Corrected Transcript

27-Oct-2023

CBRE Group, Inc. (CBRE)

Q3 2023 Earnings Call

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CBRE Group, Inc. (CBRE)

Corrected Transcript

Q3 2023 Earnings Call

27-Oct-2023

CORPORATE PARTICIPANTS

Brad Burke

Emma E. Giamartino

Head-Investor Relations and Treasurer, CBRE Group, Inc.

Chief Financial Officer, CBRE Group, Inc.

Robert E. Sulentic

President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, CBRE Group, Inc.

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OTHER PARTICIPANTS

Anthony Paolone

Patrick Joseph O'Shaughnessy

Analyst, JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst, Raymond James & Associates, Inc.

Steve Sakwa

Alex Kramm

Analyst, Evercore ISI

Analyst, UBS Securities LLC

Jade Rahmani

Michael A. Griffin

Analyst, Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.

Analyst, Citigroup

Stephen Sheldon

Analyst, William Blair & Co. LLC

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MANAGEMENT DISCUSSION SECTION

Operator: Greetings and welcome to the CBRE Group, Inc. Q3 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mr. Brad Burke, Head of Investor Relations and Treasurer. Thank you, Mr. Burke. You may begin.

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Brad Burke

Head-Investor Relations and Treasurer, CBRE Group, Inc.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to CBRE's third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Earlier today, we posted a presentation deck on our website that you can use to follow along with our prepared remarks and an Excel file that contains additional supplemental materials.

Before we kick off today's call, I'll remind you that today's presentation contains forward-looking statements, including without limitation statements concerning our economic outlook, our business plans, and our financial outlook. Forward-looking statements are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results and trends to differ materially from those projected.

For a full discussion of the risks and other factors that may impact these forward-looking statements, please refer to this morning's earnings release and our SEC filings. We have provided reconciliations of the non-GAAP

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CBRE Group, Inc. (CBRE)

Corrected Transcript

Q3 2023 Earnings Call

27-Oct-2023

financial measures discussed on our call to the most directly comparable GAAP measures, together with explanations of these measures in our presentation deck appendix.

I am joined on today's call by Bob Sulentic, our President and CEO; and Emma Giamartino, our Chief Financial Officer.

Now, please turn to slide 5, as I turn the call over to Bob.

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Robert E. Sulentic

President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, CBRE Group, Inc.

Thank you, Brad. And good morning, everyone. Commercial real estate capital markets remained under significant pressure in the third quarter. As a result, we experienced a sustained slowdown in property sales and debt financing activity, which drove the decline in core EPS. This decline was exacerbated by delays in harvesting development assets, which we will sell when market conditions improve.

Over the last several quarters, we have detailed the increased importance of our resilient and secularly favored businesses. These businesses saw continued solid growth in the third quarter, led by Global Workplace Solutions.

Interest rates have increased more than 100 basis points since we - since we reported second quarter results 90 days ago, continuing the sharpest rise in rates in nearly 40 years. The unexpected jump in rates has pushed back the capital markets recovery.

Property prices are gradually declining, and we believe this process won't complete and transaction activity won't rebound materially until investors are confident that interest rates have peaked and credit becomes readily available. We now believe this rebound is unlikely to occur until the second half of next year at the earliest.

In the meantime, as we discussed last quarter, pockets of opportunity exist and the breadth and depth of our market presence gives us visibility into where we want to be positioned for the long-term. For example, year-to- date, we've committed more than $350 million in co-investments to value-add opportunistic and development strategies and believe these investments are positioned to deliver quite attractive returns as market conditions improve.

This is the time in the market cycle when well-positioned investors can secure opportunities that deliver outsized returns. We expect to identify and act on more opportunities to deploy capital, especially in co-investments and M&A while the market is depressed. In light of continuing challenges in the real estate capital markets, we have lowered our expectations for 2023 core EPS to a mid-30% decrease from the 20% to 25% decline we anticipated 90 days ago.

The reduced outlook is almost entirely attributable to our interest rate sensitive businesses. While it's difficult to forecast the timing of the capital markets recovery, the resilient and secularly favored businesses we mentioned earlier have generated over $1.5 billion of SOP over the last 12 months and we expect them to represent over 60% of CBRE's SOP for full year 2023. We further expect SOP from these businesses to increase by double- digits next year.

Emma will walk you through our outlook after she reviews the quarter. Emma?

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CBRE Group, Inc. (CBRE)

Corrected Transcript

Q3 2023 Earnings Call

27-Oct-2023

Emma E. Giamartino

Chief Financial Officer, CBRE Group, Inc.

Thanks, Bob. Please turn to slide 6 for a review of Advisory Services results. This segment's net revenue fell 17% and SOP declined to 35% versus the prior year's Q3.

Across geographies, APAC showed the best relative performance, with revenue up 3%, led by continued strong growth in Japan. Revenue was weak across EMEA, declining 18%, slightly better than the Americas, where revenue fell 21%.

The revenue decline was most pronounced in property sales, which decreased 38%, with both buyers and sellers pausing amid the sharp and unexpected interest rate increases over the past 90 days. EMEA sales revenue saw the greatest decline at 47%, while APAC sales revenue fell only 12%.

In the Americas, property sales revenue dropped 41%. Ironically, compared with other major property types, also saw the least severe decline due to weak prior year comps and seller capitulation.

Industrial sales were largely limited to properties under 300,000 square feet, and multifamily sales were concentrated in core and core-plus properties as investors focus on the highest quality properties to mitigate risk.

Commercial mortgage origination revenue fell less than property sales, down 18%. The decline was tempered by our significant business with the GSEs, which have taken share amid the broader pullback in lending.

Beyond capital markets, our leasing revenue declined by 16%, a few percentage points below what we had anticipated going into the quarter. Significant growth in several APAC countries was offset by lower revenue in both EMEA and the Americas.

Economic uncertainty continues to delay occupier decision making, particularly for large office and industrial deals. For example, leasing revenue declined by 23% in the US, but the number of leases completed was only down 10%. The remaining lines of business in our Advisory segment were relatively flat, with growth in both loan servicing and property management offsetting weaker valuations revenue, which is tied to sales and financing activity.

Please turn to slide 7, as I discuss the GWS segment. GWS posted another strong quarter with net revenue and SOP increasing by 14% and 15% respectively. Both Facilities Management and Project Management generated mid-teens net revenue growth. Our business continues to benefit from our focus on industry sectors that allow us to meet the unique needs of our diversified client base.

Growth year-to-date has been notable in three sectors. Healthcare due to our enhanced capabilities to meet client needs. Energy spurred by strong expansion with existing clients, along with growth in renewable energy. And industrial & logistics, an industry that is increasingly embracing outsourcing in their manufacturing plants to reduce costs.

We are also seeing continued strong revenue growth in our GWS local business, driven by a mix of new and existing clients. Investment in our US local business, which I discussed last quarter, resulted in several new wins and accelerated revenue growth.

In addition, our Turner & Townsend project management business continues to outperform expectations, most notably through their expansion in the US.

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CBRE Group, Inc. (CBRE)

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Q3 2023 Earnings Call

27-Oct-2023

Our GWS pipeline reached a new record in the quarter, with one-third of our pipeline coming from first-generation outsourcing clients. That is clients who have not previously outsourced their real estate operations. The growth in first-generation pursuits reflects corporations increased interest in reducing occupancy costs among the uncertain economic environment.

Our remaining pipeline is filled with occupiers that are looking to either expand their scope of services with CBRE or switch their service provider to CBRE because of our ability to provide more integrated global solutions.

Margins improved slightly in Q3 due to strong revenue growth that offset the investments made earlier this year, allowing us to achieve operating leverage. We anticipate further margin expansion next quarter.

Now turn to slide 8, for a discussion of the REI segment. Overall, SOP totaled just $7 million, reflecting few US development asset sales and lower operating profit in our Investment Management business. Within Investment Management, the decline in operating profit was primarily driven by negative marks in our more than $330 million co-investment portfolio compared with positive marks last year, as well as lower incentive fees.

AUM declined sequentially to $144 billion, primarily due to lower property valuations and negative foreign currency effects, which offset modest net inflows. While fundraising has decelerated materially across the sector, including for CBRE, investors remain keenly interested in higher target return strategies to take advantage of current market stress and dislocation, such as opportunistic secondaries and value-add real estate strategies.

And we have committed almost $200 million year-to-date in co-investment capital in support of these strategies. This is a record level of co-investment across our funds and a substantial increase in our commitment to higher return strategies. We have focused on follow-on funds with strong track records and led by experienced portfolio management teams.

Development results were below expectations due to deals slipping into 2024. Historically, we've covered the US development business as operating costs with project fees, and we expect this to be the case going forward.

Our in-process portfolio was flat with last quarter as we added few new projects, but also did not have any meaningful asset sales. Note that we have refined our development portfolio definitions to better reflect projects that are actively under construction. The primary change is that the definition of in-process now only includes projects that have started construction, whereas the prior definition included projects that are under our control with construction expected to start within 12 months.

The environment for harvesting development projects and recognizing the related gains has become increasingly challenging. The project sale process is progressing more slowly than we typically see, driven by increased caution from buyers. This has been elongating the sale process rather than impacting pricing. However, we're reaching a point where pricing will be impacted and in that case, we will proactively decide to hold well capitalized assets until market conditions improve.

As Bob noted earlier, these circumstances, which put downward pressure on our business in the short run, create opportunities to secure assets that will lead to substantial future profits.

Looking forward, we have continued to invest in development with more than $150 million committed year-to-date. These investments are focused on securing multifamily and industrial projects at a time of capital markets dislocation that we expect to deliver historically attractive returns.

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CBRE Group, Inc. (CBRE)

Corrected Transcript

Q3 2023 Earnings Call

27-Oct-2023

Please turn to slide 9. As we've noted, the current environment is providing opportunities to deploy capital strategically. With respect to M&A, we continue to evaluate many opportunities across our lines of business. However, we are being disciplined about pricing and thorough in our due diligence. Just as the rise in interest rates and increased uncertainty impacts real estate transactions, it also affects M&A deals.

We have passed on otherwise attractive deals where we could not close the gap in pricing with sellers. Our hurdle rates to achieve returns above our risk adjusted cost of capital have increased along with interest rates. The seller pricing expectations for the most part have adjusted more slowly.

In the meantime, we've completed over $500 million of share repurchases during the quarter, bringing our year-to- date total to $630 million. Volatility during the third quarter allowed us to get close to our share repurchase target for the full year.

I want to reiterate that while we are looking to take advantage of this period of investment opportunity, we remain highly disciplined around pricing and we are fully committed to maintaining an investment grade balance sheet with a leverage ratio below two turns.

Next, I'll briefly touch on cash flow and cost reductions. Full year free cash flow is tracking below our prior expectations, primarily due to lower earnings. In addition, several large uses of cash, mostly timing related items such as cash compensation tied to last year's results do not flex down with this year's lower earnings. As a result, these items are a headwind to free cash flow this year. As these timing impacts reverse next year, we anticipate a significant improvement in our 2024 free cash flow generation.

We discussed earlier this year that we were prepared to cut costs further if the market environment deteriorated. The time has come and we will be reducing costs across our lines of business. We have already targeted $150 million of reductions in our run rate operating costs, primarily focused on our transactional lines of business that have been most negatively impacted by the market downturn. We expect to provide more detail on the benefit of our cost savings actions when we provide 2024 guidance next quarter.

Turning to our outlook, as Bob noted earlier, we now expect core EPS for the full year to decline by mid-30%. Our expectations for double-digit revenue and SOP growth in our GWS segment are more than offset by capital markets driven SOP declines in Advisory and REI segments.

Looking to next year, while the recovery of transaction activity, particularly in capital markets, will take longer than initially anticipated, we expect double-digit growth of our resilient and secularly favored lines of business, which combined have exceeded $1.5 billion of SOP on a trailing 12-month basis.

In addition, we will continue to benefit from strategic deployment of capital and our cost reduction initiatives. Taking into account all of these circumstances, we believe this year will be the trough for our earnings and anticipate meaningful growth next year. However, our return to record earnings will likely be delayed a year relative to our earlier expectations.

With that, operator, we'll open the line for questions.

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CBRE Group, Inc. (CBRE)

Corrected Transcript

Q3 2023 Earnings Call

27-Oct-2023

QUESTION AND ANSWER SECTION

Operator: Thank you. We will be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Anthony Paolone with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question.

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Anthony Paolone

Analyst, JPMorgan Securities LLC

Q

Great. Thank you and good morning. My first question relates to leasing and the hesitancy by occupiers to make some decisions there, dial down just the size of deals. Do you think that's on the front-end at this point where that hesitancy is just starting? Or do you think that's been happening for a while now. I'm trying to get a sense as to how we should think about leasing as we look to next few quarters?

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Robert E. Sulentic

President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, CBRE Group, Inc.

A

Tony, it's been happening for a while. It's become a little more pronounced and we think it's going to go into next year. What's causing it is, we don't have a recession. Everybody knows that. We don't have the kind of financial problems we've had in prior cycles, but we have a lot of uncertainty. And we have uncertainty around the cost of capital, which causes companies of all types to be careful about their expenditures that would run through their income statement. Of course, the minute that happens, they're cautious about leasing.

We don't think it's going to become materially more pronounced than it is now. And as we've said, we think now when we get to the back half of next year, things will recover. That's where we are.

I think what's notable is the slowdown on behalf of big absorbers of industrial space. We went through an extended period where not only were they taking space to support their growth, some of them were taking space to hedge against future growth. They're now burning through that space. And when that's done, we'll start to see leasing come back by those big industrial users.

It is notable that we still only have 4% vacancy in industrial space, so they'll get back to being careful and make sure they have adequate inventory.

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Anthony Paolone

Analyst, JPMorgan Securities LLC

Q

Okay. Thanks. And then, you called out Investment Management as a focus area on the M&A side, are you seeing specific deals that are making more sense there? Or is that just an area that thematically you like?

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Emma E. Giamartino

Chief Financial Officer, CBRE Group, Inc.

A

I think, Tony, you're talking about maybe prior remarks that we made. We're looking broad-based across the company at M&A, and we've been focused on the areas of our business that are resilient and [ph] in fact (00:18:33) really favored, but those are the types of larger deals we've done in the past and those are the type of deals that we're looking at now.

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CBRE Group, Inc. (CBRE)

Corrected Transcript

Q3 2023 Earnings Call

27-Oct-2023

One of the things that's happening right now is we are looking at a number of deals and we've talked about deals on the larger end of the range that we've typically looked at in the past, or that we've typically executed in the past. But pricing has become more of a challenge than it was a year ago or even six months ago.

Similar to what's happening in the real estate market, with the gap between buyer and seller valuations remaining high or even increasing as interest rates are increasing, a similar impact is happening to M&A. So, for us, our cost of capital is increasing slightly, our risk appetite is reducing slightly, and so, we need seller prices to come down for us to be able to execute some of these deals - many of these deals.

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Anthony Paolone

Analyst, JPMorgan Securities LLC

Q

Okay. And then just Emma, one last clarifying item if I can. Did you mention you thought the recurring businesses like GWS were going to grow double-digits in 2024 or was that just for 2023? I didn't catch that.

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Emma E. Giamartino

Chief Financial Officer, CBRE Group, Inc.

A

We expect our resilient lines of business in aggregate, which for the year is to generate $1.6 billion of SOP, to grow in the low double-digit range going forward into the future. And GWS specifically of that SOP for this year is going to grow in the mid-double-digit range, so low-teens range and should continue going forward.

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Anthony Paolone

Q

Analyst, JPMorgan Securities LLC

Okay. So, you feel comfortable with that double-digit number, around GWS, for instance, for 2024 as well?

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Emma E. Giamartino

Chief Financial Officer, CBRE Group, Inc.

Yeah. Absolutely.

A

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Anthony Paolone

Analyst, JPMorgan Securities LLC

Okay. Thank you.

Q

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Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Steve Sakwa with Evercore ISI. Please proceed with your question.

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Steve Sakwa

Analyst, Evercore ISI

Q

Yeah. Thanks. Emma, just on the share buybacks, I know in the last call you had talked, I think, about doing $600 million, you guys did, a little north of $500 million this quarter. So, I guess, are you still, still sticking with that $600 million number for the back half, kind of implying a fairly low fourth quarter number? I know that kind of ties in maybe with the lack or less free cash flow. So, just any thoughts around buybacks for the rest of the year?

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Emma E. Giamartino

Chief Financial Officer, CBRE Group, Inc.

A

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CBRE Group, Inc. (CBRE)

Corrected Transcript

Q3 2023 Earnings Call

27-Oct-2023

Yeah, Steve, that's the right way to think about it. We were going into the latter half of the year, where our expectation was for $600 million, and as you said, we did $500 million in this quarter, so we are on track to deliver the same amount we were thinking last quarter.

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Steve Sakwa

Analyst, Evercore ISI

Q

Okay. And, look, I know everybody is highly focused on the sales environment that really seems to kind of be the linchpin for the company. Bob, you've obviously talked about maybe a second half recovery, just sort of trying to think through kind of the timing and is it more the economy that you think is driving people uncertainty? Is it the absolute level of interest rates? Is it the fact that the banks and insurance companies aren't really lending money? I know all of it impacts it. But is there one factor that you think is more pronounced than another?

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Robert E. Sulentic

President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, CBRE Group, Inc.

A

Uncertainty around interest rates is one really prominent fact and the expectation that they're now going to come down later than we previously thought.

Number two, there's still a view that values are going to come down some, that privately held assets haven't come into line yet. And maybe another 5% to 10% decline in asset values. But, Steve, I really think it's important to remember this about our business. Those assets are real, and they're held by investors. And there's buyers with massive amounts of capital waiting to make trades when those two things sort out. We will get back to an active trading environment. It's not like some things that go away and never come back, right. The assets are there.

The base of assets is actually growing and the people that hold the assets, there's a significant number of them and a significant volume of them that want to trade those assets with buyers ready to go. And buyers are watching closely the interest rates and watching closely the valuations. And things are starting to come in line to the point where we think there will be trading again in the second half of next year.

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Steve Sakwa

Analyst, Evercore ISI

Q

Okay. And then one just small technical one, I guess we noticed that the tax rate Emma in the quarter came in much lower than expected. I think that might have helped kind of EPS. Just kind of what are your thoughts and what drove that in the quarter? And I guess, is that sort of a sustainable lower tax rate or is that more of a one-off issue in the quarter?

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Emma E. Giamartino

Chief Financial Officer, CBRE Group, Inc.

A

That is a one-time tax planning benefit that we had this quarter. For the full year, we're expecting our tax rate to come in at about 21%. And excluding that benefit this quarter, our tax rate is about 20% in Q3.

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Steve Sakwa

Analyst, Evercore ISI

Great. Thank you.

Q

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Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jade Rahmani with KBW. Please proceed with your question.

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CBRE Group, Inc. (CBRE)

Corrected Transcript

Q3 2023 Earnings Call

27-Oct-2023

Jade Rahmani

Q

Analyst, Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.

Thank you very much. On leasing, if new tenants are taking 10% to 20% less space and there's some pressure on net effective rents on the office side, as well as the overall uncertainty around demand for office space, and then you mentioned some of the slowdown in industrial and then I would characterize retail as mixed. Do you think that leasing would be negative in 2024?

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Robert E. Sulentic

President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, CBRE Group, Inc.

A

It could be in some areas, Jade, but we think that what's going on with office spaces has kind of settled out, right? Rents have come way down, users of office space have backed off, people that want premium office space for the experience side of things for their employees are going after it and we think they'll continue to go after it into next year. We think industrial has slowed down for the time being, it will come back the back half of next year. And I think you commented already, retail is mixed. But there's a lot of retail activity in the economy now and there is reason to believe that, that will kind of sustain the way it is now.

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Jade Rahmani

Analyst, Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.

Q

And then on GWS, I understand the long-term opportunity and gaining the penetration rates by passing on cost savings to those that don't currently outsource. But there are friction costs associated with this as well as execution, complexity and uncertainty, would not the macro backdrop create headwinds in GWS as well and thereby put some pressure on the double-digit growth. I mean, if the economy is slowing down, it seems - that business' double-digit growth profile could be at risk. Can you give some reasons why that's not the case?

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Robert E. Sulentic

President, Chief Executive Officer & Director, CBRE Group, Inc.

A

Well, when the economy slows down, companies focus intensely on cost. And when they focus on cost, they think about having somebody like us, us more than anybody else, handle their real estate facilities for them because we save them money. That is absolute front and center dimension of that business. Where you see things slow down is capital expenditures, which can hit project management. But there's so much momentum around various parts of our project management business related to enhancing the experience for clients in the office space that companies have, which is a big deal for them now. We think that's going to continue to be a big deal. We think that will offset the focus on reducing capital expenditures.

Also that project management business, as you know, does a lot of stuff in the infrastructure, green energy, et cetera areas. And so, we think that there's offsetting factors there that will allow that business to continue to grow at a double-digit rate. So, the bottom line is, I don't think what we're seeing in the economy and the uncertainty in the economy would push that down below being a double-digit grower next year.

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Jade Rahmani

Analyst, Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Inc.

Q

Thank you very much. Finally, just on REI, have you changed CBRE's underwriting toward the capitalization and acquisition of new projects to account for potentially rates remaining at current levels? And does the outlook for asset sales depend more on timing or a moderation in interest rates in order to refinance those deals and sell at attractive cap rates?

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CBRE Group Inc. published this content on 27 October 2023 and is solely responsible for the information contained therein. Distributed by Public, unedited and unaltered, on 30 October 2023 14:04:24 UTC.