CBRE Group (CBRE) To Post Q1 Earnings: What's In The Cards?

CBRE Group, Inc. (NYSE:CBRE) is slated to report first-quarter 2019 results on May 8, before the market opens. The company is anticipated to display year-over-year growth in both revenues and earnings.

In the last reported quarter, this Los Angeles, CA-based commercial real estate services and investment firm delivered a 7.08% positive earnings surprise. Results indicated strong revenue growth, driven by leasing and occupier outsourcing.

In fact, CBRE has a decent record of earnings surprise, having surpassed estimates in each of the trailing four quarters, coming up with an average positive beat of 6.35%. The graph below depicts this surprise history:

Let’s see how things are shaping up for this announcement.

Factors to Consider

CBRE Group has made concerted efforts to diversify its revenue base over the past years. It has opted for a better-balanced and more resilient business model, and in pursuit of this, shifted the business mix toward a more contractual one. This trend is expected to continue in the first quarter as well.

Further, occupiers of real estate are increasingly opting for outsourcing, and depending on the expertise of third-party real estate specialists to achieve improvement in execution and efficiency. With a market-leading position and being one of the few companies boasting occupier outsourcing capabilities on a global scale, CBRE Group remains well poised to bank on the favorable trends. Also, the company continues to achieve diversification in terms of client-industry mix, which is impressive, while the FacilitySource acquisition strengthened the company’s facilities-management capabilities and the company remains well poised to capitalize on the favorable trends during the March-end quarter.

Amid these, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the first-quarter revenues is currently pegged at $5.10 billion, indicating projected growth of nearly 9.21% year over year.

Nonetheless, shift toward a comparatively lower-margin outsourcing business might strain the company’s margins. Moreover, after witnessing decent growth in 2018, U.S. capital markets transaction activity was tepid in the first quarter. Additionally, industry-wide leasing volumes have been weak. Nevertheless, the January-March quarter generally marks the slowest quarter seasonally.

Also, CBRE Group’s activities during the quarter did not gain analysts’ confidence. As a result, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for first-quarter earnings moved down a cent over the last 30 days to 59 cents. However, it indicates a year-over-year increase of 9.3%.

Here is what our quantitative model predicts:

CBRE Group has the right combination of two key ingredients — a positive Earnings ESP and Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) or higher — for increasing the odds of an earnings beat.

You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they’re reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.

Earnings ESP: The Earnings ESP for CBRE Group is +7.69%.

Zacks Rank: CBRE Group carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), currently.

A positive Earnings ESP is a meaningful and leading indicator of a likely earnings beat. This, when combined with a favorable Zacks rank, makes us reasonably confident of a positive surprise.

Other Stocks That Warrant a Look

Here are a few other stocks in the broader real estate sector that you may want to consider, as our model shows that these have the right combination of elements to report a positive surprise this quarter:

Investors Real Estate Trust (NYSE:IRET) , scheduled to release earnings on May 8, has an Earnings ESP of +3.19% and currently carries a Zacks Rank of 3. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Global Medical REIT Inc. (NYSE:GMRE) , set to report quarterly numbers on May 8, has an Earnings ESP of +1.65% and carries a Zacks Rank of 3, currently.

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