CBRE Group Inc

Welcome to CBRE's second quarter 2022 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Brad Burke. You may begin.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to CBRE's second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Earlier today, we issued a press release announcing our financial results, which is posted on the investor relations page of our website, CBRE.com, along with a presentation slide deck that you can use to follow along with our prepared remarks, as well as an Excel file that contains additional supplemental materials. Before we kick off today's call, I'll remind you that our presentation contains forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Examples of these statements include our expectations regarding CBRE's future growth prospects, including our 2022 outlook, core EPS growth and long-term positioning, operations, market share, capital deployment strategy and share repurchases, financial performance, including leverage, profitability, and cost management, the business environment, the performance of acquisitions and other transactions, and any other statements regarding matters that are not historical fact. We urge you to consider these factors and remind you that we undertake no obligation to update the information contained on this call to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. 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 most recent annual and quarterly reports filed on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q, respectively. We have provided reconciliations of the non-GAAP financial measures included in our remarks to the most directly comparable GAAP measures together with explanations of these measures in the appendix of the presentation slide deck. I'm joined on today's call by Bob Selentik, our President and CEO, and Emma Giammartino, our Chief Financial and Investment Officer. Now, please turn to slide five as I turn the call over to Bob.

Thank you, Brad, and good morning, everyone. CBRE had an outstanding second quarter with strength across our global businesses. All three business segments posted double-digit revenue and segment operating profit growth, despite the significant currency headwinds that affected all U.S.-based global companies. Core EPS was the highest for any quarter in CBRE's history, up 37%, from last year's second quarter and even slightly higher than last year's record fourth quarter. These results reflect the benefits of the diversification strategy we've described in detail on previous calls and an economic backdrop that was still generally supportive despite heightened macro concerns. Highlights for the quarter include a record level of new occupier outsourcing contracts strong growth in project management, aided by Turner and Townsend, strong growth in leasing, and record real estate development profits. We ended the quarter with excellent new business pipelines across numerous lines of business, which Emma will review. We also repurchased more than $600 million worth of our own shares, the most ever in any quarter, bringing year-to-date share repurchases through July to nearly $1.1 billion. Given the uncertain macroeconomic environment, Emma's remarks will take a different approach this quarter. She will first discuss the long-term positioning of our business before she covers the quarter's results and our outlook for the second half. As we look ahead to full-year performance, we are increasing our expectation of core EPS growth to the high teens from our earlier expectation of mid to high teams. This reflects both our robust first half and several other compelling factors. First, a larger portion of our revenue and profits is generated from businesses that have performed particularly well through downturns. Second, our cost structure is inherently variable. And as we demonstrated during COVID, we've become increasingly adept at proactively cutting discretionary costs while continuing to thoughtfully invest in growth. Third, our balance sheet lets us aggressively deploy capital during down cycles through M&A, opportunistic investments in our REI businesses, and continued share repurchases. Finally, macro uncertainty creates ripe conditions for market share gains. Occupiers and investors rely even more heavily on the insight, advice, and global execution that CBRE is best positioned to deliver. Emma will now discuss all of this in greater detail. Emma?