Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc. said Thursday its net income in the third quarter was $51.14 million, up 6 percent from the prior year’s $48.28 million.
Revenue for the third quarter was $544.3 million, compared with $441.8 million reported for the third quarter 2014.
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NET INCOME
$51.14 million
YEAR-EARLIER NET
$48.28 million
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“Our utility’s continued work to modernize our electric grids and pursue new customer options is more important than ever,” said Constance Lau, HEI president and CEO in a statement.
Hawaiian Electric Co., HEI’s utility subsidiary, earned $43.0 million compared with $38.9 million for the same quarter last year. The $4.1 million increase was due to higher net revenue and lower operations and maintenance expenses.
HECO reported $3 million increase in net revenues compared with the third quarter of 2014 primarily due to $2 million in recovery of costs for clean-energy and reliability investments as well as $1 million for better fuel-efficiency performance. The utility reported $2 million less in operations and maintenance expenses in the third quarter of 2015 compared with the same quarter last year.
HEI spent $1.7 million in costs related to the $4.3 billion proposed sale of its utility companies to Florida-based NextEra Energy Inc. and the spinoff of its American Savings Bank subsidiary.
Lau said the company has made progress on the sale.
“The PUC (state Public Utilities Commission) just completed public listening sessions on all islands, and during the past few weeks, we and NextEra Energy filed our surrebuttal testimonies and closed out a six-month discovery process,” she said. “We look forward to evidentiary hearings beginning late November. And as we move forward, we continue to believe NextEra Energy is the right partner for Hawaiian Electric to help achieve Hawaii’s 100 percent renewable portfolio standard by 2045.”
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved the sale in March, and HEI shareholders approved the sale in June. Two of the 28 outside groups included in the PUC review of the sale, who were previously opposed to the sale, announced their support recently. Gov. David Ige, who appoints the PUC board, has said he is opposed to the sale as it currently stands. The PUC has said a decision could come as soon as June.
HEI subsidiary American Savings Bank said Oct. 30 its earnings rose 1.5 percent in the third quarter.
“Our bank delivered solid revenue and loan growth this quarter. Credit quality remained sound and capital levels were healthy,” added Lau.
The state’s third-largest bank posted net income of $13.5 million compared with $13.3 million in the year-earlier period.
HEI miscalculates its net cash for operations
As part of its third-quarter earnings, Hawaiian Electric Industries said it had understated net cash from operations by $175 million in recent years.
The company said it understated cash by approximately $45 million in 2012, $40 million in 2013, $25 million in 2014 and approximately by $65 million this year.
Jim Ajello, HEI executive vice president and chief financial officer, said the miscalculations were a “financial nonevent.”
“We see no impact or effect to any of our obligations, neither the merger agreement or any of our duties in terms of loan agreements or liabilities, really whatsoever, or the shareholders, for that matter,.” he said onduring a conference call with financial analysts. “I will stress again, no income statement and no balance sheet impacts. It’s really a financial nonevent from the standpoint of our obligation.”
