Castle & Cooke
earnings jump 53%
Rising Oahu home sales and
By Russ Lynch
declining losses at Lanai
hotels help boost profits
Star-Bulletin
Increased sales of new homes on Oahu, at higher prices, helped Castle & Cooke Inc. improve its second-quarter profit by 53 percent.
Losses at its Lanai hotels also declined, the company said today as it reported an overall second-quarter net profit of $3.95 million, compared with $2.59 million in the year-earlier quarter.
The per-share profit of 23 cents a share in the latest quarter was up proportionately more, 76.9 percent, from 13 cents in the 1998 quarter, because of a stock buyback that reduced the number of shares outstanding.
Second-quarter revenues of $81.9 million this year were up 17.8 percent from $69.5 million in the 1998 quarter, the Los Angeles-based company said.
On Oahu, the company delivered 107 homes in the latest quarter, a 15 percent increase from 93 in the year-earlier quarter, at an average price of $312,000, up 15.6 percent from $270,000 in the 1998 period.
The company ended the quarter with a backlog of 117 Oahu homes sold but not completed, a 24.5 percent increase from 94 a year earlier.
On the mainland, the company delivered 17 new homes in the latest quarter, a 325 percent increase from four in the 1998 quarter. The average mainland price was $197,000, up 84.1 percent from $107,000. As of June 30 there was a mainland backlog of 34 homes, up from three a year earlier.
Also on the mainland, Castle & Cooke delivered 265 home sites to buyers, a 3.6 percent decrease from 275 in the 1998 quarter.
On Lanai, the company lost $1.2 million in the latest three months from its resort operations, before counting its sales of luxury homes and depreciation expenses. The company owns and operates the Manele Bay Hotel and the Lodge at Koele. In the previous second quarter, those operations had an operating loss of $1.5 million.
Including the luxury home sales, the Lanai business produced an operating loss of $3 million, compared with $1.5 million the year-earlier period.
The company ended June with five sales contracts in place for luxury town houses under construction at Manele Bay, worth a total of more than $7 million.
