CB Richard Ellis Group, Inc. (
CBG)
Q3 2008 Earnings Call Transcript
November 7, 2008, 10:30 a.m. ET
Executives
Nick Kormeluk – Senior Vice President, Investor Relations
Brett White - President and Chief Executive Officer
Kenneth Kay - Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Analysts
Anthony Paolone - JPMorgan
Will Marks - JMP Securities
Brandon Dobell - William Blair & Company
Jay Haberman – Goldman, Sachs & Co.
Sloan Bohlen – Goldman, Sachs & Co.
Patrick Burton - Citigroup
Presentation
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the CB Richard Ellis third quarter earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session; instructions will be given at that time. If you should require assistance during the call, please press “*” then “0”. As a reminder this conference is being recorded.
And I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations, Nick Kormeluk. Please go ahead.
Nick Kormeluk
Thank you and welcome to CB Richard Ellis''s third quarter 2008 earnings conference call. Last night we issued a press release announcing our financial results. This release is available on the home page of our website at www.CBRE.com. This conference call is being webcast live and is available on the Investor Relations section of our website.
Also available is a presentation slide deck, which you can use to follow along with our prepared remarks. An archived audio of the webcast, a transcript and a PDF version of the slide presentation will be posted on the website later today.
Please turn to the slide labeled forward-looking statements. This presentation contains statements that are forward-looking within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 including statements regarding our momentum in and possible scenarios for 2008 and 2009, future operations, expenses, financial performance, performance under our credit facilities and the success and impact of future securities offerings. These statements should be considered as estimates only and actual results may ultimately differ from these estimates.
Except to the extent required by applicable securities laws, we undertake no obligation to update you or publicly revise any of these forward-looking statements that you may hear today. Please refer to our current annual report on Form 10-K and our current quarterly report on Form 10-Q, in particular any discussion of risk factors which are filed with the SEC and available at the SEC''s website at www.sec.gov, for a full discussion of the risks and other factors that may impact estimates that you may hear today.
We may make certain statements during the course of this presentation which includes references to non-GAAP financial measures as defined by SEC regulations. As required by these regulations, we have provided reconciliations of these measures to what we believe are the most directly comparable GAAP measures which are attached hereto within the appendix.
Please turn to slide 3. Our management team members participating today include Brett White, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Ken Kay, our Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.
I would now like to turn the call over to Brett.
Brett White
Thank you Nick and please turn to slide 4. Macro market conditions for the third quarter were among the most challenging we''ve encountered. The dual forces of a financial market dislocation and significant global economic weakening took a significant toll on the general business climate. Despite these challenges, we posted respectable revenue and profit for the quarter.
Our performance under very adverse conditions illustrates a flexibility of our business model, our ability to quickly reduce expenses and maintain a respectable level of profitability. To put our results in perspective, our normalized EBITDA margin this quarter is more than 350 basis points higher than it was in the last downturn for the full year 2001.
