Colliers International Group Inc.

Welcome to the Collier's International Second Quarter Investors Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. Legal counsel requires us to advise that this discussion schedule to take place today may contain forward-looking statements that involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Actual results may be materially different from any future results. Performance or achievements contemplated in the forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning factors that could cause Actual results to materially differ from those in the forward-looking statements is contained in the company's annual information form as filed with the Canadian Securities Administrators and in the company's annual report form 40F as filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. Today is August 2, 2023, and at this time, for opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the call over to the global chairman and chief executive officer, Mr. Jay Hennick. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and thanks to everyone for joining us for this second quarter conference call. I'm Jay Hennick, chairman and chief executive officer of the company. With me today is Chris McLernan, chief executive officer of our real estate services business, and Christian Mayer, our chief financial officer. As always, this call is being webcast and is available in the investor relations section of our website, along with the presentation slide deck. During the second quarter, Collier's experienced strong growth in recurring revenues, which contributed 65% of our adjusted EBITDA. Having such a large percentage of recurring revenue highlights our balanced and resilient business model enables us to withstand market fluctuations and truly sets us apart from the others. Once again, investment management and outsourcing and advisory experienced robust growth during the quarter, while capital markets and, to a lesser extent, leasing declined versus the prior year, a record quarter. As everyone knows, lower interest rates at lower investment volumes, sorry, have been caused by rising interest rates, challenging debt availability, and continued price discovery, which we expect will quickly rebound once conditions stabilize. Since the rest of our business has been performing well, we're maintaining our financial outlook for the year, as Christian will elaborate on. Our company is basically comprised of two parts. Collier's, one of the top global leaders in commercial real estate. This segment makes up about 70% of our adjusted EBITDA and is led by CEO Chris McLernan. Chris will provide some highlights in a few minutes. The second segment is investment management, which is our fastest growing business. Since 2016, Colliers has built a highly differentiated private investment platform with an impressive $100 million of assets under management. Importantly, 85% of our AUM is comprised of perpetual or other long-duration investment vehicles, giving us predictable revenue streams over the long term. As importantly, 70% of these assets are in defensive strategies like seniors and student housing, healthcare, and infrastructure, classes that are highly sought after with strong tailwinds for the future. During the second quarter, IM continued to scale with revenues up 58%, including the benefit of acquisitions. We continue to invest in our platforms. adding investment professionals and new products, as well as strengthening our distribution capabilities. While fundraising remains a challenge for the entire industry, the interest in our investment vehicles has never been greater. We expect our fundraising will accelerate as we move towards the end of the year. And now let me ask Chris McClernand to discuss some of the highlights from our real estate services business. Once he's completed, Christian will provide his usual financial report, and then we'll open things up to questions. Chris?

Thank you, Jay, and good morning. Our vision at Colliers is to accelerate the success of our clients and our people while creating value for our shareholders. Today, Colliers is stronger than ever. It is our unique enterprising culture that sets us apart from our competitors as we continue to attract and retain the best talent in the industry while taking share from our competitors. Although transactional services of capital markets and leasing declined versus prior year due to the challenging market conditions, our outsourcing and advisory services showed strong growth, continuing the momentum from the first quarter. Globally, capital markets investment volumes have hit the lowest levels seen in a decade. due to the rapid rise in continued uncertainty around interest rates, combined with the tightening debt markets, which is affecting price discovery between buyers and sellers. We are confident that our transaction business will rebound strongly once market conditions improve. In the meantime, to counter the decline in transactional revenue, we have been very proactive, optimizing our costs throughout the business. We have done this before, and our enterprising culture with leadership at all levels are fully aligned with shareholders, allows us to make hard decisions quickly and in the best interests of our clients, people, and shareholders. Finally, during the quarter, we continue to make progress toward our Enterprise 2025 plan, growing our outsourcing and advisory business internally, and strengthening our service offering by completing three strategic investments in the US, Australia, and New Zealand. Now let me pass things over to Christian.