Strong lending growth and a large sale of Visa stock helped boost Bank of Hawaii Corp.’s earnings 10 percent in the first quarter and lifted assets above $15 billion for the first time in more than 16 years.

The state’s second-largest bank, which is benefiting from Hawaii’s economic recovery, said Monday that improved business in the consumer and commercial sectors helped loans increase 15.6 percent over the year-earlier period.

Bankoh’s net income of $42.4 million, or 97 cents a share, beat analysts’ consensus estimate by 7 cents. A year earlier the bank’s net income was $38.6 million, or 87 cents a share.

Despite beating estimates, the bank’s stock fell 85 cents, or 1.4 percent, to $60.80 after the results were announced.

"We’re all focused on the construction segment, and it’s finally beginning to pick up steam," Peter Ho, chairman, president and CEO of Bankoh, said in a telephone interview. "The consensus I hear around town is that it’s likely to happen over the next year or so, and that will be very helpful for our economy.

"The visitor industry has performed exceptionally well for five years now, and coming out of the financial crisis, the growth rate in visitor spending has been nothing short of spectacular. There’s a chance that growth begins to flatten out, although I think visitor spending will continue to be a strong pillar for our economy. I don’t know if it necessarily will be a growth driver, but our guess is that construction spending will begin to take over as the growth driver of the economy."

Analyst Aaron Deer of San Francisco-based investment bank Sandler O’Neill said Bankoh has been performing better than many of its mainland counterparts.

"Generally speaking, loan growth has been a challenge for banks nationally," Deer said. "But there are pockets of strength around the country, and certainly Hawaii is one of those and, I would argue, more specifically Bank of Hawaii. They’re just doing a really good job at Bank of Hawaii serving their customers and pounding the pavement and drumming up new customers. Their hard work is paying off, and it’s reflected in their loan growth."

Bankoh got a big boost in the quarter with a $10.1 million net gain resulting from the sale of 95,000 Visa Class B shares. That helped boost Bankoh’s noninterest income 16.8 percent to $52.3 million from $44.8 million.

The bank had been selling $2 million of Visa stock each quarter, including the first quarter of 2014. Ho said the unnamed U.S. financial institution that it works with changed the minimum transaction requirement to $10 million. Ho said the bank won’t sell any more Visa stock this year and now will plan to sell its shares once a year rather than four times. The bank obtained the Visa shares for its membership stake in the card company when it went public in 2008, and as of March 31 had 297,814 shares remaining.

"You really can’t take the growth in EPS this quarter as an absolute indicator simply because we had a big gain in the quarter from selling Visa shares," Ho said. ("EPS" stands for earnings per share.) "Having said that, when you look at where the loan growth has gone, when you look at deposits, when you look at the fact that the bank is over $15 billion in assets, when you look at the credit quality we’re exhibiting as an organization, I would have to say I’m very pleased with how we have performed."

Bankoh also lowered its tax rate by contributing 4,700 Visa Class B shares to the Bank of Hawaii Foundation, which benefits nonprofit organizations.

The bank’s lending portfolio, which has been strong in recent quarters, rose to $7.18 billion from $6.21 billion in the year-earlier quarter. Deposits also were strong, rising 7.8 percent to $12.98 billion from $12.04 billion. Ho said the strength in deposits also was attributable to both the consumer and commercial sectors.

Bankoh’s assets gained 6.1 percent to $15.14 billion, marking only the second time it has surpassed the $15 billion level. The last time it reached that threshold was at the end of 1998 when it finished the year at $15.02 billion. That was during the bank’s ill-fated international expansion, when it had branches in such places such as Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Seoul and Manila. Those branches were either closed or sold under former CEO Mike O’Neill beginning in 2001.