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First Hawaiian Bank files for initial public offering

STAR-ADVERTISER / 2009

French banking giant BNP Paribas is selling a portion of First Hawaiian Bank, which it fully owns. Shown is the bank’s headquarters at the corner of Bishop and King streets.

First Hawaiian Bank is going to become a publicly traded company again.

The state’s largest bank, filing under the name First Hawaiian Inc., submitted its long-anticipated registration statement for an initial public offering of stock Friday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

First Hawaiian is seeking to raise up to $100 million in the offering, but a report from Connecticut-based Renaissance Capital, an IPO research company, estimates the offering could raise $1 billion depending on demand for the available shares.

GOING PUBLIC

First Hawaiian Bank is planning to be publicly traded for the first time since 2001.

>> Proposed offering: $100 million

>> Projected offering: $1 billion

>> Valuation of bank: $3 billion to $5 billion

>> IPO price and date: Undetermined

>> Stock market: Nasdaq

>> Ticker symbol: FHB

>> Assets: $19.1 billion (as of March 31)

>> Branches: 62

Source: Securities and Exchange Commission, Star-Advertiser research

French banking giant BNP Paribas, which owns 100 percent of First Hawaiian, is selling a portion of the company to raise capital. BNP plans to retain majority ownership of the bank but relinquish that control over time, according to the filing. First Hawaiian will not receive any proceeds from the sale.

First Hawaiian, which was founded in 1858 and is the state’s oldest bank, said in the filing that it will be listed on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol FHB.

The filing, which will be amended at a later date, doesn’t include the estimated initial price range for shares, nor does it include the number of shares that will be offered, the percentage ownership that will be retained by BNP or the date the IPO will take place. Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Merrill Lynch are among the underwriters.

As part of its filing, the bank also was required to disclose its executive and director compensation. Chairman and CEO Bob Harrison received a pay package in 2015 worth $2.3 million, up 16.3 percent from just under $2 million in 2014. The $2.3 million would make him the second-highest-paid bank CEO in the state behind Bank of Hawaii’s Peter Ho at $5.2 million.

Harrison also would rank as the fifth-highest-paid executive of a publicly traded company in Hawaii. Ahead of him would be Ho, Matson Inc. CEO Matt Cox ($4.4 million), Hawaiian Airlines CEO Mark Dunkerley ($3.3 million) and Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc. CEO Connie Lau ($2.7 million). Harrison’s pay package includes a salary of $800,000, a bonus of $725,000, BNP stock awards worth $27,154, nonequity incentive plan compensation of $621,810 that represents an annual cash payment tied to meeting certain corporate goals, and “all other compensation” totaling $110,838 that includes company-provided parking, automobile allowance and related expenses, club dues and fees, spousal travel expenses and noncash gifts provided to First Hawaiian directors.

Banking analyst Joe Morford, who covers Bank of Hawaii and Central Pacific Bank as well as mainland financial institutions, said Friday that he values First Hawaiian in the post-Brexit era at between $3 billion and $3.5 billion. That is down from the range of $4 billion to $5 billion cited by sources in the Wall Street Journal in April. If the offering raises $1 billion, as is projected by Renaissance Capital and earlier Wall Street Journal sources, that means BNP would have sold about one-third to one-quarter of the company, Morford said.

“It’s a tough market for bank stocks in general, particularly in the wake of Brexit and what we’ve seen post-Brexit,” said Morford, of San Francisco-based investment bank RBC Capital Markets. “That’s added uncertainty to the economy and, most notably, the expectation of rate hikes by the Federal Reserve has gotten pushed back yet again. At the same time, we have seen a further flattening of the yield curve, and so that suggests a struggling revenue environment for the banks. We’ve seen the group underperform the broader market this year.”

Morford said Bank of Hawaii, the state’s second-largest bank, offers the best comparison when trying to value First Hawaiian but that First Hawaiian’s return on equity (ROE), a measure of how well the bank uses its capital to generate additional earnings, is not as strong as Bank of Hawaii’s.

“The ROE is not as high as Bank of Hawaii, so (the valuation of) First Hawaiian is likely to come at about a 10 percent discount,” Morford said. “That suggests a value of more likely in the $3 billion-to-$3.5 billion range rather than the $4 billion-to-$5 billion range. First Hawaiian is also new to the public markets — although obviously it was publicly traded years ago — and it doesn’t exactly have a track record in the public market.”

Still, he said First Hawaiian has an advantage of doing business in a strong local economy.

“The bank has a lot to offer,” Morford said. “First Hawaiian is a very attractive franchise. Hawaii is an attractive banking market, and it is one of the strongest economies in the country. It has low unemployment, tourism numbers have been relatively healthy, there’s a lot of construction going on and the housing market is doing well. There’s a fair amount of economic activity. It’s a good place to be a bank, and, basically, Bank of Hawaii and First Hawaiian have a duopoly in that market with a dominant market share. Bank of Hawaii is a very profitable bank, and First Hawaiian offers a lot of the same attributes. Unfortunately, it’s a tough time for bank stocks.”

BNP said in December it was considering strategic alternatives for First Hawaiian, including a sale of the bank as a way to generate more capital and satisfy a rising regulatory requirement to have a higher ratio of capital to assets.

Since that time, various news reports have indicated that BNP was planning an IPO for the bank, but First Hawaiian and BNP never confirmed that scenario prior to Friday’s filing.

First Hawaiian declined to comment Friday.

As of March 31 the bank had $19.1 billion in assets, $11 billion in gross loans and $16.1 billion in deposits. First Hawaiian had net income of $65.5 million during the first three months of this year and earned $213.8 million in 2015. It has 62 branches overall: 57 in Hawaii, three on Guam and two on Saipan.

First Hawaiian could join competitor American Savings Bank, the state’s third-largest bank, in becoming independently traded later this year. American Savings will be spun off by parent Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc. if the state Public Utilities Commission approves Florida-based NextEra Energy Inc.’s $4.3 billion pending acquisition of HEI. The spinoff is required as part of that deal.

The IPO of First Hawaiian will mark the first time that the bank will be publicly traded in 15 years. BNP acquired 45 percent ownership of First Hawaiian in 1998 as part of a merger with San Francisco-based Bank of the West and then bought the balance in 2001.

One response to “First Hawaiian Bank files for initial public offering”

  1. allie says:

    Ho makes 5.2 million dollars..yikes!

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