Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated (NYSE:JLL) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Stephen Sheldon: Okay. That’s helpful. And then just on the leasing side, can you just give some more detail about the main overhangs that are delaying decision making for larger deals and maybe how those have changed over the last six months to nine months? Are any of the main factors become — becoming a heavier or lighter headwind over that period? And just for example, it sounds like you’re talking about return-to-office activity is picking up incrementally. So maybe that’s becoming less of a headwind or area of uncertainty just, what are some of the bigger overhangs that — that’s pushing out activity?

Karen Brennan: Yeah. It’s really around the uncertainty in the macroenvironment and geopolitical events that is causing some of these larger decisions to be put on hold. And then counter to that, as you rightly point out, is continued momentum of return-to-office where we’re reaching new highs in the U.S. and as a reminder, the U.S. has been lagging the rest of the world. So you have those two factors at play. And we did, we pointed out there was a negative net absorption in the quarter, but we are seeing an uptick in new space requirements. And so people out looking for more and it’s just a matter of the timing of when those will hit in the current environment.

Stephen Sheldon: All right. Thank you.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Stephen Sheldon — I’m sorry, with Michael Griffin with Citi. Your line is open.

Michael Griffin: Great. Thanks. Maybe just turning to kind of capital markets activities. For assets that are trading, can you give us a sense of kind of what the buyer pool is for that and maybe where bid-ask spreads have gotten to, have they narrowed, have they widened out, anything there would be helpful?

Christian Ulbrich: Sure. The one thing which has been quite clear over the last couple of quarters, the most active buyers have been private buyers, high net worth individuals who are coming into the market who see this as a great opportunity to get hold of exceptional assets. The question around the spreads. It has been quite volatile, whenever we have a bit of calmness on the interest rate front, then spreads are starting to narrow and when there is again some noise coming from that end or more geopolitical tension as we have seen over the last four weeks, then spreads are widening immediately again. So, this hasn’t been consistent over the last couple of quarters. And so, now with the Fed for the second time not making a move, hopefully, we see in the next couple of weeks to the end of the year, which is very important for us at the Capital Markets business spreads narrowing again.

Michael Griffin: Thanks. That’s helpful. And then just on kind of external growth M&A opportunities that you’re seeing in today’s environment, how are you weighing those in the context of growing the enterprise versus, share repurchases, if you can look at as well, it’s kind of shrank the share base.

Christian Ulbrich: Yes. I have to almost repeat myself what I’ve said over the last couple of calls. We are reviewing potential M&A transaction on a regular basis, but first and foremost, we continue to believe that valuations in the private market are still too high. And we have to review that pricing of those opportunities against our strategic objective and our alternative use of cash and as you say, including share repurchases, you see where our share price is and so far we haven’t been very active on the M&A front. And it’s not a big concern for us, because we don’t have any major gaps or white spaces in our existing services and therefore, we are very relaxed about that situation.

Michael Griffin: Great. Thank you.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Jade Rahmani with KBW.

Jade Rahmani: Thank you very much. I wanted to ask about the 2025 or the mid-term targets. The fee revenue target does that include M&A and could you perhaps quantify a percentage or dollar amount of contribution?

Karen Brennan: So, it doesn’t include any significant M&A, just would assume some minor tuck-ins.