Welcome to the Colliers International Third Quarter Investors Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. Legal counsel requires us to advise that the discussion scheduled to take place today may contain forward-looking statements that involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Actual results may be materially different from any future results performance or achievements contemplated in the forward-looking statements. Additional information concerning factors that could cause actual results to materially differ from those in the forward-looking statements is contained in the company's annual information form as filed with the Canadian Securities Administrators and in the company's annual report on Form 40-F as filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. Today is Tuesday, November 5, 2024, and at this time, for opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the call over to Global Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Jay Hennick. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, and thanks for joining us. As the operator mentioned, I'm Jay Hennick, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; with me today is Chris McLaren, CEO of our Real Estate Services segment; and Christian Mayer, Chief Financial Officer. As always, this call is being webcast and is available in the Investor Relations section of our website, along with the presentation slide deck. This quarter, Colliers realigned its operating segments to better reflect the future potential and value of our complementary growth engines, and we delivered solid growth across each one of them. Engineering grew by 21% driven by acquisitions. In Real Estate Services, revenues and capital markets rose a strong 17%, exceeding our expectations while leasing continued to grow nicely, building on last quarter's strong momentum. And in investment management, recurring management fee revenue showed a modest increase, though fundraising fell below expectations, reflecting a trend seen across the industry. We anticipate stronger fundraising in 2025. Assets under management grew by $2.4 billion during the quarter, rising from $96 billion to nearly $99 billion, which is very positive. We also completed the acquisition of Englobe, creating a substantial new growth platform in Canada. After the quarter, we added GWAL in Canada and Pritchard, Francis and TTM in Australia, continuing our growth trajectory in this segment of our business. Overall, we continue to have a robust M&A pipeline that positions us well to continue to grow and strengthen our operations for the long term. Over the past decade, Colliers has transformed one step at a time into a uniquely differentiated global professional services and investment management firm. Through the Colliers way, we have continued to strengthen our commercial real estate operations around the world while adding new growth engines and service lines to provide more recurring revenue streams and diversification to our successful business model. Today, recurring revenues contribute more than 70% of our earnings, providing exceptional balance and predictability driving greater shareholder value now and into the future. With experienced leadership, significant inside ownership and a proven 30-year record of delivering 20% annualized returns for shareholders, we expect to sustain mid- to high single-digit growth going forward. And as we enter 2025, we expect further upside to come from improving capital markets enhanced investment strategies and capital raising in our investment management business and continued incremental growth through acquisitions across all segments of our business as we have been doing for so often in the past. Now let me ask Chris McLaren to discuss some highlights. And after Chris has completed, we will hear from Christian on his financial report. Chris?

Thank you, Jay, and good morning, everyone. Colliers Real Estate Services delivered another quarter of strong results. Capital Markets revenues rose 17%, exceeding expectations and marking a second consecutive period of growth. We saw growth across the core asset classes of office, up 77%, retail up 53% and industrial up 19%. Colliers transaction volumes were up meaningfully in the Americas and APAC regions, supported by the recent softening of interest rates, improved lending conditions and the narrowing of price expectations between buyers and sellers. Debt origination continued to show solid improvement in the quarter with both agency and non-agency business performing well. Leasing continued to build on last year's momentum achieving a 6% growth in the third quarter led by EMEA and the U.S. regions. In particular, office leasing was up 22% on the back of several large transactions during the quarter with strong performances in the U.K., Germany, Poland and the U.S. markets. Most major markets are rebounding with rental rates stabilizing. Demand for Class A office space remains high as occupiers continue to focus on improving the employee experience and modernizing workspaces. Our recurring outsourcing services again delivered steady growth, up 5%. We are seeing increasing momentum in our valuation and advisory business, driven by the multifamily sector and the increased activity in capital markets. Our investments in our people and business, which help us fill gaps and capture market share, we will continue to enhance our platform and deliver long-term value for our shareholders. We continue to aggressively recruit and add talent in strategic markets to position ourselves to benefit from the improving transactional markets in leasing and capital markets. This past quarter, Colliers was included on its list of the world's best companies. In addition, we were named to Forbes World's Best Employers ranking for the second year in a row and are proudly the only global full-service commercial real estate firm on the list. These accolades speak volumes about our growth and ability to deliver a world-class experience for our clients and our professionals. Now I'll turn things over to Christian who will provide more details on our financials.

Thank you, Chris, and good morning. Please note that all references to revenue growth made on this call are expressed in local currency and that the non-GAAP measures discussed here today are as defined in the materials accompanying this call. As noted by Jay, in the third quarter, we realigned our operating segments to better reflect our operations and the value and growth potential of each. A summary of historical results is available to be downloaded on our Investor Relations site. Third quarter revenues were $1.2 billion, up 11% relative to the prior year period. Each of our segments and service lines reported solid revenue growth for the quarter. Internal growth was 5% overall and was led by capital markets, which was up meaningfully against a low base in the prior year, particularly in the Americas and Asia Pacific. The Engineering segment's internal growth was flat for the quarter due to the completion of several large project management contracts in the prior year period, which resulted in a challenging comparative. Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter was $155 million, up 6% over the prior year. Our margin for the quarter declined slightly to 13.1% due to higher captive insurance reserves in our Corporate segment and the margin dilutive effect of pass-through performance fees in our Investment Management segment. Our real estate services margin remained flat for the quarter with operating leverage from higher revenues offset by continued aggressive recruiting and strategic markets. Turning to Investment Management, we raised a total of $1.1 billion of new capital commitments during the quarter, bringing year-to-date fundraising to $2.6 billion. We now expect to raise about $3.5 billion for the full year which is an increase of 15% over 2023 but below our expectations for 2024. We are in the process of deploying capital raised and have started to fundraise for new vintages launching early next year. Our highly differentiated direct private capital investing strategy with a focus on alternatives and infrastructure continues to resonate with investors and we expect fundraising velocity to increase in 2025. Assets under management increased $2.4 million during the quarter to $98.8 billion. Growth was driven by fundraising, positive mark-to-market adjustments in almost all asset classes and foreign exchange gains in our European portfolio. Moving to our balance sheet. Our financial leverage ratio, defined as net debt to pro forma adjusted EBITDA, was 2.5x as of September 30 with about 0.5 turns attributable to capital deployment on the recently completed Anglo acquisition. We expect leverage to decline to just over 2x by year-end as we generate seasonally strong fourth quarter cash flows. We have revised our outlook based on our year-to-date operating results and our updated fundraising expectations for the fourth quarter, as I noted a moment ago. With less than 2 months remaining in the year, our investment management results are essentially locked within a tight range. Our real estate services performance, particularly in capital markets, is subject to greater variability as we approach year-end and could lead to the higher end of the outlook range. Our expectation for adjusted earnings per share growth is being impacted by the mix of earnings and higher-than-planned depreciation expense due mainly to technology investments. Let me take a moment to put this year's financial performance into context. In Real Estate Services, we are encouraged by the beginning of the rebound in capital markets albeit from a low base last year. Leasing continues to show solid momentum, and we've been taking advantage of market conditions to recruit aggressively. Our engineering business is poised for internal growth based on our current backlog of work as well as incremental earnings from acquisitions completed this year. Investment Management has demonstrated consistent resilient earnings despite challenging fundraising during the past 2 years, but we expect conditions to improve in 2025. In summary, our 3 businesses are well positioned for the years ahead. That concludes my prepared remarks. We'll now open the call for questions. Operator, can you please open the line?

Your first question comes from Stephen Sheldon at William Blair.

First, can you just walk through the moving pieces for the profit guide reduction how much of that is due to lower fundraising and expected profit in IM? And it also sounds like you're reinvesting in RES to support the growth outlook there. So maybe how much more are you reinvesting there maybe relative to what you included in the guidance last quarter? Just more detail on the moving pieces on the profit guidance?

Yes, Stephen. So I think as we noted in our comments and in the press release, the adjustment to the earnings outlook is entirely due to investment management fundraising. I will give you a bit more color on investment management, the capital commitments that are generated in a given year become accretive to revenues in a modest way into EBITDA and very significantly because of the high incremental margins on this in the range of 40% to 50% incremental EBITDA margin. So that is very impactful to our earnings and with our fundraising outlook and now we've got 3 quarters completed at our for Q4. We have adjusted that accordingly, and that's really what's driving the change in the outlook.

Okay. Got it. And then maybe for Chris, on the leasing side, a little bit of deceleration there this quarter, although the growth rate is still very good. I think some of your peers have reported continued acceleration there. So anything to call out there? And just generally, how are you thinking about the outlook for leasing growth in the fourth quarter and heading into next year? And would also love some commentary on what we're seeing. You gave some good commentary on Office. What are you seeing on the industrial side?

Yes. So we had a pretty good quarter for leasing on the back momentum of the previous quarter. We're seeing some larger deals starting to come to market. There's been some hesitation over the last few years, but now there's some confidence in the economy. So some of these bigger decisions are being made, and we're seeing that in some transactions at Colliers. Certainly, the trend is the return to office continues and that through mandates or just through people wanting to get back and be in a cultural situation and share time with employees. So that's all positive. And then we're seeing that definite trend of going to the prime space. There has to be more of an experience space, and there needs to be amenities and it needs to be centrally located. So we're definitely seeing across the globe in all regions an uptick in office leasing based on the confidence of their business models in the general economy. In terms of industrial leasing, we had an 8% increase in the U.S. in the third quarter. It's our largest market for industrial leasing. So that's a good sign, but generally around the world, there is a hesitation from tenants to sign leases. There's been more vacancy on the market, so it takes more time to look at the alternatives and there's also the hangover from the real buildup and taking space from the COVID e-commerce period. But the fundamentals long term are very strong for industrial, with e-commerce continuing on-shoring and near-shoring, so we're feeling that there'll be more than equilibrium in the industrial leasing by mid-2025.

Your next question comes from Jimmy Shan at RBC Capital Markets.

Just on the fundraising within investment management. Some of your peers are talking about better asset monetization environment, which potentially lead to better fundraising, which it sounds like that's what you guys are saying. So just wondering to what extent are you seeing the same with the funds that are close to end of life? And then what does your 2025 fundraising pipeline look like?

Yes, Jimmy, we have been deploying capital this year, but we've also been harvesting gains in our portfolios. There are certain older vintage funds nearing the end of their lives, allowing us to selectively sell assets, realize gains, and return capital to investors. This is part of the capital cycle, which helps facilitate future fundraising for us. We had more of this activity in the third quarter and expect it to continue as we deploy new capital while also harvesting gains from existing investments and recycling that capital to investors. This will lead to additional fundraising going forward, as it sends a positive signal to our limited partners. Regarding our 2025 fundraising outlook, we will discuss that in February along with our year-end results and outlook for 2025.

In terms of the Real Estate Services margin, we pointed out that margins have remained flat, which seems to be due to aggressive recruiting. How should we consider the operating leverage moving forward? If there is a continued recovery, what are our expectations for that margin?

So our real estate services business, just to pull back a bit here, we've got leasing, capital markets and outsourcing, 3 different service lines. Our Leasing and Capital Markets business as we generate additional revenues there, we do expect incremental margins in the order of about 20% on an incremental revenue dollar, but that is when you look at the Real Estate Services segment, that's muted somewhat by the incremental margins coming from valuation or from property management, which are more modest in nature.

Okay. So like if we see a decent amount of recovery within leasing and capital markets, unlike this quarter, we should probably see improvement in margin. Is that fair?

Yes, I would expect that absolutely in the fourth quarter. And as you know, Q4 is our seasonal peak quarter. So the margin is always higher in that period, and the margin should be higher, absolutely.

Okay. And then last question. Just again, some of your peers have called out sort of big growth in the mortgage origination business. I know you guys have bought up in terms of producers, and it sounds like you were underutilized. How big of a business do you see that being? And again, how do you see that recovering within the capital markets?

Let me address that. We made some significant investments around 18 months ago, which, in hindsight, may have been a bit early. Currently, we have about 160 to 170 producers in the debt capital division, a number that's higher than we've ever seen before. We're beginning to see a return, though it's happening slower than we'd prefer. However, as capital markets normalize and improve, we expect to see increased activity in that area. This year, their internal metrics are already showing a considerable increase compared to last year. Their performance is closely tied to capital markets, so with more transactions, we'll generate more debt, leading to higher revenues and profits from that segment of our business. I hope that clarifies things.

The next question comes from Himanshu Gupta at Scotiabank.

So just on the Engineering division. I mean, good to see this being reported as a separate segment with your scale here as well. So how should we think about the organic growth in the engineering in this business?

So Himanshu, the organic growth in our engineering practice on an ongoing basis should be in the high single-digit, 5% to 7%, 8% range as we roll out across 2025 and on an ongoing basis thereafter. In the third quarter, I'll just point out again, I mentioned it in my call comments, we had a very tough comparative and very strong results in the third quarter of 2023, which were the result of a couple of large projects that were completed in that period and resulting in a lower organic growth rate for Q3 of 2024.

Got it. So 5 to 7 kind of organic growth and on the margin side, I mean, obviously, I think there was some volatility in the last few quarters. But going forward, I mean would you say like low double-digit kind of margin there on this business?

I think that's right, Himanshu. Yes.

Okay. Okay. And then just to follow up on the Investment Management division, I mean, I am, you mentioned fundraising was lower than expectations in Q4. Was it the pipeline getting pushed out to next year? Or do you think that potential capital or investors have moved on?

We expect a significantly more fundraising in 2025 for a whole variety of reasons. One, we think the market is coming back, as we've discussed but secondly, we have a lot of new product in the marketplace. Our existing funds basically ended in many cases, ended or will end in '24. So we've got new funds coming to market in '25. Christian mentioned that there's been some repatriation of capital so we expect a pretty solid fundraising market in 25 based on the way we're anticipating it now. But as Christian says, we'll give you a better report and outlook on that in our February results.

Fair enough. And just from a timing perspective, do you think that acceleration in fundraising, it will be more towards the second half of next year? Or is it like the first half of the year? I mean, is there a seasonality in terms of like fundraising, which typically is in like closer to the year-end.

We'll provide a clearer outlook in February. Generally, when new funds are established, it typically takes one to two quarters for investors to commit again. On average, about 85% of investors re-invest in subsequent funds as we repay them. This indicates that our business model is based on recurring revenue, and as long as we deliver positive outcomes for investors, they tend to participate in future funds. Usually, a fund might take around three years to fully invest the capital. Since we are closing out several funds this year, we expect considerable new activity next year. However, I anticipate it will take one to two quarters before we begin to see that momentum and the associated funds start coming in.

Got it. That was very helpful. My last question is about Christian; I believe you mentioned an incremental margin of 20% on leasing and capital markets. Did you achieve that incremental margin in Q3 as well? And was it completely offset by the aggressive recruitment you referred to?

Yes. I mean, I think you've answered the question, Himanshu. The investment in recruiting largely offset the incremental margin on those revenues in the quarter.

Okay. And then where are we process? I mean, do you think like you are at the end of this improvement cycle? Or is it going to keep on going for the next year as we see fit on in transaction models?

Yes. I would say that recruiting is part of everyday work at Colliers. We're constantly filling gaps and driving increased market share. To give you some color in terms of this aggressive recruiting comment, our biggest opportunity is in the U.S., and we're ahead of our targets from last year, and we're focused on the core asset classes, office, industrial and retail. We're making some efforts for landing some multi-market brokers, brokers that transact across geographies and then both in leasing and capital markets. We're looking at specialty sectors like the hotel sector and building a global business where we've recruited experts in the U.S., Japan, U.K., Spain and Germany. And then we're taking advantage of high-growth markets like Japan and India. Bolstering our teams there. And then there's specialty cases where there's some team lifts. So I can give you an example in Hong Kong, where we added a first-class valuation and capital markets team. So gives you a flavor of the recruiting, and we think it's a real great time to be adding talent to Colliers.

The next question comes from Daryl Young at Stifel.

Has your mix and exposure to secondary versus gateway markets changed significantly in recent years as part of the recruitment effort to strengthen your presence in some of the gateway markets? I often receive inquiries about whether Colliers will engage equally in the recovery, especially if it is primarily focused on gateway markets.

Yes. I would say that we're focused in a parallel approach to get into those gateway cities in a deeper way. Those are the larger transactions. There's more volume of deals. So there's certainly the aspiration is there. Our country and market leaders are focused on bringing in talent to beef up those gateway cities in addition to the secondary cities.

Got it. And then flipping over to the Investment Management platform. Could you just update us on where you're at in terms of integration of some of the sales and marketing side of the business for fundraising and is that going to be a more concerted effort going forward to have sort of cross-selling of LPs?

That's a great question. Our approach has always been to stand out because we collaborate closely with the management teams in our strategies, which we believe gives us a significant competitive edge. However, due to the challenging fundraising environment we've experienced over the past two years, our teams have shown an increasing interest in collaborating and sharing opportunities. Previously, they operated independently, confident in their fundraising visibility, but now there's a willingness to adapt. We are currently exploring ways to reorganize our distribution capabilities across the company. We will share more details on this as we refine our plans over the next few quarters. We have some promising changes in mind to enhance our management team, improve our distribution abilities, and optimize both institutional and high-net-worth capital opportunities throughout our platform. This process will take time and may require some bold decisions, but we are fully equipped to make these changes and believe we can speed up our progress. We are excited about the potential outcomes and will keep you updated as we develop our approach.

That's great. That's good color. Maybe one last one in the opening remarks, you said commercial real estate transaction activity could pick up in the back half of the year, such that you deliver at the high end of your guide. Is that a function of having some really big transactions in the pipeline that are maybe going to fall over the line at year end or could push into '25? Or just a little bit more color on what gives you the optimism for that statement.

Yes. So I think we're seeing our pipelines build throughout the year, and Q4 in capital markets is a seasonally strong quarter for us. And we're expecting a 25% roughly increase quarter-over-quarter delivery. So some deals will slip over but it seems like there is good strong belief that will come through in that 25%.

The next question comes from Frederic Bastien at Raymond James.

There was good color on pretty much every business line, but I'm wondering on a geographical basis, how Europe and the U.K. are performing more broadly speaking?

I think EMEA had a good quarter. The U.K. has been a strong market for us and has remained unaffected by some of the capital markets challenges that were particularly impactful in the Nordics and Germany over the past couple of years. We're satisfied with our operations in the U.K. Additionally, regarding our businesses on the continent, our German and Nordics operations are beginning to feel much more optimistic about their future, especially in capital markets and leasing.

Next, my next question is around the acquisition. I know it's early days, but are you seeing potential for revenue synergies with your project management business in Canada and how that is shaping up with respect to opportunities, but also integrating the business within your own platform?

We're seeing more opportunity, frankly, than we expected. Going into the Englobe transaction, we're very pleased with it, early stages of course, but very pleased with it. But our Colliers project leaders business in Canada is a market leader and covers the country from coast to coast. And so there's a lot of opportunity that we believe Colliers project leaders and Englobe can pursue together, and they're looking at that. And so we think that together, there's more synergy than we expected.

There are no further questions. I will turn the call back over to Jay Hennick for closing comments.

Thanks, everyone, for joining us for our third quarter conference call. We look forward to our February results. And of course, providing some comfort and forward-looking outlooks going forward from there. So thanks for participating.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the conference call. Thank you for your participation, and have a nice day.