CBBI profit jumps
26% in quarter

» A&B earnings drop 56%
» BancWest reports higher earnings

---

By Russ Lynch
rlynch@starbulletin.com

CB Bancshares Inc., Hawaii parent of 21-branch City Bank, posted a 26 percent increase in first-quarter profit.

The company reported yesterday net income of $3.5 million, or $1.01 a share, for the three months through March 31, compared to a net of $2.8 million, or 80 cents a share, in the year-earlier quarter.

Ronald K. Migita, the bank's president and chief executive officer, said higher net interest income, higher income from services other than interest, and the company's ongoing steps to improve efficiency all contributed to the improved result.

Net interest income, the bottom line from the cost of attracting deposits and other funds and what comes in from loans, was $19.4 million in the latest quarter, up 23 percent from $15.8 million in the first quarter of 2001. Non-interest income was $4 million in the recent quarter, up 22 percent from a year-earlier $3.2 million.

Migita said the increase in non-interest income was primarily from a $605,000 increase in service charges and fees, due to a higher volume of business.

At March 31, the company had assets of $1.54 billion, down 10.8 percent from a year-earlier $1.73 billion. Deposits of $1.1 billion were down 11.7 percent from $1.26 billion at the end of March 2001. Loans of $1.18 billion were down 9.8 percent from a year-earlier $1.31 billion.

As other banks have done, CB Bancshares took a strong approach to loans that were not profitable or were delinquent, trimming them in a way that lowered the asset total but produced better-performing assets.

Nonperforming loans were trimmed 11.8 percent to $15.3 million at the end of March from a year-earlier $17.4 million and nonperforming assets, such as investments, were cut 4.5 percent to $19.2 million, from $18.3 million.

However, the bank increased its provision for credit losses by 75 percent to $4.9 million, from a year-earlier $2.8 million because of what Migita called the "continued economic uncertainty both locally and nationally."