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First Hawaiian
parent’s net
soars 244%
BancWest's 1998 merger
By Russ Lynch
and an acquisition last year led
to a record fourth quarter
Star-Bulletin
BancWest Corp. had a profit of $48.5 million, or 39 cents a share, in the final quarter of 1999, compared to a profit of $14.1 million, or 7 cents a share, in the final quarter of 1998.
The 244 percent increase, producing a record quarter, was mostly because of the November 1998 merger of First Hawaiian Inc. and Bank of the West, which created Honolulu-headquartered BancWest.
That merger and the July 1999 acquisition of SierraWest Bancorp make the two quarters not directly comparable.
Still, the financial report yesterday, just hours after BancWest announced it is purchasing 68 branches of other banks in Utah and Idaho, shows that the merger strategy has been successful.
"Our performance in the year since we created BancWest Corp. is solid evidence that the 1998 merger has been good for our shareholders and for the customers who rely on us for financial services," said BancWest Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Walter A. Dods Jr.
"By hitting the financial targets we laid out when we announced the merger with Bank of the West, we set a record for earnings per share in 1999. We also increased our shareholders' quarterly dividend nearly 10 percent and split our common stock 2-for-1, improving the marketability of BancWest shares to the average investor."
Lately, the company has stressed its cash earnings results, because they don't include amortization of goodwill and other accounting items related to mergers but unrelated to month-to-month performance.
The cash result for BancWest in the latest quarter was a profit of $56.7 million, or 46 cents a share, up 183.7 percent from cash earnings of $41.8 million, or 40 cents a share, in the year-earlier quarter.
For all of last year, BancWest had a profit of $172.4 million, up 104.5 percent from $84.3 million. Full-year income per share was $1.38, up 31.4 percent from $1.05 in 1998. Complicating the financial report was the fact that the SierraWest acquisition was accounted for as a pooling of interests and BancWest therefore had to include SierraWest's results in a way that would have been the case if it had owned SierraWest for all of last year. The Bank of the West merger was treated as a purchase so its results were included only from Nov. 1 1998. BancWest ended 1999 with assets of $16.7 billion, up 4.7 percent from the end of 1998; loans of $12.5 billion, up 4.7 percent; and deposits of $12.9 billion, up 6.9 percent.
