PHOENIX -- It's proving to be an upbeat year for CoreNet Global, and the Sunday afternoon New Member Reception here at the Phoenix Global Summit will turn out to be a primary indicator that the association and the corporate real estate (CRE) industry are back on the upswing. More than 150 new members will turn out for the reception, the highest number since the last pre-recessionary Global Summit was held in Orlando in the Fall of 2008. The turnout marked a continuation of a robust new member recruiting wave also seen this past Spring at the New Orleans Global Summit New Member Reception.
But the really big news here is the near-record level of corporate end users registered for the Phoenix Global Summit, a hefty 50% of the total audience of 1,600 industry professionals convening in the Valley of the Sun to compare notes, share war stories, hear about common problems, and maybe even take home a couple of solutions in the form of best practices or lessons learned from the wide array of case studies to be presented here in what has become the industry's most significant knowledge sharing, learning and networking event of 2010.
In fact, the strong proportion of end users or occupiers to service providers and economic developers approaches record percentages set in headier times like the San Diego Global Summit or the Chicago Global Summit some 6-7 years ago in the midst of the Dot Com crash rebound.
CoreNet Global Treasurer Dino Piccini of DTZ will offer supporting metrics when the Summit closes on Tuesday afternoon, September 21. Piccini will report that CoreNet Global's financial health has improved substantially compared to the bottom realized by the association and the industry in 2009, and the current membership growth trend is a key driver of the trend.
Global membership bottomed out in mid-2009 at 6,100 worldwide. The Board asked staff to meet a baseline goal of 6,700 members by the end of the fiscal year in March, 2011. But Piccini will report that the basic goal of 6,700 has already been reached, and that the organization is within range of its stretch goal of 7,000 members - the highest total count attained in the past. A goal of at least 1,000 net new members is also now well within reach, with more than 600 recruited year to date. In addition, membership retention is fueling the upward trend. Retention bottomed out at 61% in 2009, but it's back up to 80% in recent consecutive months and still climbing. The strong growth of the Corporate Partners and Strategic Partners programs is a contributing factor, Piccini will also report. There are 100 corporations and service provider firms in the Partner program today.
"The bottom line," according to Piccini and the positive financial audit recently completed is that, "we project a positive operating income and cash flow for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2011."