Cushman & Wakefield plc (NYSE:CWK) Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call April 29, 2024 5:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Megan McGrath - Head of Investor Relations
Michelle MacKay - Chief Executive Officer
Neil Johnston - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Anthony Paolone - J.P. Morgan
Michael Griffin - Citi
Alex Kramm - UBS
Ronald Kamdem - Morgan Stanley
Patrick McIlwee - William Blair
Patrick O'Shaughnessy - Raymond James

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Cushman & Wakefield First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Megan McGrath, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Megan McGrath

Thank you, and welcome to Cushman & Wakefield's first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Earlier today, we issued a press release announcing our financial results for the period. This release, along with today's presentation, can be found on our Investor Relations website at ir.cushmanwakefield.com.

Please turn to the page in our presentation labeled Cautionary Note on Forward-Looking Statements. Today's presentation contains forward-looking statements based on our current forecasts and estimates of future events. These statements should be considered estimates only, and actual results may differ materially.

During today's call, we will refer to non-GAAP financial measures as outlined by SEC guidelines. Reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures, definitions of non-GAAP financial measures, and other related information are found within the financial tables of our earnings release in the appendix of today's presentation. Also, please note that throughout the presentation, comparisons and growth rates are to the comparable periods of 2023, and in local currency, unless otherwise stated.

And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to our CEO, Michelle MacKay.

Michelle MacKay

Thank you, Megan. In 2023, we spoke with you frequently about positioning ourselves in a thoughtful way for the recovery. And as you can see from our performance, the actions that we took in support of these words created strong first quarter results. Since the last time that we spoke, our teams have seized market opportunities, and we continue to strengthen our balance sheet, including our first optional prepayment of debt, as well as successfully repricing our 2030 term loan, reducing our annual cash interest costs.

We reported another quarter of global leasing growth, and some meaningful improvements in capital markets. We've had a couple of key wins in our services businesses in the last month alone as we continue to step away from less accretive services transactions. And importantly, we achieved these results, while maintaining cost discipline, leading to an improvement of more than 100 basis points in adjusted EBITDA margin.