Savills plc (SVS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies, and gentlemen, and welcome to our presentation of Savills preliminary results for the year ending 31st December 2023. Our format for today's presentation will be similar to the prior year. I will present the highlights of our results, an overview of both market sentiment and activity before handing over to Simon, who will then take you through a detailed review of the financial performance of the segments of our business. I will then conclude by highlighting the business development we've undertaken during the year, in line with our global strategy for growth. Therefore concluding with our summary and outlook for this current year. At our half year results in August last year, I highlighted the dramatic effect that the rapid movement of debt costs had on transactional volumes across most sectors of real estate. This has continued creating one of the biggest falls in investment volumes since the global financial crisis and actually 2012 itself, causing one of the most significant and rapid price recalibrations that I've experienced during a 40-year career in real estate, and it's the gray hair. And the effect on leasing volumes is also significant with occupiers delaying decision-making due to the cost increases, coupled with the continuing economic and geopolitical uncertainty. Even within the most in-demand sectors such as logistics and living, post-pandemic, we have already started to see normalization of demand from the elevated levels over the last 3 years. This rapid price recalibration is continuing. And in some markets, this has already moved through cycle, and we're starting to see the improvements together with greater stock liquidity, which has been lacking, and this will lead to increased transactional volumes during the current year. The recalibration is not just about price there. It's also affecting choice. And our focus is to provide our clients with the best possible advice to support the choices they need to make. That means the linkage between our transactional, our consultancy as well as property management services is now closer than ever, with the need to provide the consistent and comprehensive advice as market conditions improve. So now turning to the highlights. I'm pleased to announce that the group concluded the year with a creditable performance taking into account, as I said, the challenging conditions experienced during last year. The balance of our business allowed us to minimize the overall reduction in revenue to 2.6%, also in line with that at our interim results, reporting total annual revenues of GBP 2.238 billion. Underlying profit was significantly impacted, falling by 42% year-on-year to GBP 94.8 million. This reduction in profit is due to the lower transaction revenue being substantially replaced by less transactional revenues, primarily property and facilities management and consultancy, which are lower margin. We also continued to adopt our clear strategy of maintaining our core transactional bench strength to support our clients, which also impacted the bottom-line performance during the period. However, our geographic and business diversity were key to achieving this result. And our policy of maintaining bench strength allows us to, in a challenging period, continue and resulted in a net cash balance for the year of GBP 157.3 million. This allows us that continuation of investment in our strategic priorities during the anticipated market recovery. The key drivers of performance with the substantial falls, as I said, in transactional advisory revenues across all main markets with reductions totaling some 17% year-on-year due to these subdued conditions, albeit we did experience an improvement during the final quarter. Our less transactional businesses increased their proportion to 65% in aggregate of our group revenue and continue to perform well with overall revenue up 7% and the strongest performer here was Property and Facilities Management, increasing its revenue up by 11%, supported by revenue growth of around 4% across our comprehensive consultancy services. Savills' Investment Management was also affected by the effects of this pricing recalibration referenced earlier, with overall revenue down 6% due to reduced transaction and performance-related fees, whilst assets under management remain broadly stable, highlighting the quality of our overall portfolio here. In light of the performance, we are proposing an aggregate dividend distribution of 22.8p, which balances the resilient performance of the less transactional businesses against the challenging conditions, which affected the transactional lines. Taking into account the exceptionally difficult trading conditions experienced during the period, I'm encouraged by our overall performance, which allowed us to maintain the quality and consistency of service to our client base as well as positioning us well as markets now move into a recovery phase. We will, of course, maintain our strong cost discipline, but also continue selective investments across the core pillars of our strategy for growth. Now to examine our revenue growth over the last 10 years. Whilst last year inevitably represented a step back from the annualized growth rate in revenue, we have consistently delivered, of course, with the exception of 2020, the pandemic lockdown year. It's important to highlight that we've achieved an overall annualized growth rate of around 9.5%. And more importantly, as you'll see, we've maintained a higher growth rate across our less transactional businesses, over 10% per annum, which is clearly indicated by the growth of the yellow shaded column in this bar chart. Now on to global market sentiment. As I've outlined, this has been affected perhaps by a perfect storm of financial, political, and behavioral changes, some of which manifested themselves a year or so earlier, but with the full weight felt last year. In particular, it was a year of financial change with all markets perhaps accepting Japan, struggling to recalibrate prices against the rapid and successive interest rate rises, stalling market volumes, and maintaining a risk off environment, coupled with cautious lending and greater regulatory oversights. In the face of geopolitical uncertainty and indeed conflicts, we are seeing more onshoring of manufacturing and a prioritization of supply chain security. We also saw increased domestic migration in certain locations in North America, often as a result of tax variations. And finally, there is behavioral change affecting both occupiers and investors with secondary markets particularly hit across the office sector as occupiers and investors turns towards higher specification and greater sustainability. This is a theme which has taken greater prominence in decision-making and is beginning to affect the APAC and North American markets in addition to those previously felt in the U.K. and Europe. So now turning to the investment market. Well, there's no hiding the dramatic falls the markets experienced, namely a 44% reduction and the lowest volume recorded, as I said, since the GFC. All market sectors were affected, institutional buyers were the most obvious absentee. And in particular, there was a significant pivot away from the office sector. But previously hot sectors, including multifamily, logistics and industrial also experienced a sort of more normalized demand. On the back of this, equity raising remains enormously challenging with global capital raised for real estate down 37% on the year, but appetite has started to improve in the value-add segment. Whilst this is somewhat sobering, we did see improved sentiment in some markets such as London, which reclaimed its top spot as the global destination for cross-border investors as well as improvements in a number of key Asian markets. This, coupled with a significant weight of debt refinancing during this year, will promote greater liquidity and buyer interest, especially if evidence emerges of progressive interest rate reductions later this year, which we expect. Moving on to the leasing market. Well, there is significant hesitation here that I referenced, causing many occupiers to delay decisions and push off capital expenditure as they work to work out their own future occupation requirements, particularly in the office sector, where more of the workforce has now returned to the office. It's therefore no surprise that office leasing volumes fell worldwide, down around about 8% overall, but with individual markets in Europe and Greater China the most affected. We did, however, see a recovery emerging in the final quarter, and we are now seeing a broader recovery across selective markets, in particular London and Paris as well as the stronger markets in the APAC region. In North America, which comprises the largest part of our commercial leasing business, we have seen office availability stabilize as well as continued relocations driving demand in Texas and Florida. One factor of this current cycle in contrast perhaps to the GFC is that we don't have a significant development oversupply, a Prime office stock. And this is already starting to drive rental growth on the best grade A sustainable accommodation as occupier demand focuses on an upgrade. And in the industrial and logistics sector, the abnormally strong demand that we experienced post-pandemic has normalized across most markets with a greater focus on manufacturing, particularly in the APAC region. Finally, the Prime retail markets have continued to recover, particularly at the luxury end, driving declining vacancy and improved rental levels in markets in particular, London, Paris, New York. So a positive sign there. Turning then to residential finally. The theme here is, again, one of normalization, particularly affecting the mainstream market in the U.K., now 15% below the average transaction levels recorded pre-pandemic, but that's probably just a sort of calibration exercise. The change is reflected in mainstream price falls for the first 3 quarters too, before recovering in the final quarter as mortgage costs started to moderate. The effects of this were also felt across the Prime markets where we primarily focus with volumes down 21% and small price falls experienced in London and larger falls of about 4.8% in Prime country. This effectively gave back about 1/3 of the average price growth the market has enjoyed post lockdown. However, the strength of the letting market also continues, particularly in Prime, with rents enjoying a 4% increase nationally during the year. Finally, international residential markets were also recalibrating, particularly across Hong Kong and Mainland China, putting greater demand on the letting markets. But during the second half, we saw prices stabilize in Shanghai and elsewhere in the APAC region and in some cases starting to improve, experienced in Singapore, a 6.8% increase year-on-year. In fact, the strongest price growth last year was Prime Dubai, Tokyo, and Sydney. And this momentum appears to be continuing into the first quarter of this year. I will now hand over to Simon to take you through the financial review.

Thank you very much, Mark, and good morning, all. You've got a pretty clear picture now, I suspect, of why we like the rest of the real estate services sector had a significantly less profitable 2023. The effect, obviously, of the global reduction in transaction volumes being in our case, largely mitigated at the revenue line, as you can see, by growth in lower-margin property management and consultancy. And this does give rise to a steeper rise in the bottom line or steeper fall, I should say, in the bottom line. Because we have the strongest balance sheet in the industry, we were able to continue our tried and tested policy of retaining our core teams in temporarily compromised market conditions. This obviously has a short-term effect on profitability until the benefits of that operating leverage come through as markets recover. I'd also point out on this slide, the slightly larger-than-normal difference between underlying earnings and the basic earnings per share. That is down to a onetime restructuring charge of just under GBP 14 million, which came about as a result of us reshaping certain parts of the business where we couldn't see recovery in the short to medium term, clearly enough. You'll see that charge in our standard reconciliation between those 2 earnings figures in this morning's release. And I would note that we anticipate benefiting from gross annualized savings of a similar amount in about 12 to 18 months as these savings manifest themselves. So in summary, the less transactional businesses underpinned the group and allowed us to continue the progression of our ordinary dividend, as you'll see on the next slide. If I can get to the next slide. You can see here, the ordinary dividend has been increased by 4% on top of the interim increase of 5% at the halfway stage, and these are supported by the performance of our less transactional businesses. Clearly in a world where our transactional businesses have declined significantly year-on-year as will be evident in a moment, we had to reduce the transactional dividend, which has always been designed to be able to flex with the ebb and flow of those underlying trading markets that we can't control. So I will now look at our trading performance and starting with our regional breakdown. The U.K. clearly delivered a standout performance here with significant market share gains and strong performances from our less transactional business lines. In Asia, property and facilities management largely mitigated the revenue falls from lower transaction volumes, but you can clearly see the impact of that margin mix on the bottom line. In North America, profits were impacted by the volume that we traded generally being in lower lot sizes as occupiers understandably tended to delay major leasing decisions. In addition, the trend to migrate south from places like New York and San Francisco, to perhaps Texas and Florida, together with some office downsizing also affected our largely transactional base. And lastly, in Continental Europe and the Middle East, story is broadly similar with significant transactional revenue reduction and indeed losses in the established markets of Germany, France, and Sweden with stronger performances in Southern Europe, so Spain, in Czech Republic, and in the Middle East. And it won't come as a great surprise that the majority of our very small restructuring exercise occurred within Continental Europe and within North America. And within that, I'll turn now to our global service slides. What's immediately apparent, obviously, is the resilience of our property management business globally a bit more later. And you can see very clearly from the left-hand side, the impact of a reduction in transaction activity on our business. What you don't see so obviously is that, that also affected other parts of our business, namely the investment management business on the right-hand side of this graph, as it was very difficult to deploy capital into recalibrating or untransparent markets. And this obviously principally affected their transaction fees. In addition, with consultancy, as you know, some 25% of our consultancy business worldwide represents valuations, which are affected by market volumes and a number of our higher value sort of longer-term services such as development and planning can also be temporarily affected, as I said, at the halfway stage this year -- last year by sentiment, particularly when markets are sharply recalibrating. I'm glad to say things have improved substantially, particularly in the U.K., our biggest business, through the second half of last year, and in particular into the fourth quarter. Before I move on to our other service lines or individual service lines, I'd just like to pause here and look at the performance of our less transactional businesses as a whole over the last 4 years of quite considerable volatility. And sometimes it genuinely is a good thing to look back at the road traveled. This slide shows the trajectory of the 3 component parts of our less transactional business. And we've compared it here with the clean pre-COVID period comparative of 2019. And if we cast our mind back to 2019, if somebody comes to me then and offer this graph as a business plan for the subsequent 4 years, I confess I would have been pretty underwhelmed. And the reason I would have been underwhelmed is because the growth projections were at the lower end of our normal estimates for this group of businesses as a whole of high single digits, low double digits annualized growth. If, however, that same person had also come and told me about the exogenous geopolitical, pandemic-related, and economic threats and the fivefold increase in real estate debt costs that we and our clients would have to contend with during this period. I would have completely changed my mind and been very, very pleased to see the outcome that you can see on this graph. So with that, so collective pat on the back of our less transactional teams, I'll now turn to the here and now again with cash flow. The reduction in cash generated from operating activities, we see it over on the right-hand side of this bridge, is a function of really 2 things. Obviously, the lower pretax profits generated in the year and the significant negative working capital movement, which always happens in a down year, and I guided to this, this time last year. As among other things, the value of the incentive payments that we make during the period is based on the previous higher-performing year and is much higher than the accrual rate of the current year's incentive payments. But the other big working capital factor this time around is allied to the fact that as we started to see recovery in Q4 and -- particularly in Q4 and later in the year, a much larger than normal proportion of our business comes [indiscernible] into the back end of the year, and that had quite a significant impact on working capital, which was quite extreme and that we finished the year with a higher current receivables balance than we did the previous year despite the lower revenues generated in the year, and I think you'll agree that's quite counterintuitive. I have to say, it is one of the cases I outlined this time last year in answer to one of your questions about working capital prospects for 2023, which entirely were going to depend on the shape of recovery as we saw it come through the year. And this, we started to see it quite late. The other items in the cash flow bridge, mainly outflows, obviously, are all reduced year-on-year, but not by proportionately the same amount as the lower profit. But the short summary to this is 2023 was clearly another year in which the wisdom of a cautious and strong balance sheet could -- was clearly manifest. Now I'll turn to the individual service lines, starting with commercial transactions. You've heard from Mark around the context for our performance. So I would stress on this slide, if you look at the left-hand side chart, that negative GBP 50 million swing in profit from the group commercial transaction business year-on-year is the fundamental movement in our group results for -- between the 2 years. However, in contrast to many of our more leveraged peer group, where removing staff wasn't imperative during the year. This is where the majority of our policy of retaining that core bench strength takes effect. And with most markets past their point of peak uncertainty, we would expect to benefit from this policy through the recovery period at very attractive incremental rates of margin on new revenue. Finally, in respect to our European business, the restructuring I referred to earlier was largely centered on the transactional teams in Germany and France, 2 of the markets most affected by volume declines. So if we turn now to our residential business. Here, really the bullet point to say at all. On a global basis, you can see the effect of revenue reduction at our marginal profit rate of 40%. But the key point here is that, as Mark said earlier, economic uncertainty catalyzed the normalization of Prime U.K. market volumes compared with the post-pandemic rush of the previous couple of years. And although our segment of the market is generally less exposed to the impact of finance costs, we have tended to see that effect in the regional new development sales element of our business, particularly. In Asia Pacific, reductions in China, for obvious reasons, and Singapore are the principal causes of the overall decline in revenue and profits during the year in that region. And obviously, 2024 carries election risk in a number of locations, but we have started the year well thus far. We turn to the less transactional businesses. Our property management business performed well overall with good revenue growth, albeit that some of this is, particularly in Continental Europe, is pass-through costs on facilities management, which have no profit impact. We posted a slightly increased net margin in the U.K. business just shy of 8% and a stable margin performance in Asia Pacific. Nonetheless, you can see from that left-hand chart that the overall margin was affected, and this was down to the Continental European and Middle East business, which is a function of scale, contract initiation costs on new business wins, and you'll hear a bit more about that in a moment, and reduced levels of profitable ad hoc work in much quieter underlying markets. And this was particularly the case for our larger markets of Germany and France. In addition, this year, we've had a onetime reclassification of just under GBP 4 million of profits, which relate to project management, which have been reclassified out of property management and into consultancy to harmonize our treatment of that business line globally. So in summary, despite all of this, our global PM and FM business performed very well indeed. And if I turn now to consultancy. Obviously, the other side of that reclassification is within this segment. However, from a trading perspective, starting in the U.K., which is both the largest and broadest based consultancy practice we have. The business performed well, turning around a year-on-year deficit in both revenue and profits at the halfway stage to post growth in both lines by the year-end. In Asia Pac and Europe, our consultancy services are highly exposed to transaction-orientated valuation work, which temporarily declined for obvious reasons. And our project management business growth in that region could only partially mitigate the revenue effect of that. In North America, our largely project management-based consultancy business was materially affected by a significant client deferring a number of major in-flight projects during this period of uncertainty. And that, of course, we expect to be a timing difference, but will come back. Despite the issues I've just mentioned, it's really encouraging to see the global consultancy business improved substantially during the second half of the year from, if you recall, the decline in profits of over 55% in the first half to settle just 14% down by the year-end. And I do think that was the beginnings of a positive indicator for underlying market sentiment in a number of our markets. Finally, if I turn to Investment Management. I'd repeat that this business can never be immune to market declines in volumes, and it did well to weather some 35% reduction in transaction fees and 20-odd percent reduction in performance fees during the period, with base management fees marginally down on valuation, but still representing just under 80% of our revenues during 2023. Our fund performance remains very strong and AUM stable, as you've heard, with some valuation reduction being offset by investment, albeit during '23 at lower periods than prior. And that's down to the fact that investment committees quite rightly are wary of deploying capital in opaque market conditions. So at year-end we had accumulated some GBP 1.7 billion of firepower for investment in both debt and equity products, and that includes the undeployed element of the Samsung commitment to our platform. We also had a number of new fund products underway, and I'm glad to say one of them has just had a first close last night, which is a Pan-European whole loan product, of which you'll hear more about the half year, I suspect. So we look forward to an increase in investment activity and performance during 2024. And with that, I'll hand you back to Mark to add color and strategic context to these results.

Thanks, Simon. This slide just really to remind you really the diversity of our revenue, both by way of sector and region. And this clearly highlights the continued growth of our less transactional revenue, which totaled some 65% of group revenues. By far, the largest portion of this is provided, as you've heard, Group Property and Facilities Management and due to the exceptional reputation our business has in this key service area, we managed over 2.64 billion square feet for many of the largest global institutional investors. As Simon mentioned, our global consultancy business continued to diversify through project management and consultancy growing particularly well, linked to the focus on sustainability and green retrofit assignments for our clients. Inevitably, in the balance of our transactional revenue across both the commercial and residential markets reduced year-on-year with more resilience experienced in the Prime residential and commercial leasing markets, which I've outlined. But geographically, we continue to diversify across core and developing markets internationally, and we anticipate this increased weighting will continue going forward. So moving on to our global strategy for occupier services. Before I summarize the business development we actually undertook during the year, I thought it would be useful to reiterate our key areas of strategic focus, defined by our commitment to try and provide the best-in-class insights and advice to our client base to enable them to make better property decisions. Within the first segment, our investor services, our focus remains on the growth and enhancement of the property facilities management platform, I referenced, to make sure that our clients can effectively manage their portfolios and enhance performance in the challenging conditions that we're experiencing. In addition, the acceleration of obsolescence is affecting all sectors, particularly offices, and this has meant us wanting to make sure we can provide the supply of project management and mechanical and electrical consultancy services and sector is now experiencing strong investor demand include infrastructure, green capital as well as the multifamily and living sectors. In light of the increased cost of debt, which we've highlighted, it's no surprise that we're also experiencing greater demand for debt advisory and recovery services. Occupationally, we have maintained our core bench strength across leasing and a particular focus of growth has been the development of our global occupier services platform across all regions of our business. And we've also developed a full suite of services to support this key initiative. Within our residential services, our main focus is on the growth across Europe and the APAC region, covering prime international sales and resales as well as selective resort markets. And we're also continuing to build our residential lettings and block management businesses, backed up by detailed research and data analytics. Okay. Now turning on to the U.K. Our policy to maintain that core bench strength allowed us to increase our investment market share. And I'm pleased to say our teams ranked #1 nationally across all property types. And in Central London, our team achieved a market share of 43% by volume of all transactions, an all-time high. We are also delighted to acquire Nash Bond, a specialist London retail business, which is now fully integrated into our national platform. And during the year, our team advised on flagship store openings for UNIQLO, Footasylum, and HMV on Oxford Street. We also continued to grow our natural capital and infrastructure teams and Savills Earth, a bias on the largest ever solar farm in the U.K. to be consented. We're also instructed on over 25,000 acres of farmland, representing a market share of 16%. Due to the importance of international linkage across the prime residential sector, we also grew our cross-border team and we maintained a commanding market share of over 26% on properties over GBP 5 million in London and 25% market share on prime country over GBP 3 million. We also maintained the #1 spot in multifamily investment advising on over GBP 1 billion worth of stock, including acting as a financial adviser, but aware super on its acquisition of a stake in Get Living Plc. I highlighted earlier the growth of the global occupier services platform, and this is also reflected in the U.K., where we renewed our Anglian Water contract, along with a new contract for [ Brit ] and also for Howden Insurance. Moving on to the APAC region. It's worth noting in the APAC region that we are now significantly weighted to less transactional revenue, exceeding 82% as a result of the strong growth of our property management and consultancy markets, particularly in markets such as Singapore, South Korea, and Vietnam. Within Investor Services, we maintained our strong market share in key markets such as Hong Kong, where we held a share of 27%, but also the principal markets, including Japan, South Korea, and Singapore. And this allowed us during the period to undertake some of the largest deals in the region, including Seoul City Tower and the GFGC building in Kowloon Bay Hong Kong. During the year, we also integrated AMS, our newly acquired facilities management platform in Singapore, winning a number of key new mandates too. And we also extended our platform in India, opening 2 new offices. We strengthened the occupier services business and won new mandates for UBS, Visa, and Medtronic as well as transacting for clients, including First Solar, BP, and Munich Re. We also continue to invest in our residential platform across Singapore, Thailand, and Australia as markets recover. And we also undertook some of the highest-value transactions in the reading, including the sale of Pine Hill Villa in Hong Kong for over GBP 120 million. Turning now to North America. In this region, where we are heavily weighted to the office sector, we obviously experienced the market decline in office transactional revenue, which we've highlighted. But this was somewhat offset by stronger growth within both the global occupier services element of our business, up 105% year-on-year, together with continued growth in the industrial and logistics sector as we pivot more towards contracted mandated work. On business development, this followed the same strategy with the recruitment of new teams across the industrial logistics platform in Canada, Texas, Chicago, and Southern California. And thanks to this continued growth, we undertook a number of the largest industrial transactions during the year, acting for Chedraui on a 1.4 million square foot industrial property in Los Angeles and also RS technologies on their major manufacturing plant. We also strengthened our Life Science platform with a new market-leading team in San Diego and continued to expand our tenant rep platform across Dallas, Washington, D.C., and New York, with the securing of over 30 key new brokers. Focusing on the Global Occupier Services, our mandated portfolio in North America. Here, it grew to over 5.1 billion square feet across 28,500 separate locations. And this included major contract wins from Baxter Pharmaceuticals, Regal and Rexnord, Black & Veatch amongst many others as well as the renewal of our key mandate for the State of Florida. We also strengthened our divisional Board in the region, appointing new heads of global occupier services and workplace consultancy to deliver the onward growth strategy. Next on to Europe and the Middle East. Whilst we experienced significant decline in commercial transaction revenue, which Simon has highlighted, particularly affecting the markets of Germany and France, we did see improvements in other markets, including the Middle East, Italy, while Spain and Ireland maintained very strong market share. We established new teams in Logistics and Hospitality in Italy appointed a new CEO at country level, and we grew our property management platforms across Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, and Spain. Despite the weak transactional markets, our team undertook some of the largest portfolio transactions in the region during the year, including the sale of 22 Carrefour supermarkets in Spain for AEW, the acquisition of a portfolio of 82 Decathlon stores for Realty Income and the sale of more than 400 multifamily residential units for MEAG in Germany. We also secured new significant mandates in property management from NSI, Union, P3, and Brookfield, amounting to a future pipeline of more than EUR 8 million of annual fees going forward. Although, as Simon has mentioned, again, we were impacted by the initial setup costs for these mandates in the short term. We continue to grow our global occupier services here too, across the main markets and secured new mandates from Aberdeen, from Citi and also BASF. And our residential network opened new offices in Porto, Milan, Rome and Palomo as well as setting up a brand-new project sales team in Barcelona. Highlighting the continuing resilience of the prime residential sector. Our teams transacted over GBP 325 million of sales for Qatari Diar at their CityGate project in Egypt as well as achieving the highest price ever on the French Riviera with the sale of Maryland in Cap Ferrat. Turning now to Investment Management. Reflecting the prudence needed when considering deployment of capital in a recalibrating market, our transaction fees [ NFT ] during the period. But alongside this, our continued fund performance with 79% of our funds outperforming their 5-year benchmarks indicates the continued strength of this platform. We increased the capital raise by some 25% to EUR 2.3 billion during the year, no mean feat under such difficult market conditions. And this success, including new product launches as well as securing several significant new segregated mandates has allowed us to build significant future dry powder, again, Simon referenced that. Our relationship with Samsung Life continues to grow well, as evidenced by the imminent exercise of their option to acquire a further 4% of Savills Investment Management, thereby strengthening our relationship as well as committing over USD 1 billion of funds to our platform. Moving forward, our third focus is on the continued growth within the living platform in U.K. and Europe as well as extending our integrated debt platform, DRC SIM, into new markets, which has included Australia as well as opening their first office in North America through a joint venture with QCP. During the year, we also appointed a new Head of Europe and a new head leader in the APAC region, together with the appointment of a new Global Head of Capital. Turning now to our responsibilities across ESG. As a responsible global business, we remain committed to minimizing our impact on the environment and by achieving our net 0 targets by 2040. In light of this, our Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions reduced by some 26.9% against the base year, and our carbon reduction target has formally been validated by the science-based target initiative. We've also continued to roll out our policy for the comprehensive conversion to green energy for a whole network of our offices, achieving substantial progress, which I think you can see on this slide. Focusing on culture, I'm delighted that the U.K. business has retained its position as the top apprentice employer of the year as well as the Times property Graduate employer of choice for the 17th year running. And in North America, we've also achieved 84% diversity in our Junior Broker development program. At this stage, I would like to take the opportunity to thank all our worldwide staff for their tremendous efforts this year, both in support of our clients as well as commitment to over 100 charities worldwide and their voluntary work within the community projects. So thank you very much indeed there. Now turning on to our summary and outlook. Well, trading last year was adversely affected by some of the most substantial declines in global transaction volumes experienced since the GFC, and there remains continued economic and geopolitical uncertainty affecting many parts of the world. That said, the market recalibration we experienced last year and this which is continuing, has already stabilized in some markets, leading to an improvement in transactional volumes. We anticipate that this will lead to an aggressive recovery in many more markets during this year and more notably during the second half, particularly as interest rates moderate as is anticipated. I'm pleased to say that we have started the year ahead of 2023 and in line with our expectations. And the robustness of our balance sheet, together with will allow us to maintain that bench strength, but also selectively invest in the key areas of our strategy. Together with the market share gains and the potential operating leverage we therefore have, this should enhance our performance as these market conditions improve. Thank you for attending today's webinar. Simon and I will now be happy to answer any questions you have. And I can see already we have a fair few.

We had a few come in. We'll work through those piece by piece. The first one is from Chris Millington. What's the expected drop-through of incremental revenue to operating profits in each of your businesses? And I think that's obviously one for me [indiscernible]. I think as I think as I mentioned during my piece, really, this is about the incremental drop-through as transaction markets recover. It depends exactly what type of transaction you're talking about, but the range for each dollar or pound of incremental revenue that comes into the top line should be somewhere between 35% to 42%, 45% to the bottom line at the levels that we stand at the moment. So that's the first one. And that's really, as you know, where the operating leverage lies. The next question also from Chris was how large is the pipeline for project management from refurbishment and quality requirements? You want to take, Simon, that?

So, Chris, most definitely, that has significantly improved. I mean, I suppose the conditions of less speculative development, therefore, needing to infill the gap. And we have seen a gap on prime stock is promoting now a lot of refurbishment activity. So the book of work there is significant, both driven by occupiers and investors wanting to upgrade their existing stock in light of lease events coming forward. So I would say that element and particularly Green Fit, which we referenced earlier, has got a stronger pipeline than ever. There has been perhaps a pivot away in some cases from the major logistics, the very large developments there because that market has perhaps normalized. So we're seeing that, but we're also seeing it in many other sectors too, particularly around sustainability.

And Chris, your final one is, is there an M&A pipeline for property management? What do you think my answer is going to be to that? We clearly look to expand our property management business around the globe, but we're not going to comment on M&A pipelines in any detailed way. But obviously, we'll always look for good quality infill opportunities in that arena.

And that's probably linked also to consultancy.

Yes. And now we've got one from James Black. Can you give a view on how your market share has changed in transactional and consultancy on a regional basis?

Okay. I'll start with the transactional bit because the consultancy bit is quite -- is a little bit harder to define. But on the transactional side, James, yes, look, the idea of maintaining core transactional bench strength does pay off. Of course, volumes are down, we can only take volume in a smaller market. That said, you heard already that we defined leading nationally in the U.K., leading in London too. And we've made strong gains across main European markets, maintaining very leading positions in Ireland and Spain and also in the Middle East, but improvements elsewhere too. Across the APAC region, again, we've taken market share, maintaining #1 status in markets like Hong Kong and growth in markets like Singapore and moving forward in South Korea. So it does pay off. And the pipeline, which is perhaps the most important element of this is stronger. We're seeing that improved opportunity to transact through reputation. So I think we're positive in the residential markets, again, I highlighted our share in the U.K. but improved share in the main European markets and also in prime Asian markets. So that would be sort of market share. Consultancy, it does depend on what we do in those regions. We have a very strong valuation business across all regions, apart from North America, and that's maintained that strength despite the fact that we have perhaps had less transaction-related valuation work. But in terms of growth, our portfolio work, et cetera, continues to increase there. I think we referenced the other bigger big bit of consultancy is project management, and we probably referenced that already.

Yes. We're going to combine a couple of -- a little bit more specific questions that have come up. I think one from Zach, UBS, is a useful sort of question to bounce off. And this is, you mentioned an expectation of an increase in transactional activity in 2024, but which buyers do you think will drive this? We may see more buyers at the opportunistic again from refinancings, but debt yields to remain above real estate yields in many markets for core assets. So where do you see that demand coming from the more Prime end of the market? And secondly, do you have an estimate on where you see global transactions getting to in 2024? Well, the answer to the second one is, no, we don't have one that we will publish. But I think, do you want to comment on that one -- talking honestly about value add.

Yes, I'm going to try and take a bit of it. Yes. So let's start with the core element, which you're talking obviously about debt rates being ahead of core yields. I mean, you've got to remember, if you look backwards, that's normal. The idea of having this very cheap debt is it was a thing of recent times. And the reason why investors still will invest in real estate, even when debt rates may be at the same level as core yields is because rental growth and rental growth, therefore, capital growth. And look, the expectation, of course, is that interest rates are going to moderate as inflation is tamed in major economies, but we'll wait to see on that. So I do see there's still core buyers in the market and where are they, let's just use London as an example. What are we seeing? We're seeing Middle East money. We're seeing pan-European money coming back in as prices have recalibrated. We're seeing a very significant amount of Japanese money. And of course, Japanese debt, as we've discussed, is very, very low. So you can see why you're seeing movements coming forward on core. And that will continue. We've also seen the Australian superannuation funds being much more active in the U.K. So again, core buyers. The value-add of it is definitely where activity is coming because a lot of investors are seeing the opportunity of mispriced assets where they can improve and add value through that process. So a lot of the equity now being raised is in value-add products. And there's some significant amount of firepower already weighting to pounds. I think it's going to be when they see -- they believe the values have reached that sort of that bottom in the secondary markets. I think in core, it's already happened in many parts. But I think it's going to come during the course of probably the second half of this year, you're going to see a greater deal of activity in this sort of value-add segment. And that's not just U.K., that's worldwide.

Now I think the last question is from [ Sam Colin ], which is, assuming markets recover and incremental profit drops through to cash, what's the right level of cash to be held on the balance sheet? And that probably does fall to me, Mark.

I think that does, yes.

And what I think I said at this time last year, actually, a very similar question. And what I said is over the 4 years of volatility that we've experienced over the last 4 years since the 2019 "Clean year". We have deliberately retained a higher level of liquidity on our own balance sheet to enable us to do all the things you've heard about in the course of today and to continue to invest into recovery as we see it happening. I think we are always going to be a net cash at year-end business. There's a lot of value to doing that. But I can see that probably the answer to your question is that you're more likely to see a not dissimilar level of balance at the end of this year to that which was there at the end of 2023 and potentially a greater propensity to undertake selective strategic M&A, but that's sort of the limit to the guidance on that. We're not going to go into a leveraged balance sheet position in this industry. I think unless there are any more questions, that is a lot. So, Mark.

Okay. Well, thank you very much for attending this webinar. Thank you for your support, and we look forward to seeing you at the half year in the anticipation that the market recovery continues.

And in-person.

And in-person. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.