CB Richard Ellis Group, Inc. (CBG)
Q4 2008 Earnings Call Transcript
February 11, 2009 10:30 a.m. ET

Executives

Nick Kormeluk - Senior Vice President, Investor Relations
Brett White - President and Chief Executive Officer
Gil Borok - Executive Vice President and Interim Chief Financial Officer

Analysts

Anthony Paolone - JPMorgan
Jay Habermann - Goldman Sachs & Co.
Brandon Dobell - William Blair & Company
Vance Edelson - Morgan Stanley

Presentation

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Thank you for standing by and welcome to the CB Richard Ellis fourth quarter and fiscal year 2008 earnings conference call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Later there will be an opportunity for your questions and instructions will be given at that time. If you should require any assistance during today’s call, please press “*” then “0” and an AT&T operator will assist you. And, as a reminder this conference is being recorded.

At this time, I''d like to turn the conference over to our host, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations, Mr. Nick Kormeluk. Please go ahead.

Nick Kormeluk

Thank you and welcome to CB Richard Ellis'' fourth quarter and fiscal year 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 Relation section of our website.

Also available is a presentation slide deck, which you can use to follow along with our prepared remarks. An archive 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 2009, future operations, expenses, financial performance, performance under our credit facilities and our ability to negotiate, to renegotiate the terms of our credit agreement and cost savings. These statements should be considered as estimates only and actual results may ultimately differ from those estimates. Except to the extent required by applicable securities laws, we undertake no obligation to update 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 any estimates that you may hear today.

We may make certain statements during the course of this presentation, which include references to non-GAAP financial measures as defined by SEC regulations. As required by these regulations, we have provided reconciliations to these measures to what we believe are the most directly comparable GAAP measures which are attached hereto within the appendix.

Please turn to slide three. Our management team members participating today are Brett White, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Gil Borok, our Executive Vice President and Interim Chief Financial Officer.

I will now turn the call over to Brett.

Brett White

Thank you, Nick. And please turn to slide four. Before Gill gets into the deck, I thought it would be appropriate to begin our remarks today with a brief commentary that simply acknowledges the current environment for our business and our industry.

Throughout the fourth quarter of 2008, the headlines for the U.S. economy have included continued significant job losses, which are expected to continue into 2009. Due to these job losses, pay decreases and other factors, consumer spending is down and consumer savings are up, negatively impacting the short-term financial performances of businesses across a wide variety of industry.

As a result, the contribution to GDP growth made by consumer and business spending has dramatically reduced. Many providers of equity or debt financing for any type of assets have shut down their investment activities because of uncertainty about the future and concerned about asset values. Most economies around the world are experiencing similar challenges.