Cushman & Wakefield’s chief executive has hailed a “strong start” to the year for the agency, but has warned over ongoing challenges for the business as markets recover from the pandemic.
Chairman and chief executive Brett White told analysts on a call to discuss the agency’s first-quarter results that his team is more confident about the outlook now than during the previous quarter.
“What has changed over the last three months is that the pace of the recovery has certainly accelerated from what we were expecting near the end of last year, and that is wholly related to [the vaccine rollout],” White said.
“Our thinking around 2021 is that while there is still a lot of uncertainty across the marketplace globally, and uncertainty across some of the product types as well, there is more certainty that recovery is on is way in some sense… but there are headwinds and there are tailwinds.”
White said he is now hopeful of a pick-up in transactional activity. “Institutional investors are beginning to look through Covid. There is a growing sense that as nasty as that short recession was, and as tough as the pandemic was and the questions it has created around how people use space, there is a stronger growing consensus that this was a point-in-time event.”
Revenue of $1.9bn was largely flat year-on-year – up by 1% in US dollars and down by the same amount in local currency. Revenue growth in property, facilities and project management helped to offset falls in the leasing and capital markets divisions.
Some trimming of costs – the agency highlighted “reduced spending on travel and entertainment” – allowed the agency to narrow its loss from $55m a year ago to $17.2m.
In EMEA, the agency posted revenue of $223.9m, up by 7% in dollars, and an adjusted EBITDA of $2.4m. Leasing and capital markets revenue both grew in EMEA.
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