CBRE Spends $1.2B To Push Deeper Into Power And Data Center Services
CBRE spent more than $1B to acquire Pearce Services, a major service provider in the data center and infrastructure sectors.
Dallas-based CBRE, the world’s largest real estate brokerage firm, paid roughly $1.2B to acquire Pearce from alternative investment manager New Mountain Capital. The deal has already closed, and CBRE said it expects the purchase will provide an immediate boost to the company’s performance.
Pearce has more than 4,000 employees in the U.S. and India and provides design, engineering, maintenance and repair services for industry giants in power and telecommunications. The acquisition comes with an additional $115M in potential earnout payments for Pearce executives based on the company’s 2027 performance.
Executives hinted at the purchase during CBRE’s earnings call last month, and it follows other high-profile purchases from the firm this year, including picking up coworking firm Industrious at an $800M valuation in January.
“This acquisition complements our large and growing presence in digital and power infrastructure,” CBRE CEO Bob Sulentic said in a statement. “It also opens sizable new growth avenues for CBRE in markets where the need for Pearce’s services is growing rapidly.”
Pearce is on pace to generate $660M in revenue in 2026, according to CBRE. In 2025, CBRE expects 34% of Pearce's business to come from work with critical power and cooling systems, 30% from renewable energy and power storage, 29% from wireless and fiber network services, and 7% from electric vehicle charging stations.
CBRE has leveraged the explosion in data center demand from artificial intelligence to boost its earnings, with nearly $700M in data center-related revenue in the third quarter alone, up 40% from the prior year.
Growth in the sector helped boost CBRE's third-quarter revenue to $10.3B and its earnings per share 34% higher than the year prior.
Analysts at JPMorgan Chase reacted positively to the acquisition announcement in a note to investors Tuesday morning. They said the deal “should be marginally more accretive” than the stock buybacks CBRE executed in the first half of the year.
“Our initial take on this deal is positive as the transaction is strategic, leaning the platform further into areas like data centers and specialized technical services,” they wrote.
CBRE spent $663M in the first half of the year buying back stock, but it stopped repurchasing shares in the third quarter. Chief Financial Officer Emma Giamartino told analysts on the firm’s earnings call last month that leadership still thought its shares were undervalued but it was nonetheless holding on to the cash, signaling that an acquisition could be coming.
