Central Pacific Bank parent enjoys solid second quarter

The parent company of Hawaii’s fourth-largest bank had a steady second quarter with a slight decrease in profit from a year earlier while taking in more deposits and making more loans.

Central Pacific Financial Corp. reported earning $12 million in the April-June period, about 1 percent less than its $12.1 million profit in the same period last year. For both quarters, earnings per share of company stock was 39 cents, and that was 1 cent below the average expectation five stock analysts had for the recent quarter.

The parent of Central Pacific Bank said the small profit decline was due to shifting part of a $1.5 billion investment portfolio from shorter-term securities with lower returns to longer-term securities with higher returns. The shift, which involved about $97 million in government-issued mortgage-backed securities, is expected to produce $700,000 more income annually, but Central Pacific took a $1.6 million loss on the sales to make the change.

Core bank operations — mainly deposits and lending — had good growth in the quarter.

“We are pleased to report another solid quarter of financial performance,” Catherine Ngo, Central Pacific’s president and CEO, said in a statement released for publication today along with the company’s financial results.

Deposits, which provide the bank capital to lend, grew 10.9 percent to about $4.9 billion in the recent quarter from $4.4 billion a year earlier. Loans, which provide the bank with interest income, grew by 5.5 percent to about $3.6 billion from $3.4 billion in the same comparable period.

All assets held by Central Pacific totaled $5.5 billion at the end of June, up 4.7 percent from nearly $5.3 billion a year earlier. The recent asset total included $9 million of “nonperforming” assets, essentially delinquent loans not accruing interest and foreclosed real estate. A year earlier, nonperforming assets totaled $14.9 million.

Anna Hu, Central Pacific’s chief credit officer, said the amount of nonperforming assets, which represented 0.16 percent of the company’s asset total, is a normal level in a good economy. “It’s really a function of the economy,” she said in an interview Tuesday.

In connection with the improved asset quality, Central Pacific reduced a provision for loan losses by $2.3 million, which added that amount to its operating income. A year earlier Central Pacific had a comparable $1.4 million benefit from reducing its reserve for loan losses.

NGO said in an interview Tuesday that she expects the company, which has 35 bank branches statewide, will continue its loan growth for the full year by a percentage in the mid- to high single digits. “It’s a nice pipeline, and we feel very good about what we’ll be able to deliver in the next couple of quarters,” she said.

One part of the pipeline is a connection made in April with six regional banks in Japan that will refer their customers to Central Pacific for bank-related needs in Hawaii, which could involve investing here or starting a business here.

Shares of Central Pacific stock closed Tuesday at $31.71. Shares over the last 52 weeks have closed between $24.37 on Aug. 2 and $33.28 on April 26. During the second quarter, Central Pacific spent $7.7 million repurchasing 248,621 shares at an average $30.89.