Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Q4 2023 JLL Earnings Conference Call. I would now like to welcome Scott Einberger, Investor Relations Officer, to begin the call. Scott, over to you.

Thank you and good morning. Welcome to the fourth quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call for Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated. Earlier this morning, we issued our earnings release. along with a slide presentation and Excel file intended to supplement our prepared remarks. These materials are available on the investor relations section of our website. Please visit ir.jll.com. During the call and in our slide presentation and accompanying Excel file, we 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 slide presentation. As a reminder, today's call is being webcast live and recorded. A transcript and recording of this conference call will be posted to 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 our soon-to-be-filed annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year December 31st, 2023, 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, Scott.

Hello and welcome to our fourth quarter 2023 earnings call. JLL's fourth quarter financial results reflect the strengths of our resilient business lines, which grew a combined 9% in the quarter. This growth helped offset the soft transaction market our industry has experienced over the past year. Sentiment in the global real estate market has improved since our last earnings call in early November, a result of the drop in the 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yield and a growing consensus that interest rates have reached peak levels across most major economies. While falling debt costs will lead to a more predictable operating environment going forward, it will take time and prolonged stability for pricing to fully adjust. The path forward may be uneven, but we are confident that bid-ask spreads will normalize and transaction volumes will improve. The fourth quarter saw global commercial real estate investment of $166 billion, reflecting the year-over-year decline of 24%, according to JLL research. Liquidity remains available, and debt markets are active, favoring asset types such as residential, industrial, and data centers. In the current market environment, smaller deal sizes remain the most attractive to lenders, although we have seen a modest number of larger deals come into the market over the past few months. On the leasing side, occupiers continue to take a cautious approach, but office demand is stabilizing as many companies are making progress on their return to office initiatives. Similar to investment sales, large lease transactions are starting to return to the market but have not come back in a meaningful way yet. As we have noted in the past, larger deals are a more significant portion of our fee revenue base in both leasing and investment sales. As larger transactions come back into the market, we expect to benefit disproportionately. The global office market Volume was up 4% year-over-year in the fourth quarter, according to JLL research. Asia-Pacific easing demand remains resilient, with most markets ahead of pre-pandemic levels of office attendance. Global office vacancy rates picked up 25 basis points to 16.2% in the fourth quarter. Companies are still focused on upgrading into higher-quality, sustainable space, supporting demand in buildings that offer these features. Turning to the industrial sector, fourth quarter leasing activity declined in the U.S. and Europe as the industrial sector continues to manage through the record amount of space that was leased following the pandemic. Asia-Pacific leasing was resilient, supported by a wave of new supply and ongoing demand from e-commerce. Rental growth remained positive in the fourth quarter, but continued to moderate across all three regions. Long-term fundamentals in the industrial sector are strong, supported by reassuring requirements and demand for energy-efficient space. The retail sector saw solid leasing activity in the fourth quarter across most markets, benefiting from resilient consumer spending and a recovery in international travel. Turning to JLL's results for the quarter, we continue to focus on growing our resilient business lines as part of our strategy to further diversify our platform and drive long-term shareholder value. Our workplace management and property management business lines both reported double-digit fevered new growth in the quarter as we continue to benefit from new client wins. For the full year 2023, our work dynamic segment delivered 80 basis points of the trusted EBITDA margin expansion, compared with the prior year. We are on pace to achieve our previously communicated goal of delivering a mid-teens margin profile for our work dynamic segment. Performance in our leasing capital markets business was in line with expectations given the broader industry environment and continued slowdown in transaction activity. We have selectively added to our brokerage teams and asset classes such as multifamily, industrial, and data centers. We believe these asset classes have structural tailwinds and will lead to recovery as transaction activity improves. In addition, our industry-leading debt platform will serve as a catalyst as an increased level of real estate debt matures in the coming months. JLL Technologies' fourth quarter operating income highlights the work we have done to drive operational efficiencies in this segment of our business. We continue to make progress towards CLL technologies being profitable on a sustained basis, excluding equity earnings. In our LaSalle business, advisory fee revenue have remained resilient despite impacts to AUM from valuation declines in a softer fundraising environment. As transaction activity improves, we expect that fundraising levels across the industry will pick up. Recent valuation declines have created attractive investment opportunities in our new funds, and we expect that funds launched during this period of time will prove to offer favorable returns. With that, I will now turn the call over to Karen, who will provide more detail on our results for the quarter and full year.