JLL, the world’s second-largest real estate brokerage, doubled down on its expectations that improving conditions for real estate sales and leasing will drive earnings growth for the full year.

Executives for the Chicago-based brokerage reiterated their forecast from JLL's previous earnings call in February for a 14% to 16% increase in adjusted earnings for 2023 over last year, barring an unexpected worsening of geopolitical or macroeconomic conditions.

“We expected a very slow first quarter and a very slow second quarter in our own plan, and we assume a substantial recovery for our capital markets business starting in September, leading to a really vibrant fourth quarter,” CEO Christian Ulbrich said during the company's first-quarter earnings call Thursday.

JLL is the third major commercial real estate brokerage to report earnings in recent weeks. CBRE, the world's largest by total revenue, and Colliers, the fourth largest, each reported year-over-year declines in real estate fee revenue, with the steepest drops in capital markets income.

Similar to its rivals, JLL said the industrywide slowdown in investment sales and leasing caused decreases in deal activity that offset steady revenue gains from property management, consulting and other businesses that don't rely on real estate transactions.

Similar to CBRE and Colliers, JLL reported that is capital markets income declined more than 40% from a year earlier. The brokerage's revenue from real estate fees fell 15% to $1.6 billion in the first quarter from a year earlier, and total revenue ticked up 1% to $4.7 billion in the quarter, about what analysts were expecting.

“We were able to deliver results broadly in line with our plan, despite the further deteriorating operating environment,” Ulbrich said.

While investors signaled their willingness to deploy capital early in the year, rising borrowing costs and turmoil in the banking sector had a “deadening effect” on sentimens late in the first quarter, contributing to an industrywide 54% decline in global investment property sales over the year-earlier quarter, Ulbrich said.

Ulbrich expects its capital markets business to improve by this fall as debt costs become more predictable, allowing buyers and sellers to agree on property sale prices.

The major risks to JLL’s full-year earnings target include unexpected geopolitical disruptions, a worsening of the liquidity crisis for regional banks or the potential failure of the U.S. government to reach an agreement on the debt ceiling, Ulbrich said.

“If those things are not going in the wrong direction, we continue to be confident about the 14% to 16%" target, Ulbrich added.