CBRE Files Prospectus for $300M Stock Offering

LOS ANGELES-CB Richard Ellis Group Inc. has filed a registration statement with the SEC to sell up to $300 million in shares of its class A common stock. The shares will be sold from time to time in an at-the-market offering, meaning that rather than being offered at a fixed price, the stock will be sold at market prices at the time of sale.

The company intends to use the net proceeds from the offering for general corporate purposes, “which may include repayment of a portion of its outstanding indebtedness under its senior secured credit agreement,” it said in a news release and in its registration statement regarding the offering. The company named BofA Merrill Lynch, as sales agent and/or principal and “also may sell shares of class A common stock to Merrill Lynch, as principal for its own account, at a price to be agreed upon at the time of sale,” according to its SEC filing. CBRE’s stock was selling at $10.67 per share in early morning trading Wednesday.

The launch of the the stock offering follows a CBRE third-quarter earnings report and conference call last week in which the company’s president and CEO, Brett White, commented that the Los Angeles-based firm “continued to make strong progress” in managing its capital structure. During the quarter, “We substantially strengthened our balance sheet by extending maturities and amortization on almost $1 billion of bank debt,” White said. Among other actions he noted that improved the company’s financial position, CBRE “completed actions that will allow us to achieve our goal of reducing annualized operating costs by $600 million,” he said.

CBRE reported net income of $12.4 million and four cents per share for the quarter and said that, excluding one-time charges, net income would have totaled $21.6 million and eight cents per diluted share. White, in his conference call comments, said that CBRE’s business “continued to perform well amid a very difficult global market environment.” He pointed out that, because of the company’s two-year effort to increase efficiencies and remove costs from its operating platform, combined EBITDA margins in its major geographic regions of the Americas, EMEA and Asia Pacific matched those of the previous year’s third quarter despite significantly lower revenue.