Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated (JLL) operates as a leading global professional services firm, specializing in comprehensive real estate and investment management solutions. ...
JLL, officially Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated, is a leading global professional services firm specializing in real estate and investment management. Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, the company operates in over 80 countries and has more than 113,000 employees. JLL's history traces back to 1783 when Richard Winstanley founded an auction house ...JLL, officially Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated, is a leading global professional services firm specializing in real estate and investment management. Headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, the company operates in over 80 countries and has more than 113,000 employees. JLL's history traces back to 1783 when Richard Winstanley founded an auction house in London, but the modern entity was formed in 1999 through the merger of Jones Lang Wootton, a UK-based real estate consultancy, and LaSalle Partners, a US-based property and investment management firm. As a Fortune 500 company, JLL generated annual revenue of approximately $26.1 billion. JLL offers a comprehensive suite of services that cater to property owners, occupiers, investors, and developers across a diverse range of property types, including office, industrial, retail, multifamily residential, and specialized asset classes like healthcare, data centers, and logistics facilities. Its core business segments include real estate services, which encompasses tenant and landlord representation, capital markets (including debt and equity advisory, loan servicing, and investment sales), property management, project management, consulting, valuation, and sustainability advisory. JLL also manages an integrated facilities management portfolio encompassing about 1.2 billion square feet. In addition, JLL's investment management arm, LaSalle Investment Management, provides asset management services to institutional investors, retail investors, and high-net-worth individuals. Financially, JLL demonstrates robust profitability with a net profit margin of 3.6%, return on equity of 13.6%, and a price-to-earnings ratio of 17.0. The company maintains a healthy balance sheet with a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.34 and a current ratio of 1.13. JLL is led by CEO Christian Ulbrich, who has been in position since 2016, and the company is known for its commitment to innovation, sustainability, and leveraging technology to optimize real estate outcomes. With a strong global footprint and diversified service offerings, JLL continues to be a key player in the commercial real estate sector.
Operator: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call for Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated. I will now hand the conference over to Sean Coghlan, Head of Investor Relations. Sean, please go ahead.
Sean Coghlan: Thank you, and good morning. Welcome to the Second Quarter 2026 earnings conference call for Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated. Earlier this morning, we issued our earnings release, along with the 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 as well as in our slide presentation and supplemental 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. We also reference resilient and advisory revenues, which we defined in the footnotes of our earnings release. 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 annual report on Form 10-K and in other reports filed with the SEC. The company disclaims any undertaking to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. Finally, a reminder that percentage variances are against the prior year period in local currency, unless otherwise noted. I will now turn the call over to Christian Ulbrich, our President and Chief Executive Officer, for opening remarks.
Christian Ulbrich: Thank you, Sean. Hello, and welcome to our second quarter 2026 earnings call. Q2 was a big quarter for JLL. We grew revenue by double digits and profit gains accelerated with adjusted EBITDA up 33% and adjusted earnings per share up 61%. At our investor briefing in March, we told you why we felt good about where JLL was headed, and this quarter is a proof of that. We are now a few months into Accelerate 2030, and I'm pleased with how the strategy is taking hold across the organization. I want to spend my time today on 3 parts of our business that give me continued conviction in our future: First, our resilient business lines, which represent nearly 80% of our revenue are built for consistent growth and margin expansion. Multiyear client relationships, recurring revenue and a business model amplified by scale. That was evident again this quarter with real estate management services growing 8%, in line with the level of growth we have delivered over recent quarters while margin expansion also continued. These businesses sit at the center of long-term secular tailwinds in the global economy as …