JLL is looking to bolster its transactional teams in anticipation of a “very bright” outlook for the business.
Chief executive Christian Ulbrich (pictured) said the agency aims to build out the workforce covering areas such as capital markets and leasing, describing 2022 as likely be “a year in which growth rates start to normalise” and in which “near-term… challenges will soon give rise to a more bullish confidence” in the real estate markets.
“We do a lot of investment in new talent into our transactional businesses,” Ulbrich told analysts on a call to discuss JLL’s third-quarter earnings. “The outlook for the transactional business going into 2022 is very bright, and so we are doing all the effort to secure additional talent.”
In Europe, the Middle East and Africa, JLL’s fee revenue rose by 15% year-on-year, in local currency to $385.2m in the three months to 30 September. Regional leasing, capital markets and advisory revenues were ahead year-on-year, but the top line was weighed down by single-digit percentage drops in property and facilities management as well as project and development services. Adjusted EBITDA of $1m dropped sharply from $7.7m a year ago.
Ulbrich said a “very significant recovery” in the EMEA transactional businesses had helped to offset activity, such as mobile engineering, that had been hit given that “the return to [the] office is still relatively weak”.
“We have taken very significant steps to work on the cost base of our EMEA business and we are pretty optimistic that will be visible in 2022,” he added. “The seasonality in EMEA is always slightly stronger than in the other two geographies [US and Asia]. So we are quite positive about the fourth quarter for EMEA.”
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