CBRE Group, Inc. (NYSE:CBRE) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

I do want to comment a little bit on the local business because that is something that we haven’t talked about extensively and is a really strong contributor to our growth, especially GWS’s growth over time. That came out of the acquisition of Norland at the end of 2013, and it was primarily a UK-based company, and that’s really how we entered the local or regional facilities management market. And when we acquired them, they had about $40 million of EBITDA. And today, they have about – we expect for the year, $230 million of EBITDA. So that’s an exceptional growth story for us. And this year, we’re expecting it to grow another 20%. But as I said, it requires investments over time to launch into new territories, but that will – we’ll see operating leverage as those businesses grow.

Anthony Paolone: Okay. And if I could just ask one more. You talked about some of the investments that affect free cash flow with people and recruiting and so forth. I guess just casually observing it does seem like there’s been a pickup of articles of people moving around. Can you just comment just generally on the landscape and kind of where the efforts may lie in terms of trying to recruit and retain folks right now?

Bob Sulentic: Yes. Tony, when we talk about recruiting and retention, it’s heavily skewed toward our brokerage business. And our brokerage business is experiencing a good year and an active year of recruiting. And we think it’s going to measure up with some of the best years we’ve ever had. Recruiting – even in a tough market, recruiting is expensive because what you’re typically doing is recruiting the best brokers in the marketplace, and it’s like buying great companies. They never come cheap. But we’re at a time now where people are finding their platforms and the circumstances in the companies they’re in today being less supportive of what they want to do with their careers less supportive of how they want to support their clients than they think CBRE can be.

So we’re finding good hunting out there in a lot of places in bringing on people and as a result, spending more money. It’s a little bit like Emma said about the land situation with Trammell Crow Company. There’s a lot of people out there that previously, we’re able to buy land, industrial land or multifamily land that aren’t in a great position to buy it now. It’s not cheap. You still have to pay up to get good land. But you can get some land sites that you couldn’t get previously. You can get some brokers you couldn’t get previously. And that’s what Emma’s comments were centered on about the incremental use of cash for those two types of investments into the future.

Anthony Paolone: Okay. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] The next question we have comes from Jade Rahmani from KBW. Please go ahead.

Jade Rahmani: Thank you very much. The debt issuance overall that you mentioned the term loan upsizing and also the senior notes. Was that to be incremental or a refinancing of debt? Is it to add that capacity to the company overall?

Emma Giamartino: It’s a combination of both. We’re always looking for – we prefer a long-term capital source. So we’ve been looking for opportunities to raise that long-term capital. And what we did in the near term as we used those proceeds to pay down our revolver. We like having that flexibility and capacity on our revolver. The other positive from it is that our net interest rate once – after we raised the bond and expanded the term loan is actually lower than it was drawn on our revolver. So that’s a positive impact, which should endure for the next couple of years.