.S. dollars from currency and 9%
fiscal 2019 in U.S. dollars

DILUTED EARNINGS PER SHARE OPERATING MARGIN

$
7.89 14.7%
An increase of 7% from An expansion of
fiscal 2019, including 10 basis points from
$0.43 of gains on an fiscal 2019
investment; excluding
these gains, adjusted
EPS of $7.46 increased
1% from fiscal 2019

FREE CASH FLOW CASH RETURNED TO SHAREHOLDERS

$
7.6B $ 
5.0B
Defined as operating cash Defined as cash dividends
flow of $8.2 billion net of of $2.04 billion plus
property and equipment share repurchases of
additions of $599 million $2.92 billion

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Comparison of Cumulative Total Return

August 31, 2015—  $400

August 31, 2020
$350
Accenture vs. S&P 500
Stock Index and S&P 500 $300
Information Technology
Sector Index $250

The performance graph to the right shows

the cumulative total shareholder return on $200
our Class A shares for the period starting on
August 31, 2015, and ending on August 31, 2020,
$150
which was the end of fiscal 2020. This is compared
with the cumulative total returns over the same
period of the S&P 500 Stock Index and the $100
S&P 500 Information Technology Sector Index.
The graph assumes that,on August 31, 2015,
$50
$100 was invested in our Class A shares and $100
was invested in each of the other two indices,
with dividends reinvested on the ex-dividend $0
date without payment of any commissions.
2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
The performance shown in the graph represents
past performance and should not be considered
an indication of future performance. Accenture S&P 500 Index S&P 500 Information Technology Sector Index

Index Prices as of August 31

2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Accenture $100 $124 $145 $190 $227 $279

S&P 500 Index $100 $113 $131 $157 $161 $196

S&P 500 IT Sector Index $100 $119 $156 $207 $220 $348

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FORTUNE’s World’s Most Interbrand's Barron’s Most Sustainable
Admired Companies Best Global Brands International Companies
No. 1 in our industry for No. 31, marking Among Top 2 for
7 years, marking 18 19 consecutive years 2 consecutive years
consecutive years on list

Ethisphere’s World’s Most Forbes’ Global 2000 Dow Jones Sustainability

Ethical Companies No. 205, marking Index North America and
13 consecutive years 17 consecutive years FTSE4Good Global Index
Since 2005

Fast Company’s Most FORTUNE’s Global 500 CDP’s Climate

Innovative Companies No. 279, marking Change “A List"
2 consecutive years 19 consecutive years 5 years

Awards & Recognition

Refinitiv Diversity & Great Place to Work/ Apertura Mejores
Inclusion Index FORTUNE’s 100 Best Empleadores in
Among Top 3 for Companies to Work For Argentina
3 consecutive years In Japan, Mexico, U.K. and U.S. 7 consecutive years

Human Rights Stonewall Global Randstad’s Most

Campaign’s Corporate Workplace Equality Attractive Employers
Equality Index Index in Greater China
In Chile, Mexico and U.S. 6 consecutive years 3 consecutive years

Business Today/People Disability Equality Index South African Workplace

Strong’s Best Companies 4 consecutive years Equality Index
to Work For in India Achieved Gold status
Among Top 5 for
7 consecutive years

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Stock listing Accenture’s annual report to security might cause such differences, some
holders for purposes of Rule 14a-3(b) of which could be material, include,
Accenture plc Class A ordinary shares but are not limited to, the factors
of the Exchange Act.
are traded on the New York Stock discussed in our Annual Report on
Exchange under the symbol ACN. Form 10-K and Quarterly Reports
Trademark references
on Form 10-Q (available through

Available information Rights to trademarks referenced herein, the Investor Relations section of our
other than Accenture trademarks, website at investor.accenture.com)
Our website address is accenture.com. belong to their respective owners. We under the sections entitled “Risk
We use our website as a channel of disclaim proprietary interest in the marks Factors.” Our forward-looking state-
distribution for company information. and names of others. ments speak only as of the date of this
We make available free of charge on letter or as of the date they are made,
the Investor Relations section of our and we undertake no obligation to
website (investor.accenture.com) our Forward-looking statements update them.
Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly and certain factors that may
affect our business
Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports
on Form 8-K and all amendments to Reconciliation of
We have included in this letter
non-GAAP measures
those reports as soon as reasonably “forward-looking statements” within
practicable after such material is elec- the meaning of Section 27A of the This letter contains certain non-GAAP
tronically filed with or furnished to the Securities Act of 1933 and Section (Generally Accepted Accounting
Securities and Exchange Commission 21E of the Exchange Act relating to Principles) measures that our
(the “SEC”) pursuant to Section 13(a) our operations, results of operations management believes provide our
or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act and other matters that are based on shareholders with additional insights
of 1934 (the “Exchange Act”). We also our current expectations, estimates, into Accenture’s results of operations.
make available through our website assumptions and projections. Words The non-GAAP measures in this letter
other reports filed with or furnished such as “will,” “plan,” “believe” and are supplemental in nature. They
to the SEC under the Exchange Act, similar expressions are used to iden- should not be considered in isolation
including our proxy statements and tify these forward-looking statements. or as alternatives to net income as
reports filed by officers and directors These statements are not guarantees indicators of company performance, to
under Section 16(a) of the Exchange of future performance and involve cash flows from operating activities as
Act, as well as our Code of Business risks, uncertainties and assumptions measures of liquidity, or to other financial
Ethics. Financial and other material that are difficult to predict. information prepared in accordance
information regarding Accenture is with GAAP. Reconciliations of this
routinely posted on and accessible Forward-looking statements are
non-GAAP financial information to
at investor.accenture.com. We do not based upon assumptions as to
Accenture’s financial statements as
intend for information contained in this future events that may not prove to
prepared under GAAP are included
letter or on our website to be part of be accurate. Actual outcomes and
in this report.
the Annual Report on Form 10-K. results may differ materially from

This letter and our Annual Report on what is expressed or forecast in these

Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended forward-looking statements. Risks,
All amounts throughout this letter are stated
August 31, 2020, together constitute uncertainties and other factors that in U.S. dollars, except where noted.

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