CBRE Group, Inc. Reports Financial Results for First-Quarter 2025

DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- CBRE Group, Inc. (NYSE:CBRE) today reported financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2025.

Key Highlights:

• GAAP EPS up 32% to $0.54; Core EPS up 10% to $0.86
• Revenue up 12% to $8.9 billion and net revenue up 15% to $5.1 billion
• Resilient Businesses⁽¹⁾ net revenue up 14% (17% local currency) to $3.7 billion; Transactional Businesses⁽¹⁾ revenue up 16% (18% local currency) to $1.4 billion
• GAAP net income up 29% to $163 million; Core EBITDA up 27% to $540 million
• Repurchased nearly $600 million worth of shares since year-end 2024
• More than $1.6 billion net cash flow from operations and nearly $1.5 billion free cash flow, both on a trailing 12-month basis

“CBRE had a strong start to 2025 across our lines of business and around the world. Notably, as the first quarter ended, most of our businesses were performing better than expected and our new business pipelines were strong. This was equally true for both our Resilient and Transactional businesses,” said Bob Sulentic, CBRE’s chair and chief executive officer.

“Since then, driven by the uncertainty created by the tariff situation, our outlook has become less clear. Even in light of this, our current activity levels and new business pipelines continue to be strong, just somewhat less than they were,” Sulentic continued. “The current market uncertainty aside, we are encouraged by the prospects that our strategic positioning and resource set have created for sustained, resilient growth.”

In January 2025, the company established two new business segments – Building Operations & Experience, following the acquisition of flexible workplace solutions provider Industrious, and Project Management, following the integration of CBRE’s legacy project management business into Turner & Townsend. The company now reports results for four business segments: (1) Advisory Services; (2) Building Operations & Experience; (3) Project Management; and (4) Real Estate Investments.

Consolidated Financial Results Overview

The following table presents highlights of CBRE performance (dollars in millions, except per share data; totals may not add due to rounding). First-quarter consolidated results reflect an approximately 2% to 3% currency headwind:

Advisory Services Segment

The following table presents highlights of the Advisory Services segment performance (dollars in millions; totals may not add due to rounding):

Note: all percent changes cited are vs. first-quarter 2024, except where noted.

Leasing

• Global leasing revenue increased 18% (19% local currency), well above expectations.
• The United States set the pace with leasing revenue up 24% overall, including growth of 38% for office, 34% for retail and 12% for industrial.
• Europe, the Middle East & Africa (EMEA) leasing revenue was up 9% (13% local currency).

Capital Markets

• Global property sales revenue rose 11% (13% local currency), in line with expectations.
• The United States generated 26% growth, with strength in industrial and multifamily assets, while EMEA grew by 10% (13% local currency).
• Mortgage origination revenue rose 52% (53% local currency), reflecting continued strength in loan origination activity with a variety of capital sources.

Other Advisory Business Lines

• Loan servicing revenue edged up 2% (same local currency). A 6% (same local currency) increase in servicing fees was partly offset by a decline in escrow income, reflecting lower short-term interest rates compared with the year-earlier quarter. The servicing portfolio totaled $440 billion, up 2% during the quarter.
• Valuations revenue rose 10% (13% local currency), with strength around the world.

Building Operations & Experience (BOE) Segment

The following table presents highlights of the BOE segment performance (dollars in millions; totals may not add due to rounding):

Note: all percent changes cited are vs. first-quarter 2024, except where noted.

• Facilities management net revenue increased 16% (18% local currency). The Enterprise business saw strong demand from the technology, healthcare and life sciences sectors as well as from hyperscale data center clients. The Local business’s growth was boosted by further inroads in the United States market as well as continued growth in the United Kingdom.
• Property management net revenue increased 36% (38% local currency). The growth rate was enhanced by contributions from Industrious, which was acquired in early January 2025.
• Segment operating profit on net revenue margin benefited from the company’s cost efforts in 2024, improving 100 basis points in local currency compared with last year’s first quarter.

Project Management Segment

The following table presents highlights of the Project Management segment performance (dollars in millions; totals may not add due to rounding):

Note: all percent changes cited are vs. first-quarter 2024, except where noted.

• Project management net revenue rose 7% (9% local currency), led by Infrastructure projects in the United Kingdom and Middle East as well as large new program mandates in Real Estate.
• Segment operating profit increased 12% (14% local currency), supported by a 70-basis-point improvement in margin on net revenue compared with the year-earlier first quarter.

Real Estate Investments (REI) Segment

The following table presents highlights of the REI segment performance (dollars in millions):

Note: all percent changes cited are vs. first-quarter 2024, except where noted.

Investment Management

• Revenue rose 3% (5% local currency) to $154 million.
• Investment Management operating profit⁽⁹⁾ improved to $52 million, up from $37 million in last year’s first quarter, primarily driven by higher net promotes and recurring asset management fees.
• Assets Under Management (AUM) totaled $149.1 billion, up $2.9 billion from year-end 2024, driven by net inflows, higher asset values and favorable foreign currency movement.

Real Estate Development

• Global development operating loss⁽⁹⁾ totaled $25 million versus $4 million in last year’s first quarter.
• The portfolio of in-process projects and pipeline stood at $31.1 billion at the end of first-quarter 2025.

Core Corporate Segment

• Core corporate operating loss increased by approximately $12 million.

Capital Allocation Overview

• Free Cash Flow – During the first quarter of 2025, free cash outflow totaled $610 million. This reflected cash used in operating activities of $546 million, adjusted for total capital expenditures of $64 million. On a trailing 12-month basis, free cash flow totaled nearly $1.5 billion and free cash flow conversion was 93%— exceeding the company’s 75% to 85% target range.
• Stock Repurchase Program – The company repurchased approximately 4.6 million shares for $585 million ($127.98 average price per share) since year-end 2024. There was approximately $5.2 billion of capacity remaining under the company’s authorized stock repurchase program as of April 23, 2025.
• Acquisitions and Investments – During the first quarter, CBRE acquired full ownership of Industrious National Management Company LLC, a leading provider of flexible workplace solutions.

Leverage and Financing Overview

• Leverage – CBRE’s net leverage ratio (net debt⁽¹⁰⁾ to trailing twelve-month core EBITDA) was 1.45x as of March 31, 2025, which is substantially below the company’s primary debt covenant of 4.25x. The net leverage ratio is computed as follows (dollars in millions):

• Liquidity – As of March 31, 2025, the company had approximately $3.5 billion of total liquidity, consisting of $1.4 billion in cash, plus the ability to borrow an aggregate of approximately $2.1 billion under its revolving credit facilities and commercial paper program, net of any outstanding letters of credit.

Conference Call Details

The company’s first quarter earnings webcast and conference call will be held today, Thursday, April 24, 2025 at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time. Investors are encouraged to access the webcast via this link or they can click this link beginning at 8:15 a.m. Eastern Time for automated access to the conference call.

Alternatively, investors may dial into the conference call using these operator-assisted phone numbers: 877.407.8037 (U.S.) or 201.689.8037 (International). A replay of the call will be available starting at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time on April 24, 2025. The replay is accessible by dialing 877.660.6853 (U.S.) or 201.612.7415 (International) and using the access code:13752301#. A transcript of the call will be available on the company's Investor Relations website at https://ir.cbre.com.

About CBRE Group, Inc.

CBRE Group, Inc. (NYSE:CBRE), a Fortune 500 and S&P 500 company headquartered in Dallas, is the world’s largest commercial real estate services and investment firm (based on 2024 revenue). The company has more than 140,000 employees (including Turner & Townsend employees) serving clients in more than 100 countries. CBRE serves a diverse range of clients with an integrated suite of services, including facilities, transaction and project management; property management; investment management; appraisal and valuation; property leasing; strategic consulting; property sales; mortgage services and development services. Please visit our website at www.cbre.com. We routinely post important information on our website, including corporate and investor presentations and financial information. We intend to use our website as a means of disclosing material, non-public information and for complying with our disclosure obligations under Regulation FD. Such disclosures will be included in the Investor Relations section of our website at https://ir.cbre.com. Accordingly, investors should monitor such portion of our website, in addition to following our press releases, Securities and Exchange Commission filings and public conference calls and webcasts.

Safe Harbor and Footnotes

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the “safe harbor” provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding the economic outlook, the company’s future growth momentum, operations and business outlook. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the company’s actual results and performance in future periods to be materially different from any future results or performance suggested in forward-looking statements in this press release. Any forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this press release and, except to the extent required by applicable securities laws, the company expressly disclaims any obligation to update or revise any of them to reflect actual results, any changes in expectations or any change in events. If the company does update one or more forward-looking statements, no inference should be drawn that it will make additional updates with respect to those or other forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause results to differ materially include, but are not limited to: disruptions in general economic, political and regulatory conditions and significant public health events, particularly in geographies or industry sectors where our business may be concentrated; volatility or adverse developments in the securities, capital or credit markets, interest rate increases and conditions affecting the value of real estate assets, inside and outside the United States; poor performance of real estate investments or other conditions that negatively impact clients’ willingness to make real estate or long-term contractual commitments and the cost and availability of capital for investment in real estate; foreign currency fluctuations and changes in currency restrictions, trade sanctions and import/export and transfer pricing rules; our ability to compete globally, or in specific geographic markets or business segments that are material to us; our ability to identify, acquire and integrate accretive businesses; costs and potential future capital requirements relating to businesses we may acquire; integration challenges arising out of companies we may acquire; increases in unemployment and general slowdowns in economic and commercial activity; trends in pricing and risk assumption for commercial real estate services; the effect of significant changes in capitalization rates across different property types; a reduction by companies in their reliance on outsourcing for their commercial real estate needs, which would affect our revenues and operating performance; client actions to restrain project spending and reduce outsourced staffing levels; our ability to further diversify our revenue model to offset cyclical economic trends in the commercial real estate industry; our ability to attract new user and investor clients; our ability to retain major clients and renew related contracts; our ability to leverage our global services platform to maximize and sustain long-term cash flow; our ability to continue investing in our platform and client service offerings; our ability to maintain expense discipline; the emergence of disruptive business models and technologies; negative publicity or harm to our brand and reputation; the failure by third parties to comply with service level agreements or regulatory or legal requirements; the ability of our investment management business to maintain and grow assets under management and achieve desired investment returns for our investors, and any potential related litigation, liabilities or reputational harm possible if we fail to do so; our ability to manage fluctuations in net earnings and cash flow, which could result from poor performance in our investment programs, including our participation as a principal in real estate investments; the ability of our indirect wholly-owned subsidiary, CBRE Capital Markets, Inc. to periodically amend, or replace, on satisfactory terms, the agreements for its warehouse lines of credit; declines in lending activity of U.S. Government Sponsored Enterprises, regulatory oversight of such activity and our mortgage servicing revenue from the commercial real estate mortgage market; changes in U.S. and international law and regulatory environments (including relating to anti-corruption, anti-money laundering, trade sanctions, tariffs, currency controls and other trade control laws), particularly in Asia, Africa, Russia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, due to the level of political instability in those regions; litigation and its financial and reputational risks to us; our exposure to liabilities in connection with real estate advisory and property management activities and our ability to procure sufficient insurance coverage on acceptable terms; our ability to retain, attract and incentivize key personnel; our ability to manage organizational challenges associated with our size; liabilities under guarantees, or for construction defects, that we incur in our development services business; our leverage under our debt instruments as well as the limited restrictions therein on our ability to incur additional debt, and the potential increased borrowing costs to us from a credit-ratings downgrade; our and our employees’ ability to execute on, and adapt to, information technology strategies and trends; cybersecurity threats or other threats to our information technology networks, including the potential misappropriation of assets or sensitive information, corruption of data or operational disruption; our ability to comply with laws and regulations related to our global operations, including real estate licensure, tax, labor and employment laws and regulations, fire and safety building requirements and regulations, as well as data privacy and protection regulations, sustainability matters, and the anti-corruption laws and trade sanctions of the U.S. and other countries; changes in applicable tax or accounting requirements; any inability for us to implement and maintain effective internal controls over financial reporting; the effect of implementation of new accounting rules and standards or the impairment of our goodwill and intangible assets; and the performance of our equity investments in companies we do not control.

Additional information concerning factors that may influence the company’s financial information is discussed under “Risk Factors,” “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations,” “Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures About Market Risk” and “Cautionary Note on Forward-Looking Statements” in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2024, our latest quarterly report on Form 10-Q, as well as in the company’s press releases and other periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Such filings are available publicly and may be obtained on the company’s website at www.cbre.com or upon written request from CBRE’s Investor Relations Department at investorrelations@cbre.com.

The terms “net revenue,” “core adjusted net income,” “core EBITDA,” “core EPS,” “business line operating profit (loss),” “segment operating profit on revenue margin,” “segment operating profit on net revenue margin,” “net debt” and “free cash flow,” all of which CBRE uses in this press release, are non-GAAP financial measures under SEC guidelines, and you should refer to the footnotes below as well as the “Non-GAAP Financial Measures” section in this press release for a further explanation of these measures. We have also included in that section reconciliations of these measures in specific periods to their most directly comparable financial measure calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP for those periods.

Totals may not sum in tables in millions included in this release due to rounding.

Non-GAAP Financial Measures

The following measures are considered “non-GAAP financial measures” under SEC guidelines:

These measures are not recognized measurements under United States generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). When analyzing our operating performance, investors should use these measures in addition to, and not as an alternative for, their most directly comparable financial measure calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP. Because not all companies use identical calculations, our presentation of these measures may not be comparable to similarly titled measures of other companies.

Our management generally uses these non-GAAP financial measures to evaluate operating performance and for other discretionary purposes. The company believes these measures provide a more complete understanding of ongoing operations, enhance comparability of current results to prior periods and may be useful for investors to analyze our financial performance because they eliminate the impact of selected charges that may obscure trends in the underlying performance of our business. The company further uses certain of these measures, and believes that they are useful to investors, for purposes described below.

With respect to net revenue, net revenue is gross revenue less costs largely associated with subcontracted vendor work performed for clients. We believe that investors may find this measure useful to analyze the company’s overall financial performance because it excludes costs reimbursable by clients that generally have no margin, and as such provides greater visibility into the underlying performance of our business.

With respect to Core EBITDA, business line operating profit/loss, and segment operating profit on revenue and net revenue margins, the company believes that investors may find these measures useful in evaluating our operating performance compared to that of other companies in our industry because their calculations generally eliminate the accounting effects of acquisitions, which would include impairment charges of goodwill and intangibles created from acquisitions, the effects of financings and income tax and the accounting effects of capital spending. All of these measures may vary for different companies for reasons unrelated to overall operating performance. In the case of Core EBITDA, this measure is not intended to be a measure of free cash flow for our management’s discretionary use because it does not consider cash requirements such as tax and debt service payments. The Core EBITDA measure calculated herein may also differ from the amounts calculated under similarly titled definitions in our credit facilities and debt instruments, which amounts are further adjusted to reflect certain other cash and non-cash charges and are used by us to determine compliance with financial covenants therein and our ability to engage in certain activities, such as incurring additional debt. The company also uses segment operating profit and core EPS as significant components when measuring our operating performance under our employee incentive compensation programs.

With respect to free cash flow, the company believes that investors may find this measure useful to analyze the cash flow generated from operations and real estate investment and development activities after accounting for cash outflows to support operations and capital expenditures. With respect to net debt, the company believes that investors use this measure when calculating the company’s net leverage ratio.

With respect to core EBITDA, core EPS and core adjusted net income, the company believes that investors may find these measures useful to analyze the underlying performance of operations without the impact of strategic non-core equity investments (Altus Power, Inc. and certain other investments) that are not directly related to our business segments. These can be volatile and are often non-cash in nature.

Core net income attributable to CBRE Group, Inc. stockholders, as adjusted (or core adjusted net income), and core EPS, are calculated as follows (in millions, except share and per share data):

Core EBITDA is calculated as follows (in millions, totals may not add due to rounding):

Core EBITDA for the trailing twelve months ended March 31, 2025 is calculated as follows (in millions):

Revenue includes client reimbursed pass-through costs largely associated with employees that are dedicated to client facilities and subcontracted vendor work performed for clients. Reimbursement related to subcontracted vendor work generally has no margin and has been excluded from net revenue. Reconciliations are shown below (dollars in millions):

Below represents a reconciliation of REI business line operating profitability/loss to REI segment operating profit (in millions):

Below represents a reconciliation of Cash flow provided by (used in) operations to Free cash flow for the trailing twelve months ended March 31, 2025 (in millions):

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250424999983/en/

For further information:
Chandni Luthra - Investors
212.984.8113
Chandni.Luthra@cbre.com

Steve Iaco - Media
212.984.6535
Steven.Iaco@cbre.com

Source: CBRE Group, Inc.

Released April 24, 2025