Hawaii real estate investment and development firm Alexander & Baldwin Inc. put its finances back in the black for the first three months of this year after losses in last year’s first quarter and 2016 as a whole.

Honolulu-based A&B announced today that it earned a $7 million profit in the first quarter compared with a $7 million loss in the year-earlier period. For all of last year, A&B had an $8.4 million loss.

The company said it achieved the positive results largely from operating its portfolio of commercial real estate leased to tenants and by selling a handful of relatively small properties including vacant land, some new homes and a medical clinic building in Hawaii.

“We are taking positive steps to improve performance throughout the organization,” Chris Benjamin, A&B president and CEO, said in a statement. “We made important strategic progress in the first quarter.”

Most of A&B’s income came from its collection of commercial real estate dominated by more than a dozen retail properties including Manoa Marketplace, a cluster of buildings in Kailua, Pearl Highlands Center, Kaneohe Bay Shopping Center and Kunia Shopping Center that collectively produced an operating profit of $14.3 million in the first quarter compared with $13.1 million a year earlier.

A big drag on the company’s finances last year was the shutdown of Hawaii’s last sugar plantation, Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co., that ceased operating in December on Maui, which accounted for a $10.8 million after-tax loss for A&B in last year’s first quarter.