Hello everyone. Hello everyone. I'm Chris Stent, Executive Managing Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Finance at JLL. I'd like to welcome you to this webcast. As a reminder, this event is being recorded and will be available for replay on our website, ir.jll.com. Our goal with this webcast is to provide our investors and analysts the opportunity to hear from a JLL leader on topics of interest and understand more about our company. Today we will focus primarily on our leasing, property management, consulting, and project and development businesses. Any statements made about future results and performance, plans, expectations, and objectives are forward-looking statements. Actual results and performance may differ from those forward-looking statements as a result of factors discussed in the annual report on Form 10-K of the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020, and in other reports filed with the SEC.
The company disclaims any undertaking to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. Joining me is Greg O'Brien, CEO of our global Markets business. Greg has been with JLL since the acquisition of the Staubach Company in 2008 and previously served as CEO of the Americas. Greg will begin the webcast with a brief presentation followed by live Q&A. We will begin with questions from the sell-side analysts covering JLL. Please use the Q&A function to submit additional questions. Before we begin, I'd like to provide some context to help frame the discussion. Though Greg will speak to some current trends in the business in the current quarter, we would like to focus the discussion on the significant longer-term opportunities and how JLL is well-positioned to capture that potential. Greg, thank you for participating in the webcast.
Before we commence the Q&A, let's begin with a brief overview and some slides about the business. The slides have been posted to our website, ir.jll.com. With that, I'd like to turn the webcast over to Greg O’Brien.
Thanks, Chris. Appreciate it. And thanks everyone for joining today. I'm Greg O'Brien. I'm the CEO of the Markets business at JLL. And today I want to take you through an overview of our Markets segment and critically how it fits for our clients and our people in delivering solutions, and then how it integrates with our clients across our other businesses into what I'll describe for you as One JLL. Markets includes several service lines. Next one, please, Chris. Thank you. Markets includes several service lines, including leasing, property, and asset management. And it's a very important partner to our project development business, which is critical to most of our integrated client solutions. We look at the marketplace through a few different lenses to best align with our clients on where they are on their journey and on their focus. Service lines, which I just noted.
Asset type, where we have deep expertise and specialties in those areas. Geographically, where we integrate and we grow our base working across our service lines and specialists. And then industry sectors, which gets us to increase specialization to really drive client value. I'll talk a little bit more about that. Markets is also. Sorry, Chris.
Sorry. Sorry. Apologies.
He's quick. He's very quick with his fingers. Markets is also the geographic integrator, really helping our other businesses to bridge to and then optimize our client work at the geographic level where many of our outcomes are delivered. Leasing represents about three-quarters of our Markets business in terms of fee revenue, and it's JLL's largest business line. Property management is the operating of the assets for investors, and it works foundationally with our facilities management business where we can use our scale and benefit our clients. Our property management portfolio is over 3.8 billion. Our Project Development Services business is critical. It's where we build and renovate in projects. It also is critical to many of our solutions across our other global segments. It's also the platform for our efforts in key areas such as the future of work and sustainability. Next one.
While we have different business lines, asset types, and industry-focused areas, we're constantly thinking about how to deliver more value for every client in every engagement. We call that focus One JLL. Neil Murray, our CEO of our Work Dynamics business, spoke to you in May about the lifecycle for clients on the occupier side, the one you see on the left side. Markets both delivers services for our largest outsourcing clients, largely our Work Dynamics clients, and we source and execute for clients off one-off individual needs and then the fast-growing middle market across the globe. Those often mature into further services as they grow, as noted in these lifecycles, including technology solutions and sustainability. Investors also have a lifecycle. You see that on the right-hand side from tenant retention and leasing to asset operations, which would be property management, repositioning, and capital build.
Of course, our Capital Markets business is a deep partner in the asset acquisition, disposition, recapitalization, and a broad range of services for investors. This allows JLL to take clients from capital deployment and optimizing and trading assets to value-add stabilization, operating assets, and longer hold periods as needed. Both occupiers and investors also have critical broad thematics in the business: business intelligence, data management, and technology areas, as well as the need for sustainability services, which we deliver. Few firms can deliver this broad asset across the globe and in a culture that leads with teamwork and client first. That's JLL. And that's the One JLL approach: meeting clients where their needs are today and then growing with them as they change. As we think about our Markets business and across and integrating all of our businesses, we often start with one service in one location.
Then those mature across the lifecycles that we just talked about, from those individual transactional relationships to more strategic, multi-element solutions that we provide clients. This is the path that we look to take clients on, and it works very well because we work well together across our businesses. As we develop strategies for our business, we look at some global macro trends. These are five you've seen from us many times that I'll hit very quickly. The increased capital coming into real estate, as we've seen a wave of capital coming from all over the globe that's coming to real estate assets. That creates great opportunities for us as we work across the lifecycle, help newcomers come, and then help our existing investor clients really work on their assets and their portfolios. We think there's big upside in that for us. Increased outsourcing, both on the occupier side.
Large corporates have largely, mostly outsourced in areas like the United States. We see big upside in self-performers who we think will come to outsourcing in other areas of the world. We also see increased outsourcing from investors. Urbanization, which many have thought, "What's going to happen with that regarding things like COVID?" We believe that urbanization and the densification of people will continue. It's harder and more complex to get deals done in an urban environment, which plays really well to our scaled services across the lifecycle and our ability to integrate for clients, both investors and occupiers. Our strong belief is the Fourth Industrial Revolution, really tech and data in everything our clients do and everything we do is the future. I'll talk more about technology and data in a little bit. Then sustainability. It's often been a big theme. It's becoming a bigger theme.
We're seeing it come to the forefront in areas like Europe today. We believe it's going to be a big thematic, and it's a big thematic for JLL and our clients as we go forward. A lot of questions on the future of office. I'll give you a sense for what JLL believes and our four foundational truths about the future of office. We believe that the office will remain at the center of the work ecosystem. We also believe that the net impact of space usage and footprints of the COVID challenges will be minor in the short term. Health, wellness, and safety are and will continue to be of very high importance to employees. But hybrid work is going to have a durable presence. It has in the past.
It's been an accelerating trend, and our clients are finding the balance in hybrid work and being in the office. They'll go at that at different paces, but we believe the office will be at the center of that ecosystem. Our focus is with all of our clients to bring them the best of JLL wherever we can. That's One JLL: delivering the most value for our clients wherever we can engage with them, penetrating, consolidating, and shaping markets globally across our sectors and across our different segments together, and anticipating client needs and meeting them where they are going. We believe at the end of the day, we win with talent. We have great people and the right culture of teamwork that has us always thinking about the client and how we can bring things together first.
As we move into the future, really differentiating with tech, data, sustainability, and other broader themes that are very much on the mind and on the forefront of the mind of our occupier and investor clients. That's a brief overview of our Markets business and how we're integrating it. I look forward to hearing your questions.
Thank you, Greg. The first question comes from Patrick O'Shaughnessy of Raymond James.
Hey. Good morning. Thanks for hosting this event today, Greg.
Hi, Patrick.
As Chris mentioned earlier, you were CEO of Staubach Company when it was acquired by JLL in 2008. What was the rationale for selling Staubach to JLL at the time, and how do you think things have played out relative to your expectations?
Yeah, Patrick, excellent question. Staubach, for those that don't know, is a market-leading, largely domestic tenant rep firm. Our clients at the time were becoming more global, and they were acquiring more services. It fits with some of the thematics that I was just laying out earlier, Patrick. Our first goal as we looked at that challenge and having to meet where our clients were going was cultural alignment. We found that in JLL: teamwork-based, client-centric, really focused on helping our people grow in their own career paths. That was a big connection. How has it worked 13 years later? It's amazing that it's been 13 years. Well, our clients have grown with us, and we have a lot more clients, and they're broader.
We've been able to take them on the journey globally, and we've been able to take them across a broader range of services in the great depth that JLL has and that we've augmented over the last few years. We've had strong growth from 2008, notwithstanding the great financial crisis, now COVID. We've had strong growth, and we've really shown, I think, a very resilient business in our leasing core but really expanding further than that. Our people have thrived, and I think we've exceeded client expectations. So looking back at our criteria, what we were doing, it's been a win-win. I actually think there's also strong parallels to the HFF merger. Great cultural alignment. Client needs on the investor side, as I talked before, are expanding and broadening really great people with outstanding skills who think team first. And we're seeing an integration and early successes there as well.
Maybe a couple of parallels for you, Patrick.
Interesting. Thank you. Your profile on JLL's website indicates that your job involves helping clients tailor or helping to tailor technology solutions for clients looking to use big data. Can you give a couple of examples of those types of client interactions?
Sure. An excellent question. First, our global team is committed to embrace tech and data in everything we do. We believe the future is digital and that virtually every client discussion I have gets around eventually to their tech and data journey and then how we can come together. So we've made big investments in this area, and it's making a difference. I'll give you a couple of examples of how technology is changing how we connect to client needs, what we offer, and how we serve. We're using data to help target client needs better and to raise our win percentages by leading with technology and visualization, data for insights to help clients really make better decisions. We're creating connected digital experiences to lower the time to execution and increase transparency for clients. One of our products is what we call our JLL Tenant Experience.
That allows clients online to go on with our experts and visualize a marketplace or a portfolio or an asset and the related data to move through, say, the leasing process even when they can't travel. So as we went into COVID with these technologies in place, we had very quickly, over 9 or 12 months, over 1,000 new connections with clients in this way. So we're changing. We were adapting to how we needed to work, but we're changing the way they work, making them more productive. And it becomes a little bit of a way of working as we go forward. So it's been a great differentiator for us. We're also serving clients better through the basics: workflow automation, simplified tools, easy insights, things that allow the clients to iterate on strategy.
At a time of disruption like this, our investor and occupier clients are thinking about their strategies. We can help them through the visualization of data and bringing them information in a different way, go through iterations more quickly. That brings us closer to their strategy, helping them run their business. We think it helps us add more value.
Got it. Thank you. Then lastly from me, you spoke about the future of office in your slide presentation. With companies like Rite Aid moving to a remote-first model and company back-to-office plans delayed yet again, generally until January or later now, is there any reason to be incrementally more concerned about the future of office than you were, say, six months ago?
That's an excellent question, very topical right now. Hybrid work, we believe, has a durable presence. It actually did before, and it was a trend that was coming on because of technology and other things. But like a lot of trends, it's been accelerated by COVID. Our view is remote-only and remote-first will be outliers at the end of the day. There's a pretty good history of those past experiments in fully remote and mostly remote struggling over time. So that said, we're in a health and safety crisis right now above everything else. So it'd probably be a little choppy as we've seen. And I'll give you some stats on what we're seeing in the short term. But we believe the office remains at the center of the work ecosystem to reinforce culture, drive collaboration and innovation, and enable professional growth for our folks.
We believe that net impact of the pandemic on space usage and footprints will be relatively minor in the short term. While we see companies well, some companies certainly will use a little bit less space, utilization is likely to remain high on some days, limiting the extent to downsize. Also, there's some offsetting factors such as de-densification of workstations, additional collaboration in meeting spaces for growth, and then underlying economic recovery, which we're starting to see globally, again, a little choppy in some places, is starting to drive demand, which will, we think, help the overall envelope. There was a broad trend of lower square footage per person. We think that might get arrested and changed a little bit, but we'll see how it goes. But we don't think it's going to be dramatic.
One stat for you: office leasing, which has been the slowest to recover in the U.S. market, increased 8% from Q2 to Q3. So we're coming off of 2020. We're not quite at 2019 levels. But what we saw at the end of the first half and candidly, we're seeing as we get here deep into the third quarter, we're seeing a move back on the office side. And then obviously, great growth in other asset classes as well.
All right. Terrific. Thanks for taking my questions.
Thanks, Patrick.
Next questions are from Stephen Sheldon at William Blair.
Hey, thanks. Good morning, Greg, and appreciate you doing this. On One JLL, can you just maybe talk some about the level of coordination that you have with other groups at JLL? How do you incentivize the people within your group to cross-sell to other groups and make sure that the JLL holistically is providing kind of the broadest range of services possible to clients? And kind of how much of that is formal versus maybe more informal or just more cultural?
Yeah. It starts with our clients' needs. So the problems are more complex and broader. Our tenant representation teams would not go into a big assignment without getting a perspective on the buildings they're looking at from the Capital Markets professionals and vice versa. We're finding that we're better informed, and our people do better when we do that. So there's constant collaborations every moment of every day. It starts with the bigger, more complicated things, but then it becomes a way of working. In each of our areas, our leaders in Capital Markets, Work Dynamics, and our Markets business spend a lot of time together talking about where we are with clients, how we're segmenting, what are we doing in the different sectors and areas. And we're very aligned on those strategies.
So going to market and then executing and providing support for each other, it's a very natural way. When you start to win and your clients are happier, you build muscle around it. And we've really built some muscle around it. And it starts with that openness of where teamwork is one of our core values, teamwork's first. And that's how people thrive here. And again, not every person every day, but it's a broad thematic inside of our business.
Got it. That's helpful. And then would just love some more detail on the type of work that's being done in the Project Development Services business. What are some of the bigger buckets of revenue there that we should think about?
Yeah. Our project development business is. I joke that it's the number one second business in, although they do generate a lot of business on their own. And I'll talk about that in a second. But they match up really well across all of our different areas. If you think about the lifecycle even of a transaction, delivering the tenant improvements, delivering the lobby upgrades and things you need, and repositioning a building, a lot of times that involves the project development side and delivering on time, on budget with the design insights and other things that we can deliver. So we do that, and we have an excellent team on that. In addition to how they match up so well with us in the various businesses and being there across those clients, they do some really interesting things on their own.
We build headquarters buildings for clients where they want to self-perform, and we've become their owner's rep. We built the Atlanta Braves Stadium. We're building the Lucas Museum in L.A. So iconic things that, as our project development leaders talk about, change the skyline are things that we can be very inspired by, and it gives our clients a sense of what we can do for them. Sometimes it's the mundane and basic things. Sometimes it's really impressive work. It's always impressive work, but it particularly is visually impressive.
Got it. Thank you very much. Thanks, Greg.
Thank you.
Next questions are from Andrew Rosivach of Wolfe Research.
Hey, thanks a lot. Thanks for doing this. And also, Greg, if you ever get the chance, I mentioned this to Chris. You guys did the build-out of our office here at Wolfe, and it's the coolest place I've ever worked in.
Unsolicited testimonial, Andrew. That's a great way to start.
I don't know if I've said Chris Baxter's, but it's really unique and what they did with the building. I think it's pretty amazing. Anyway, back to my question. JLL's obviously done much better overall than just focusing on office. I think I'm interested to know what's happened to the mix of your business, your mix of your revenues by property types, how it's changed through COVID, and then maybe what you think is how it's going to trend going forward.
Yeah. It's a really good question. We've invested over the last couple of years to further penetrate a variety of high-growth sectors and asset types as I kind of tried to lay out in the lenses that we use, including supply chain logistics, industrial, life sciences, data centers. And we were out in front of them because our clients, investors, and occupiers, we could see their needs shifting. So we think we had a lot of the right pieces on the board when they surged. While some things maybe have been a little muted, like office in COVID, others have just accelerated trends. The supply chain logistics, industrial is a great example, and that's up materially. Our life sciences business, healthcare, a lot of others.
These are things that our teams are constantly thinking about, where are things going so that we can bring these core services, which really break down into fundamental things, and put them through the lens of those individual industries and where we see capital flowing in others. Life science is a great example right now. It's interesting because people think of life science as maybe lab and manufacturing. It's definitely that. It's also a huge office user. So we see a lot of capital going in there. We're currently working with a longtime life sciences client that's high profile in the fight against COVID. We're helping them secure office, GMP manufacturing, distribution facilities in markets around the world. So you get to the right spot, you build the relationships, you help them through early stage, and then there's big opportunities when there's an inflection point.
COVID was an inflection point for a lot in life sciences. Data center is another interesting area for us, skyrocketing data use, including streaming services, virtual connectivity. All these things that are going on are changing how people are thinking about housing their data. Obviously, we have the big cloud players. We're a big player in that. And one of the things that's going to really change that is we're not going to get to carbon net zero, which a lot of the occupiers and investors have committed to, if we can't tackle really complex problems like data centers. So there's going to be big opportunities there. The solutions aren't readily apparent yet, but I think there'll be dynamics. And dynamics when you're in the advisory role is really helpful. So we're working really hard to have that expertise across those different areas and work closely.
2020 and 2021, office will be a lower percentage. But we've launched globally these other asset types and industry sectors, and we're seeing them. We get fast-growth components, others that aren't growing as fast. Eventually, as office comes back, we think that plays well. We think industrial and a bunch of these sectors have a lot of running room over the next few years. And we think that bodes well for our clients in those areas and for JLL.
You actually alluded to one of my follow-up questions. When you look at your client verticals, say it's healthcare, say it's technology, say it's retail, would you call out any recent trends? Say, for example, someone that perhaps wasn't as active during COVID but now seems to be coming back?
Yeah. Another good question. We need to be where clients are going. So diverse cross-asset types and all that, we're now there and we'll always be thinking about where we need to invest globally across the different areas. Certainly, tech companies, maybe not so quietly to many of you because you observe the industry, but they've quietly secured a whole lot of high-quality urban space during the COVID downturn. Longer lease terms, over 10 million sq ft in just the last year in the U.S. during the pandemic. So while a lot of other people were waiting, others were building bigger beachheads in areas where they know they need to grow because they need to get to the labor.
So we think there'll be more growth in that area, and they've been very, very smart in how they've done it using the downcycle to get to something that was really critical to their business. Healthcare sector's growing globally, but here in the U.S., we still have an aging population. I could have mentioned that as a sixth trend or some mega trends that are out there. And healthcare still only outsources a small fraction of its work. We think there's big upside in that. Life sciences is building momentum for decades. It's recently become one of the most highly sought-after sectors with big opportunities on the supply side for investors. And then in all of these new innovations that have gone on, big opportunities in new companies. And we're working on the occupier-supplier side there. Retailers are very interesting.
I think you read certain headlines that say retail is challenged, and they're certainly challenged players in every industry. We're working very closely with retailers who are not just working on their bricks-and-mortar footprint. They're thinking about their overall strategy and how do they deliver from online, which obviously is accelerated. We think about that as omnichannel. So our retail teams and our industrial teams came together a long time ago and really started talking to retailers about what this could look like. And they've become a lot more expert in supply chain and other areas, and that's played well into a real strength that we have. So our retail business is actually pretty solid this year because we're in helping them get through transitions and changes. While the overall industry may be a little bit challenged, we think there's big opportunity in repositioning assets and other things.
So, last for you, finance. One of the biggest sectors and users of space across asset types has been the number 2 in uptake in the Americas this year and globally. We've handled several large banking clients and financial services headquarters deals in flagship gateway markets like New York City. Then we've also included many big commitments for them as they look at getting to different labor pools, moving to portions, maybe the areas of the Sunbelt as they start to look at diversification strategies, really to get to the labor over time. Very active in that business, which obviously is a vibrant part of our economy. Lots going on in a lot of areas, strategy shifts. If you're the advisor and the intermediary, over time, that's going to mean more velocity.
Great. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Next questions are from Tony Paolone of JP Morgan.
Thanks, Chris. Hi, Greg. My first question is, you gave the 8% sequential pickup in office leasing from 2Q to 3Q. When you look across all of your revenue buckets that you're responsible for, where are you still furthest from normal, whether it's business type, geography, or property type?
Yeah. Good question. We generally see the same trends in the outlook that we saw in the first half of the year. Some uncertainty in office, although coming off of 2020, not quite at 2019, industrial certain sectors really showing good strength as big strategic trends get accelerated, and we and others were well positioned on that. Overall, our leasing pipeline in the U.S. is very healthy. It's increasing. It's nearly back at 2019 levels, so that's across the portfolio. And we're noticing a few trends in there, some slightly smaller transactions, less really large transactions. But sometimes the pipeline transitions as clients build confidence. We'll see how those play out. But the pipeline is broader at this point, which I think is a positive for a lot of different reasons.
I spent last week in Europe with our team, and their pipeline continues to illustrate very similar expected continued strength in areas like industrial-wide. While the office pipeline coming back, not quite there yet to 2019 levels, but it's significantly stronger and momentum is better than it was in 2020. I don't want to be redundant on other comments. Tony, certainly industry sectors are really doing great. Life science is a good example. Others are continuing to come along and mature a little bit. Healthcare, higher ed, we think those will create opportunities over time as business models shift a little bit in those areas.
Got it. My second question is, as it relates to flexible working or coworking, what's your view on where JLL's role is in the future in coworking? Because we've seen your peers take on different strategies around that business. I'm just trying to understand where a large global realty services company fits into what the business model looks like in the future.
Yeah. We're a believer, and you've probably seen our research, that flexible components will be part of the portfolio. It's part of the portfolio today. So we bridge very strongly into available supply that's out there. We counsel clients on it. It's more now at the edge of their portfolios, although it might be at the center of certain things they do as clients try to match up their term and commitment to what their business strategies are in more dynamic areas. So we believe in flex as being a part of it. Our thesis at this point is we want to be the unbiased advisor. We work very closely across the ecosystem that's out there. We're going to watch it as it matures. We built some of our own products to extend, particularly our management and operational side of our business, property management, facilities management.
So elements of our clients' portfolio, both investors and occupiers, will be more flexible, and we can provide those services like we do in other areas. It's almost like an asset type for us as we build that expertise, and we're doing that. And then we're going to watch it while it comes through this, and we'll see over time where it goes. But we're pretty confident that it'll be a part of our occupier portfolios and that it needs to be a part of our investor portfolios. And we're working because there are a lot of choices out there to help our clients optimize how to meet that marketplace.
Got it. And my last question is, you talked a bit about One JLL, and we've heard for a number of years just this shift to trying to do things on an account-based and providing a variety of different services to the client. Is there another side to that where, with your larger clients and you're providing One JLL, where they're pushing back on fees or getting a better deal? And how does that add out in the end?
Yeah. It's a good question. Procurement's a part of our lives on bigger and more complicated things. Part of bringing it all together for clients is to shift out of, "You're providing one thing so I can compare it to others." Where really what they want is outcomes and value. So as we bring integrated solutions together, which need to be able to mix and match to where our clients are, they don't all go from one individual service line to us in one city and all of a sudden want to be totally integrated. There's a lot of places in between. So we work hard with our clients on their strategies and what they're trying to get to and then put together something that adds value. I've found over time and now three decades in this industry, clients will pay for value. So we don't feel material fee pressure.
There's some over time. It's natural everywhere. But we don't feel material fee pressure if we're bringing more value when we come. And that's our goal, and not just on things we do today. But this is why we're investing so heavily in technology and data, in sustainability, in other areas so that we stay ahead of and can go on the journey with our clients. Because when you get past the individual things we're doing, those are the big threats to their businesses that they need to get to. And we want to be there and continue on that growth pattern with them. So there's some pressure in it, Tony, but I feel like we're in a pretty good position being able to serve them in so many different ways and drive more value. If you stop driving more value, you'll definitely have challenges with pricing.
Great. Thanks for the time.
Yeah. Thanks, Tony.
Next questions are from Alex Kramm of UBS.
Oh, hey. Hello, everyone. Thanks for doing this. I think this may be a follow-up or continuation of the prior theme, actually. So can you talk and dimensionalize the cross-selling a little bit more? So for one, I think that was just asked. I think you're trying to represent some of your clients more globally or in multiple regions. So can you perhaps map out where you are in that process? And I assume that's what you look at. And it may be the same question, not just by a regional perspective, but also by services that you provide. Does it usually just start with leasing, and then you upsell to other areas? Does it go multiple ways?
And again, any ways for us to say like, "Hey, you're generally touching your best clients in three different regions and four different services, and there's a whole long list of clients where you're just getting started"? So any way to dimensionalize that? I know it's a loaded question. Would be great. Thanks.
Yes is the answer. Clients come in different ways across the spectrum. That's why we have the different lenses that I talked about. And that's why the partnerships between the different segments, all clients see is JLL when we come into them. So the big integrated outsourcing, which Neil Murray spoke to you about, our Work Dynamics CEO in May, that big integrated outsourcing is the big clients. They're often global. They're often across a wide range, the entire lifecycle of services. That's one client type, very important client type for us. Some of those are totally global. Some of them are regional. But the migration for them tends to be more services, more geographies. It starts in geographies and in industry sectors, the way we go to market, asset types, in winning and making the first connection usually around one asset or one service.
And then as you get in and you understand more broadly what that client, investor, or occupier's goal is, it may be leasing and then project development to deliver the tenant improvements or things. It constantly starts. We're always looking for the new companies and new investors who need help. We're always working to try to drive more value for them, meet them, meeting them where they are. Some people like to buy outtask, and some are willing to go to fully vested and very strategic partnerships. So it's a little bit of a move to the right often with them, although sometimes clients break up and back up on that. We need to play in all three. Middle market, really fast growth is a big market for that. It often leads with leasing or property management or one of our other services.
But it starts with one service, goes to a few services, generally then across geographies, depending on where that client is. We have big technology clients, U.S.-based, who we've taken all around the globe. And the fact that they can consistently get the same client relationship manager that will bridge all of the complexities of being global, that's something that very few firms, JLL's one, can do that. We can take you from your city and your asset across a view that'll take you to other areas. And importantly, looking for innovations in other areas around the globe. We've been a pioneer in urban logistics. And I was on with our Asia-Pacific team this morning talking about urban logistics opportunities in Australia.
We were able to bring to that client views from other parts of Asia, from the United States, and even from Europe and how we're doing it, which accelerates that investor's opportunity for how to think about it. Long answer to a moderately long question. I hope it answers.
Yeah. But nothing specific in terms of any numbers that you had in terms of numbers of services used or kind of trying to get to a TAM of what you're touching and what you potentially can touch.
Yeah. If you were to think about it in three pieces, you'd say the one-off often sector or geographic client, there are more of those than there are the middle market client where we're doing more because they've now broken out, and their business model's working across a broader area, investor or occupier. And then there are more of those, and then there are less of those than the first. And then there are fewer of the big integrated outsourcings because there aren't many of the clients of that size and scale and sophistication. So it's a broad funnel of things that we do, and we're always looking to work across all those areas and then mature. So our goal every year with every client is to drive more value to them. If that means selling more services, and it often does, that's great.
At the end of the day, we want our clients to think, "JLL drove more value for me." Then that broadens how they think about us, maybe from a leasing company where they first met us to a big integrated outsourcing company.
Yeah. Thanks for that additional color then. Other topic we haven't really touched upon, I think, is competition for talent. So maybe you can give us a little bit of an update. I think there was this whole idea that this would be the environment where you can pick up a lot of talent because other firms may be struggling a little bit more. Is that playing out at all? And maybe where are the biggest areas of white space where you feel like you still need to hire?
Yeah. I think there's always opportunities for great people. And what our goal is is to have the right strategies aligned with clients. We have mapped out where we think there are opportunities for the right people, there are a right cultural fit, or for the right lateral opportunities in other ways. Sometimes they don't match. Right now, as we know, the talent markets broadly, not just in our client-facing people but across everything else, are really challenging. So we're out there looking for talent all the time. We always have. We believe we have been, and we will be, a net aggregator of that talent. We have the platform that allows people to work for their clients, again, across geographies and services. We have the right culture. So we believe that we'll be a net aggregator of talent as we come out of this health and safety crisis.
We're going to stay focused on growing in the areas where we think our clients need to take us. We're not the only ones probably thinking about some of these sectors and areas. So there's always pressure on some of those. But we feel like if we get up every day and focus on our people and how they can help our clients inside of the right strategies, and over time, that's worked out pretty well for us. So we're going to continue on that, being very disciplined about what we do, and then making sure that our people and our clients succeed. Sounds very simple, but that's our formula.
Okay. And then just lastly, quick follow-up. Again, you mentioned that you lead by service and not by fees. But you said there's some fee pressure in some areas. So maybe you can be a little bit more specific in terms of what kind of work, what kind of regions, what type of clients, and to what degree you have to give in to that or how often you actually have to walk away from something?
Yeah. There are times when clients are looking for lowest fee, not highest value, and that may not be a good match for us in our business in a certain area. Our focus is to drive the most value at all levels of our organization. I think over time, we and we're not the only ones, but that's our focus and what we're trying to do. If you want quality outcomes, we think we should be on the list and actively considered. It doesn't mean that there's not some fee pressures around certain things. Typically, the way we try to approach it is, "Let's get to that next level of value." How do we bring things together? This is where One JLL is so important in helping clients formulate strategies and do things that will help them get to better strategies and better outcomes.
And they're much more willing to then say, "We understand that you're often paid by the services that you execute in addition to helping us. So let's stay ahead with our clients and help them grow and help us grow." And we think it mutes some of the pressures around pricing because clients will pay for value. I've found that over many years.
But no specific areas to point to?
No.
Okay. All right. Thanks. Thank you very much for doing this.
Thank you, Alex.
Next questions are from Sara Obetti of KBW.
Hi. My first question is, are you seeing or do you expect to see any impact in the market based on what is going on with China, including immigrants as well as recent power outages at numerous factories?
Can you say that one more time, Sara? I'm sorry.
Sorry. Yeah. Are you seeing or do you expect to see any impact to the market based on what is going on with China, including Evergrande as well as recent power outages at numerous factories?
Yeah. Thank you. That's a good and topical question. At the macro level, we don't think it'll impact China's growth story, really transforming from fast growth to quality, sustainable growth. And we don't think it'll affect our business. Remember that Evergrande's share in China's residential sale market is only about 4%. In terms of our business and our growth strategy there in that business, that's been primarily targeting the new economy such as the tech sector. So this is mostly in line with China's growth strategies I talked about. JLL's focus on commercial real estate means that our businesses and exposure to development-focused residential-for-sale real estate companies is really very limited. We're optimistic about China overall and their growth. It's been a big part of our strategy for a long time. We don't feel that those challenges are a challenge for us as we go forward.
Got it. Thanks. My next question is, on the margin and operating expense side, have you started to see a normalization in costs such as marketing and travel and entertainment? Sorry.
Yeah. Good question. We've seen some signs of normalization here as we get into the second half as we're able to travel more, although there have been some ebbs and flows, obviously, with shutdowns in certain areas around the world. We expect that costs related to investments in people, travel, and marketing, which will help maximize our revenue growth during the recovery. We expect them to come back into our cost base over time, although not likely back to pre-pandemic levels on a percentage basis in the near term.
Okay. Conversely, are there any areas of spend where you anticipate permanent savings? If possible, could you quantify?
We're committed to operating more efficiently, and we continue to invest in our strategic priorities and growth initiatives that we believe will drive both top-line growth and then operational efficiency over the long term. So that focus on finding operational efficiency was here before. It's here now, and I think it'll always be there as we look at where we need to invest and then where we need to get better. Our goal is to get better across everywhere as long as it serves our people and our clients the right way, get us to better outcomes.
Great. Thanks for taking my questions.
Thank you.
I think we've gotten through the sell-side analyst. So we're going back to Tony Paolone of JP Morgan, who has some additional questions.
Thanks. Thanks for letting me have a couple of follow-ups here. So, Greg, one of the things that you kicked off with was your background from Staubach, and you also made some comparisons to the HFF deal. Just wondering how you think about M&A, the ability to integrate, say, a traditional leasing firm. How difficult is that to do these days? Just would be curious to hear about your experience and thoughts there.
I mentioned in my earlier comments, Tony, and there's statistics and papers written about if you don't have cultural alignment, it's very high probability of failure. So with JLL and Staubach, we have very high cultural alignment around team and client and making sure that our people were there. You saw the same thing with HFF. If you're going to do scaled opportunities and try to integrate it over an existing operating business to get to a better, in our case, One JLL, you better have those elements: high-quality people, great reputation for them, and a desire to go on that journey where clients are going. And when we've done that, we've been really good at it. We integrate people all the time, lateral groups, individuals. We bring in a lot of people from out of industry that have really great expertise in areas, take some of the sectors.
We brought in people with very deep life sciences experience who really don't have a lot of real estate experience, and we're surrounding them and bringing them together on those common goals. So anytime you change your team, you have a team, you add someone to it, it changes the dynamic a little bit. But if the foundational way that they believe is right and they're focused on the clients and people, it can work. And we work very hard at that up and down our leadership teams but also at the grassroots level, making sure that we're bringing people together on everything in every moment. But if we're doing something, there's a deep integration plan.
I think we've gotten a lot better at that over the last few years because we see it as a really critical way as we grow forward to continue to grow our skill sets, which is where we need to be to be able to help our clients.
Do you think there's anything in your domain when you look across your geographies and businesses where you feel like a bigger investment would be helpful in terms of driving share or growth beyond just organically doing some hiring and taking share that way?
This is one of the advantages of looking at the segments now more globally. We always did, but now it's very formal, working across the geographies, driving best practices out and getting to the granular work of where do we need more expertise and depth, and then making sure that we're executing that. As you do that, you start to generate more opportunities that flow in a city, in a region, and across the globe. That creates a flywheel of good opportunity that come to our people. That then allows you to recruit and retain folks. We're very focused on it day to day. We have plans. We're constantly looking at it. We're looking at shifts.
Sometimes you get hit with something out of the blue like COVID, and you have to retrench, and then you figure out how we can go forward. That's what we've been doing for the last year and a half. I think our results in the second quarter showed some positive results in our areas. Feel pretty good about July and August. So let's see how it goes. I think there'll still be some fits and starts, but we feel pretty good about where we are and then the foundational discipline that you have to put in place to be able to make businesses that scale across these areas really work.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you, Tony.
Great. It appears that there are no further questions. So we'd like to thank everybody for joining us. Thank you, Greg, for taking the time to speak with our investors and analysts.
Thanks, Chris.
Wish everybody a terrific day.
Thanks, everyone.