First Hawaiian Bank, reporting as a publicly traded company for the first time in 15 years, posted lower third-quarter earnings because of expenses associated with its initial public offering.
But the state’s largest bank said Thursday that loans, deposits and assets all reached record levels.
The bank’s new holding company, First Hawaiian Inc., recorded net income of $53.2 million, or 38 cents a share, to match analysts’ estimates. The results, which were down 3 percent from the year-earlier quarter, came in lower because of $3.1 million in pretax IPO expenses, the bank said. In the third quarter of 2015, First Hawaiian had net income of $54.9 million, or 39 cents a share.
First Hawaiian also declared a quarterly dividend of 20 cents a share. It will be payable Dec. 9 to shareholders of record at the close of business Nov. 28. The payout equates to a 3 percent annualized yield based on Thursday’s closing price of $26.90. The shares, trading under the symbol FHB on the Nasdaq Stock Market, were down 3 cents for the day. The results were announced after the market closed.
“There’s still a lot of interest in the newness of us being a public company,” Chairman and CEO Bob Harrison said in a telephone interview. “It’s very exciting for everybody. We’re now able to spend more time back in Hawaii, interacting with our customers and employees.”
Working as a publicly traded company hasn’t changed daily operations at the bank, Harrison said.
“With the exception of all the things like earnings calls and that sort of change related to public company responsibilities, there has been no change at the bank,” Harrison said. “There are some transitional issues related to the separation from BNP Paribas, but nothing that hasn’t been put out there for investors to look at.”
Paris-based BNP Paribas, which previously owned
100 percent of First Hawaiian, sold off part of its stake to generate more capital and satisfy regulatory requirements. BNP now owns 82.6 percent of First Hawaiian after raising $557.8 million through the IPO.
First Hawaiian reported $19.89 billion in assets and has the largest market
capitalization of any Hawaii- based company at $3.75 billion. The company went public at $23 a share Aug. 4 and closed at $24.25 on its first day of trading. The stock is now up 17 percent from its IPO price.
“We had a very good quarter, especially compared with last year when you take away the one-time items that were in last year’s third quarter,” Harrison said. “If you’re going to look at apples to apples, that’s the comparison. That’s the core business of the bank. If you compare those two quarters, we had good loan growth, good deposit growth and very high credit quality.”
First Hawaiian said on a core basis that its net income last quarter, excluding the $3.1 million in IPO expenses, was $55.2 million. That was up 11 percent from $49.6 million in the year-ago quarter, which was adjusted to exclude gains on sales of securities and MasterCard stock as well as other one-time items.
The bank’s loans rose
9 percent to a record
$11.40 billion last quarter to reach the upper end of First Hawaiian’s targeted loan growth of mid- to high single digits. Commercial loans increased 12 percent while consumer loans rose 7 percent.
Deposits increased
10 percent to a record $16.97 billion.
Nonperforming assets, which already were low,
declined to $10.2 million, or 0.09 percent of total loans and assets, from $20.7 million, or 0.20 percent of
total loans and assets, in the year-earlier quarter.
Harrison said the bank will incur additional expenses tied to its transition to a publicly traded company of between $14.5 million and $17 million a year through 2018, before those numbers become part of the bank’s normal expenses.
