JLL grew revenue 12% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2025, to $7.6 billion, helped by growth in real estate management services and in office and industrial leasing, the company said in its earnings report Wednesday.
Real estate management services revenue increased 9% year over year in the fourth quarter, to $5.6 billion. Within the segment, workplace management grew 9%, driven in part by expanded in-office mandates and new client wins, the company said in its earnings presentation. The expectation of elevated contract turnover continues to temper property management revenue, CFO Kelly Howe said on the company’s earnings call on Wednesday.
“Looking ahead, we remain confident in the trajectory of our workplace management business,” Howe said. “Our contract renewal rates are stable, and our pipeline is strong, albeit second half-weighted. Considering this, and the time to onboard new business wins, revenue growth is likely to be modest in the near term and build in the second half.”
Project management revenue jumped 17% in Q4, with broad-based growth across most geographies. Client activity remains healthy, particularly in the U.S., Howe said.
Leasing advisory segment revenue grew 17% in that period, led by momentum in the office sector. The most significant growth was in the U.S., according to the earnings presentation.
Global office leasing revenue increased 26% in Q4 year over year, with industrial up 11%, according to Howe. “Our leasing pipeline remains healthy as client demand for high-quality assets continues in the face of a dynamic macro backdrop,” she said. “Business confidence … has been resilient, providing optimism for continued growth in the near term.”
Office was the primary driver of broad-based growth across the U.S. as an increase in average deal size complemented higher volume, the company said.
“We’ve definitely seen a recovery in large deals,” Howe said. “In fact, when we look at deals 100,000 square feet and up in the U.S., those are up 15% year over year. That definitely plays to our strength. We’re seeing strength in core gateway markets as well as New York, San Francisco [and other markets].”
JLL sees that momentum continuing this year along with the flight to quality that occupiers are driving, according to Howe. “We’re seeing continued office mandates [and] return-to-work mandates,” she said. “The average now for the private sector is four days a week in office.”
Industrial leasing strength was a result of higher deal volume, according to the presentation. Third-party logistics, or 3PL, tenants generally remain the most active as companies focus on greater flexibility and efficiency, with demand from advanced manufacturing occupiers growing, particularly in the U.S., per JLL’s presentation.
“We are continuing to evolve our strategy to be the most intelligent, efficient data list service provider for our clients,” CEO Christian Ulbrich said on the call. “We expect these strategic moves to directly benefit JLL performance as AI and future innovation integrate in our business and industry, allowing us to gain market share and scale in under-penetrated markets.”
Ulbrich said he believes JLL is in a good position when it comes to leveraging AI due to early investments the company made in its data platform and the work it did to understand the AI startup world.
“We are trying to bring the best of those … worlds together,” Ulbrich said. “We have a lot of data, which is very hard for other people to gather … and with that proprietary data, we can build tools which just enable our people to drive better outcomes for clients.”
He added, “I don’t want to come across as kind of naive about the threat which AI may offer, but for the time being, we don’t see any competitive pressure from outside of our industry coming to our industry. And within our industry, we … are extremely well positioned to take the benefit of AI.”
JLL expects to get two main benefits from AI. First, it will drive efficiency, Ulbrich said. “We [use AI to] identify potential opportunities for our brokers, which they then work on, and we help our project management business with tools to be really on the spot for what the current pricing is for certain work, and how to do that in an optimal way for our clients,” he said.
Second, AI is leading to increased data center activity, and data centers as an asset class touch almost all of JLL’s business lines, Ulbrich said. For example, the company’s workplace management business has doubled the amount of work it does in the data center sector year over year, he said. Particularly in the fourth quarter, he said, the company “saw a lot of transactional business across leasing and capital markets.”
Despite the concern about AI replacing workers, which could impact leasing, the technology isn’t expected to harm office demand for JLL, either, according to Ulbrich.
“When you look at markets like San Francisco, the market is boosted very much by AI-driven demand,” he said. “And we also see that in New York. So for the time being, it’s growing, but if it would go the other way through AI, I don’t think there will be a significant impact on the business we are focused on. We are very focused on the best buildings and the large transactions in the main gateway cities in every country. So there is absolutely nothing on the horizon that we see shrinking over the next couple of years.”
