Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated

Good morning. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. For your information, this conference call is being recorded. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, press the pound key. Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to Chris Dent, Executive Managing Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning. Welcome to our first quarter 2021 conference call for Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated. Earlier this morning, we issued our earnings release, which is available on the investor relations section of our website, along with the slide presentation intended to supplement our prepared remarks. Please visit ir.jll.com. During the call, we will reference certain non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe provide useful information for investors. We include reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP in our earnings release and presentation. As a reminder, today's call is being webcast live and recorded. The transcript of this conference call will also be posted on our website. Any statements made about future results and performance, plans, expectations, and objectives are forward-looking statements. Actual results and performance may differ from those forward-looking statements as a result of factors discussed in the annual report on Form 10-K of the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020, and in other reports filed with the SEC. The company disclaims any undertaking to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. I will now turn the call over to Christian Ulbrich, our President and Chief Executive Officer, for opening remarks.

Thank you, Chris. Hello and welcome to all of you joining us today as we report our first quarter results. As discussed in our last earnings call, we entered 2021 with a cautious yet optimistic outlook on JLL's ability to take advantage of the expected global recovery. We are pleased to start the year with a strong first quarter. Our strong results were yet again driven by the continued hard work and dedication of the entire JLL team. And I remain impressed by their ability to execute against ongoing, rapidly changing and trying circumstances. We continue to realize the benefits of our one JLL philosophy of bringing the best of JLL to our clients for all our services and products across geographies. Turning to the market environment. The global economy had modest growth in the first quarter, although highly concentrated in a small number of large economies. The macroeconomic outlook has improved meaningfully as the rollout of the vaccination expands and ongoing global government stimulus programs outpaced initial expectations, setting the stage for more robust growth expected in the rest of the year. Our research indicates global office leasing activity has remained subdued, with global leasing volumes down 31% compared with Q1 2020. EMEA showed relative resilience with a decline of 8% in the quarter, while APEC and the US saw significantly larger declines of 26% and 45% respectively. In comparison to the fourth quarter of 2020, which saw global leasing volumes down 43% for the quarter, it is clear that the trajectory is trending in the right direction. Investment sales also continue to show signs of recovery, with global volumes down 13% versus the same period last year, following a 21% decline in the first quarter and 44% in the third. This reflects the steady improvement of liquidity and capital flows. The signs so far lend credence to the belief that 2021 will be the year of sustained recovery and expansion as the world begins to adjust to a new normal. Despite certain countries continuing to witness the devastating effects of the pandemic, we expect an acceleration of vaccination programs across the world. It should lead to increased transaction activity in the second half of the year for many geographies. Our first quarter results build upon the momentum we closed 2020 with. We believe these results reflect strong diversification across the business with exposure to high-growth areas like data centers, life science, and industrial, and JLL's increasing value proposition for clients, particularly around technology and sustainability. In local currency, consolidated revenue fell 4% to 4 billion and fee revenue declined 7% to 1.4 billion. Adjusted EBITDA of 190 million represented an increase of 96% from the prior year, with adjusted EBITDA margin increasing 700 basis points to 13.4% in local currency. Driven by discrete items of approximately 50 million, ongoing cost mitigation initiatives and a better than expected performance in our transaction-based service lines. Our adjusted net income totalled $109.7 million for the quarter, resulting in adjusted diluted earnings per share of $2.10. Our transaction-based service lines continue to face broad-based pressure as a result of the pandemic. But our strong results for the quarter were buoyed by resilience admits slowly improving market conditions for capital markets and leasing. Our property and facility management business also continues to demonstrate its strengths, particularly in the Americas. Further, our advisory consulting and other service line reflected considerable growth from strong valuation results with Asia Pacific recording substantial gains over Q1 2020. Overall, we are encouraged by our strong first quarter results and are increasingly optimistic about the road ahead. This quarter demonstrated the continued growth of our JLL Technologies platform, a key pillar of our strategy. JLLT represents our ability to broaden client access to leading-edge technology and transform the real estate industry through innovation. We will continue to expand upon our portfolio of investments focusing on strategic investments such as the multifaceted roofstock transaction and believe that the value of our portfolio will continue to yield considerable upside for JLL as demonstrated in the first quarter. I will now turn the call over to Karen Brennan, who will provide further detail on the results for the quarter.