CBRE, the world's largest commercial real estate brokerage, is raising its earnings expectations for the year as it cuts costs and prepares for dealmaking to pick up in coming months.
The Dallas-based firm said its second-quarter profit of $130 million was better than it anticipated, though it was still down 35.5% from a year earlier.
"Revenue, profitability and cash flow exceeded our expectations, with outperformance across all three business segments" of advisory services, global workplace solutions and real estate investments, Chair and CEO Bob Sulentic said during a conference call to discuss its earnings Thursday.
The firm's new outlook for the year for core earnings per share is a range of $4.70 to $4.90, an increase from the previous $4.25 to $4.65; its stock was up about 10% late Thursday.
CBRE is the first commercial real estate services firm to report its second-quarter earnings, offering a glimpse at industry headwinds that other commercial brokerages could also face. Next week, Cushman & Wakefield, Colliers International and Newmark are expected to report their results, with JLL scheduled for the following week.
Sulentic said CBRE made "several sizable capital investments" during the quarter, including buying Direct Line Global, a data center management company, and achieved "quick, material progress on the cost challenges we identified last quarter." CBRE spent more than $1 billion on acquiring businesses and assets during the first six months of the year, compared to only $166 million during the period last year, according to regulatory filings.
Like other commercial real estate services firms, CBRE has been grappling with higher costs that have hit its bottom line as its business has struggled with capital markets challenged by elevated interest rates.
For the first few months of the year, Sulentic said costs rose in CBRE's global workplace solutions business to an "unacceptable rate," leading margins to fall short of expectations. He told investors after the first quarter ended that the firm was taking "aggressive action" to address the rising costs, and Sulentic said CBRE made quick progress on those undisclosed actions in the second quarter. CBRE declined further comment on the cost-cutting actions mentioned in the earnings call.
CBRE reported a 15.6% rise in operating, administrative and other expenses during the quarter, primarily from restructuring and severance charges related to cost savings initiatives, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Leasing and sales revenue grew 5% from the prior year for the global advisory services segment with property sales revenue beginning to stabilize, the firm said. Office leasing globally increased by double digits with overall leasing revenue up 9%, bolstered by a 12% growth from the Americas. The United States led leasing activity with a 13% increase, buoyed by New York's office leasing rebound, the firm said. That leasing momentum has continued into July, executives say.
Along with the New York market that acts as a bellwether for U.S. office leasing activity, executives said tech markets, including the San Francisco Bay Area and Austin, Texas, have seen an uptick of leasing activity largely driven around the growth of the artificial intelligence sector.
Meanwhile, revenue from global property sales declined 3% in the quarter, a drop less pronounced than expected with industrial and multifamily proving to be favored among property types. The United Kingdom, where property values have largely reset, led this category with double-digit growth. The Americas segment reported sales revenue fell 4% for the quarter. The firm posted a 20% growth in mortgage origination fees driven by refinancing activity with debt funds created to bridge the gap until interest rates decline.
Growth From Acquisitions
The firm's global workplace solutions business was bolstered by the acquisition of data center management firm Direct Line Global in the second quarter and this business line's cost reductions taken during the quarter. Property management net revenue increased 16%, fueled by the firm adding Brookfield Property's U.S. office portfolio totaling more than 65 million square feet to the business during the quarter.
CBRE's real estate investments business is expected to harvest some large development deals in the fourth quarter, adding to the firm's outlook. The firm has also been investing in opportunities to acquire industrial, multifamily and data center sites, as other developers sit on the sidelines with its development arm Trammell Crow Co. entitling land and making way for new projects.
"We continue to make investments that take advantage of the lack of capital available for well-positioned real estate opportunities by committing approximately $250 million in the second quarter to development projects we believe can be harvested at favorable times in the cycle," Sulentic told investors during the earnings call.
CBRE's combined pipeline of real estate investments and development stands at $32 billion at the close of the quarter as many developers were on the sidelines to build its holdings in industrial, multifamily and data center sites, Chief Financial Officer Emma Giamartino said.
"Our improved outlook is primarily due to the large development asset sales expected to be completed in Q4, which we believe portends an upturn in this business," she said, adding the firm expects to see higher margins and better performance in the second half of the year.
Sulentic told analysts his team has seen anecdotal evidence that gives them confidence in improvement of capital markets.
"We are not only an intermediary, but a principal, and in our development business now we are seeing demand for projects that we didn't expect and it's going to happen in the fourth quarter of this year," Sulentic said, pointing to growing sentiment that there will be at least one interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve this year and that bid-ask spreads are narrowing outside of the office sector.
"We also have technical evidence that we may have well gone through an inflection point on transactions, which will impact leasing, sales, mortgage brokerage and a nice impact in the fourth quarter on the profitability of our development business," he added.
Cutting Costs
The firm was able to quickly contain costs in its global workplace solutions business by focusing on high-level performance, Sulentic told analysts during the earnings call.
CBRE is "focusing more and more on getting rid of costs that don't contribute to the success of the company," he said. "Costs of every kind. Technology projects that don't contribute, people that don't contribute, office space that doesn't contribute. The stuff that does contribute, good office space, good technology and good people — we are aggressive buyers of those things to build our business."
CBRE has a transformation office that reports to Giamartino, in which the firm looks to aggressively look at things it can get rid of — as illustrated by the cost-cutting measures taken in the second quarter — but will keep buying what the firm needs, Sulentic said. That has meant CBRE has purchased land sites and added what Sulentic describes as "spectacular talent" in the last quarter.
These moves are expected to drive efficiency and profits for the company well beyond one quarter's earnings, Giamartino said.
"From here on out, everything is focused on driving that efficiency and as we add and invest in technology and people, they are extremely smart decisions so that down the road we know we don't have to cut back," Giamartino said.
CBRE's 60% stake in the U.K.-based Turner & Townsend business is expected to grow to 70% as it combines with the firm's project management division. Given its size, Sulentic said this business will have a "profound impact on the future of CBRE."
Turner & Townsend spans real estate, infrastructure and natural resources in 50 countries and also offers cost consultancy and advisory consulting services. The synergies between Turner & Townsend and CBRE have resulted in a 20% annual growth of business compared to the company's prior yearly growth of 13% for the prior decade, Sulentic said on the call.
The combined Turner & Townsend and CBRE project management business is expected to begin reporting as a separate business segment in 2025 with more than 20,000 employees serving clients in over 60 countries. Vincent Clancy will continue to oversee the Turner & Townsend operations and will be a part of CBRE's board, Sulentic said.
CBRE's acquisition of Direct Line Global from private equity firm Guardian Capital during the quarter expands CBRE's data center management services, something Sulentic touted as a huge market that is growing rapidly. The global market for data center support services is estimated at $30 billion and is expected to grow 16% per year through 2028, the firm said.
"M&A is integral to our strategy of enhancing our capabilities in parts of our business that is cyclically resilient," said Giamartino, who added the firm's capital deployment for mergers and acquisitions, as well as co-investments, totaled $4.8 billion in the past three years. "The acquisitions we executed in the quarter are clear examples of advancing this strategy."
Along with Direct Line Global, CBRE also acquired Toronto-based Angus Consulting Management, a provider of facilities management technical services in Canada, during the quarter with plans to grow the business throughout North America.
In the first quarter, CBRE finalized its billion-dollar acquisition of J&J Worldwide Services, a provider of engineering services, base support operations and facilities maintenance for the U.S. federal government. CBRE said integration costs for the J&J deal totaled $17.5 million in the first quarter and $1 million in the second quarter, according to the SEC filing.
Updated to clarify six-month figure for CBRE's acquisitions this year.