CBRE has reported what it says is its highest Q1 revenues ever.
The firm said revenues for the first three months of 2021 had totalled more than $5.9bn (£4.2bn) – up from $5.8bn in Q1 2020.
President and chief executive Bob Sulentic said: “We are off to a strong start in 2021, with the highest first-quarter revenue and adjusted earnings per share ever for the company. Our performance is being propelled by our long-standing efforts to diversify our business across four key dimensions: property types, lines of business, geographic markets and client types. The broad diversification of our business, coupled with decisive actions in 2020 to re-set our cost structure, underpinned our earnings growth for the quarter, and we expect to see continued benefits in the quarters and years ahead.”
The record quarter for the business was driven by its global workplace solutions division, which recorded an increase in revenues from $3.8bn to $4bn during the period. CBRE said it was seeing resilient demand for facilities management, particularly for data centres. FM contributed some 80% of the division’s revenue and rose by 4% year-on-year. Project management revenues actually fell by 7%, reflecting “tepid demand” for fit-outs as a result of the fall-off in leasing activity.
Revenues across CBRE’s advisory business were hit hardest, falling frm $1.8bn to $1.7bn. CBRE said that leasing revenue had fallen by 17% globally, albeit with some increases in various geographies outside of North America. In the UK, leasing revenues increased by 11%. Industrial and logistics drove any growth with global leasing revenue from this sector of the property market increasing by 28% during the period.
Capital markets fared better, with global revenues falling by 9% – the mildest decline CBRE said it had seen since the onset of Covid. The UK recorded an 18% increase in capital market revenues. The debt and lending element of the division performed well, with commercial mortgage revenues up by14% and revenues from loan servicing increasing by 22%. CBRE’s loan servicing portfolio now totals $285bn – a 19% increase over the past year.
The firm’s real estate investment division remained relatively static during the quarter, with revenues unchanged at $211m.
Sulentic said: “Our outlook for 2021 and beyond envisions strong growth even with continued pressure on the office market. Clearly, that pressure remains very acute right now, particularly in densely populated gateway cities, and will remain challenging for some time to come. However, we strongly believe the pressures on office will recede from today’s extreme levels, as vaccine rollouts continue and companies settle into new normal work regimes.”
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