CBRE Group CEO: U.S. Strong, Europe And Asia Impacted By Strength Of The Dollar

Real estate and investment firm CBRE Group Inc CBG posted better-than-expected first quarter results earlier on Wednesday.

Bob Sulentic, CBRE president & CEO, was on CNBC post the results to weigh in on the numbers.

Good Growth

“Business was up well around the world,” Sulentic said. “Particularly strong area of our business was here in the U.S. where we saw revenues up 20 percent. Europe and Asia were under a little bit of pressure because of the strength of the dollar, both of them impacted by 10 percent by the strength of the dollar, but good growth around the world and all of our product lines.”

Dollar Troubles

Sulentic was asked to explain the overall impact of the dollar on the company’s results. He replied, “We had hedges in place. We got a couple of cents of gains from the hedges, but our revenue was pushed down, the growth in our revenue was impacted to the tune of about 5 percent because of the dollar around the world, 10 percent in Europe, 10 percent in Asia, of course not here in the U.S.”

Hedges In Right Places

On how he plans to combat the probability that dollar won’t get weaker from here, Sulentic said, “Well, we have hedges in place. Now I will say in this environment our biggest business, our strongest business is here in the U.S. So, of course that provides with a natural hedge, but in general we try to make sure we have hedges that are in the right places around the world.”