First Hawaiian Bank, gaining more independence after emerging from the shadow of onetime controlling shareholder BNP Paribas, reported Thursday a 15.5 percent gain in third-quarter earnings on improved loan growth and higher interest rates.

The parent of the state’s largest bank, First Hawaiian Inc., said earnings rose to $67.4 million, or 50 cents a share, from $58.4 million, or 42 cents a share, in the year-earlier period.

“This was a good quarter as we had solid core financial performance, strong loan production, made significant progress reducing (higher- paying) public deposits (which are from state and local city and county entities), controlled our expenses and maintained excellent asset quality,” First Hawaiian Chairman and CEO Bob Harrison told analysts on an earnings conference call.

First Hawaiian’s core net income, which does not include nonrecurring items, was $70.8 million, or 52 cents a share, to beat analysts’ consensus estimate by a penny. Core earnings from a year ago were $57 million, or 41 cents a share.

Loans rose 3.7 percent to $12.6 billion, deposits fell 5.2 percent to $16.7 billion and assets fell 2.8 percent to $20 billion. The bank’s net interest income, which is the difference between how much First Hawaiian pays for deposits compared with what it charges to lend out money, rose 6 percent to $141.3 million.

During the quarter, BNP’s ownership of First Hawaiian was reduced to 18.4 percent from 48.8 percent after BNP completed two secondary offerings of First Hawaiian stock and the bank repurchased 1.8 million shares for $50 million. BNP’s stake would have been reduced further to 16.2 percent, but the underwriters — with the stock price falling — elected not to act on their option to purchase additional shares following the last offering. Since BNP’s ownership of First Hawaiian has now dropped from 100 percent to below 50 percent, the number of BNP-nominated directors has decreased to two from five, resulting in a majority of independent directors on the board

First Hawaiian’s stock rose 57 cents, or 2.5 percent, to close at $23.76 before the earnings were announced.

THIRD-QUARTER NET

$67.4 million

YEAR-EARLIER NET

$58.4 million