Commercial real-estate giant CBRE sees choppy waters ahead due to tariffs: ‘Our outlook has become less clear’

• CBRE beat earnings estimates but executives took a more cautious tone, maintaining guidance for the year rather than raising it because of economic uncertainty and recession fears stemming from the president’s tariff agenda. 

The world’s largest commercial real estate services company posted an earnings beat but sees choppy waters ahead. Blame the president’s tariffs. 

Because of “uncertainty created by the tariff situation, our outlook has become less clear,” CBRE chairman and chief executive Bob Sulentic said in an earnings call Thursday morning. 

Despite reporting an increase in revenues and earnings per share, the company chose to maintain its guidance for the year, absent a recession, rather than increasing it, chief financial officer Emma Giamartino said.

“Things went from really good to not as good,” said Sulentic, whose total compensation last year was valued at $22 million. “We ended the quarter with strong pipelines…but we have seen some implications of what’s going on with the tariffs.” 

Sulentic shared that some of the capital in the investment management division, which invests and operates real assets, as well as business activity in the project management business, which consults and assesses operations, has slowed down. “We went from a really enthusiastic picture to one where there’s some choppiness out there,” he said. 

Office, however, might be immune. The near-apocalypse offices faced in the pandemic might finally be ending—something CBRE signaled when it last reported earnings. The choppiness CBRE sees isn’t affecting office leases thus far. In fact, offices are benefiting from the fact that not a lot were developed over the last few years and companies are now calling their workers back to their desks. CBRE reported a 38% increase in office leasing revenue, the highest for any first quarter ever, according to Giamartino.

While the two executives held a cautious tone, they underlined CBRE’s resilience throughout the call, stressing that it was better positioned to weather a recession than when coming out of the Great Financial Crisis. “If you were to put our business through the same type of a recession that we saw in the GFC, our declines would be materially lower,” Giamartino said. “So GFC, our declines were 85% peak-to-trough. Now it would be less than half that.”

CBRE declined to comment further.

The company reported $5.1 billion in net revenues, a 15% increase from the same period last year, and core earnings per share of $0.86. It still predicts core earnings per share between $5.80 to $6.10 for the year. Shares rose after earnings by 1.7% as of 11 a.m. Eastern Time. 

Still, the president putting parts of his tariff regime on ice hasn’t subdued uncertainty. After Donald Trump announced a 90-day grace period, placing a 10% blanket tax on other countries, and taxing China even more, chief executives continue to stress caution.

“We’ve adjusted our view of things to take into account considerable uncertainty, which causes us to have a view of higher risk of recession than we had before,” Sulentic said. That leads to a “higher risk of people being on the sidelines because they just don’t want to act in uncertain times,” he added. 

He continued, “we just don’t have insight beyond that. It all assumes a lot of uncertainty, a lot of choppiness and the risk of recession that we didn’t have before.”

Sulentic’s nearly $22 million compensation last year was more than he earned in 2023, but less than 2022, when he received a one-time equity boost, the latest proxy statement revealed. Giamartino’s total compensation was valued at almost $7 million last year, an increase from the two years prior.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com