The value of investments made by JLL’s technologies division has more than trebled in the space of a year.
Chief financial officer Karen Brennan said the fair value of JLL Technologies’ investments stood at $350m at the end of 2021, up from less than $100m a year earlier.
Much of the boost was due to a $140m valuation increase based on “subsequent financing rounds at higher valuation”, Brennan told analysts on a call to discuss the agency’s fourth-quarter and full-year results.
Asked about the outlook for the Building Engines business, which JLL bought outright last year and through which it aims to offer the services of investee companies, chief executive Christian Ulbrich said: “Over the last 10 years or so, a lot of technology has entered the building space… which enable the building owners to operate their buildings and the building occupiers to have a better experience in the building. All of those applications need to find a home, otherwise it becomes a pretty cumbersome task to operate them, and we believe that Building Engines can be a type of home for all these applications.”
JLL has invested in several technologies through its Spark venture capital fund, Ulbrich added. “We are now embedding many of those products into our Building Engine software and trying to bring that as fast as possible to our clients because we believe that it really adds value to them and make the building much more attractive and operationally more efficient.”
Questioned on the timeframe for investing more in or exiting those investments, Ulbrich said the goal will remain “trying to bring those products as early as possible to [clients] and integrate them into our service offering”.
He added: “Those products which we believe have a potential to become mainstream, we will look whether we can increase our share in those companies or potentially take them over completely. As you will have noted, that’s what we did with Skyline. And with others, we will potentially exit them as any other venture capital fund after six to eight years.”
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