Real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield posted what CEO Michelle MacKay calls some of its strongest first-half earnings as a publicly traded company, fueled by a jump in second-quarter property sales and leasing.
The Chicago-based firm posted a $59.2 million profit for the six months ended June 30, compared with a loss of $15.3 million for the same time in 2024. Revenue grew across nearly every region and business segment over the first two quarters.
The profit surge, led by net income of $57.3 million in the second quarter, marked the company's best earnings performance for an initial six months of a year since the company's initial stock sale in 2018, "excluding the immediate period post-COVID recovery in 2021," after real estate transactions cratered in 2020, MacKay said during an earnings call on Tuesday.
Chicago-based Cushman, the third-largest commercial real estate services firm after CBRE and JLL, said revenue climbed 9% to $2.5 billion in the second quarter from the year-prior period. Second-quarter profit compared to a $15.3 million loss in the prior-year period.
Revenue in the firm’s capital markets business, which includes sales, financing, loan servicing and consulting, jumped 26% in the latest quarter to $207 million from the prior-year period. Leasing revenue rose 8% to $486.9 million in the quarter, driven by strength in the firm’s Americas and Europe, Middle East and Africa regions.
MacKay attributed the successful first half of the year to a reorganization of Cushman’s operations. The moves, launched after she took over as CEO in mid-2023, included job cuts, restructuring the firm’s senior leadership last fall and paring hundreds of millions from the company's debt, including another $150 million announced Tuesday.
“We have rebuilt the company from the inside out, and now you will see us take flight,” MacKay said. “Our results in the first half of this year demonstrate the impact and success of our transformational strategy."
Talent gains
Cushman joined rivals CBRE, Newmark and Colliers in posting revenue gains and higher revenue expectations for the full year.
The company now expects leasing revenue to grow 6% to 8%, up slightly from the projected "mid-single digits" increase during the prior earnings call on April 29. Cushman expects mid- to high-teens growth in capital markets revenue, compared with the more than 4% growth predicted in April.
Cushman & Wakefield said it has increased the productivity and average revenue generated by newly hired leasing and capital markets brokers in the Americas.
"Year-to-date in the Americas, we have recruited capital markets brokers with annual average revenue that is 200% higher than we recruited in all of 2024," MacKay said. "For leasing, that number is 150% higher."
MacKay, echoing brokerage executives in prior earnings over the past few days, said businesses are continuing to make real estate decisions in the face of volatile federal tariff policies.
"I think tariffs have been disruptive, but they've yet to show that they are destructive," she said. "The macro uncertainty has been a constant throughout the year, and our business has performed really well because people continue to make decisions."
JLL is set to report earnings on Wednesday. Investment sales brokerage Marcus & Millichap, the last real estate services firm to report results, is scheduled to release earnings Thursday.