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First Hawaiian Bank’s parent company raised $485 million Wednesday after shares in the state’s largest bank were priced at $23 ahead of its trading debut today.
Shares of First Hawaiian Inc. are scheduled to begin trading on the Nasdaq exchange under the symbol FHB shortly after the opening of trading at 3:30 a.m. Hawaii time. First Hawaiian Chairman and CEO Bob Harrison is scheduled to ring the closing bell.
Bank employees will ring their own bells in front of First Hawaiian’s downtown headquarters at the corner of King and Bishop streets at 10 a.m. to coincide with Harrison ringing the bell.
The $23 stock price gives First Hawaiian a market value of $3.2 billion based on 139.5 million outstanding shares. The 21.1 million shares sold in the initial public offering by First Hawaiian Inc.’s corporate parent, BNP Paribas, will leave the French banking giant with 84.9 percent of the company. BNP will keep all the proceeds from Wednesday’s sale.
BNP’s financial take from the sale could increase to $557.8 million if an additional 3.2 million shares are subsequently purchased under a 30-day option by the underwriters of the offering. If those additional shares are sold, then BNP would own 82.6 percent of First Hawaiian.
Goldman, Sachs & Co., BofA Merrill Lynch and BNP Paribas are the primary underwriters.
First Hawaiian is the first Hawaii financial company to go public since Territorial Savings Bank’s parent company converted from a mutual holding company to a publicly traded corporation in July 2009. The last Hawaii company to go public on one of the three major exchanges was Hawaiian Telcom, which began trading on Nasdaq in March 2012 after previously trading on the so-called pink sheets.
First Hawaiian is now the largest Nasdaq-listed Hawaii company, ahead of Hawaiian Holdings Inc., the parent of Hawaiian Airlines, which closed Wednesday with a market capitalization of $2.4 billion.
Bank of Hawaii Corp., the state’s second-largest bank which trades on the New York Stock Exchange, has a market cap of $2.9 billion.
