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 Thursday that it earned $7 million in the first quarter compared with a $7 million loss in the year-earlier period. For all of last year, A&B lost $8.4 million.

The company, which reported revenue of $93.2 million in the recent quarter and $91.4 million a year earlier, said it achieved its recent profit largely through 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.

“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.”

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

In the recent quarter, A&B derived most of its income from its collection of commercial real estate, dominated by more than a dozen retail properties including Manoa Marketplace, much of downtown Kailua, Pearl Highlands Center, Kaneohe Bay Shopping Center and Kunia Shopping Center, which collectively produced an operating profit of $14.3 million in the first quarter compared with $13.1 million a year earlier.

Another segment of A&B, a road construction and materials operation under subsidiary Grace Pacific, produced a $5.6 million operating profit in the first quarter, which was down from an $8 million operating profit a year earlier. A&B said competitive pricing pressures, less profitable projects and selling a lower volume of materials contributed to the decrease.

Benjamin said the company is undertaking a “comprehensive performance improvement initiative” at Grace Pacific as part of the broad improvement effort at A&B that also includes bringing real estate management and leasing in-house to enhance accountability and management effectiveness.

One part of A&B that stayed in the red was real estate development, where there was a $2.4 million operating loss in the first quarter, though that was an improvement from a $3.2 million operating loss a year earlier. This segment of A&B during the recent quarter had property sales that included two town homes at The Collection high-rise complex in Kakaako for a combined $3.5 million, a 1-acre parcel at Maui Business Park for $2.4 million and a 16,600-square-foot medical office building on Maui for $3.4 million.

Other negative factors in A&B’s first quarter included having to reduce the value of a solar farm by $2 million because of tax benefits, and $4.8 million in costs to evaluate converting the company from a regular corporation to a real estate investment trust, or REIT. That evaluation is expected to be done by midsummer. The state Legislature had been considering whether to eliminate a state tax benefit for REITs, but a bill to do that died.

Shares of A&B stock closed Thursday at $45.33 on the New York Stock Exchange before the earnings announcement. That was about $1 below a 52-week high of $46.58 reached April 26. The 52-week low was $34.43 on May 19.