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Castle & Cooke
earnings jump 136%

Lanai resort operations are strong
but Oahu home sales decline

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

Helped by the first-ever quarterly profit from its Lanai resort and property operations since it started its developments there in 1986, Castle & Cooke Inc. said today that it had a 136 percent increase in total profit for the first quarter.

Home sales were down on Oahu, but the Los Angeles-based company's overall residential property business was up, thanks to stronger mainland sales.

Castle & Cooke said its first-quarter net this year was $5.7 million, or 33 cents a share, up from a profit of $2.8 million, or 16 cents a share, in the 1999 quarter.

The company's stock fell 12 cents to $18 on the New York Stock Exchange but is still up nearly 42 percent so far this year.

Additional group business at the two Lanai resort hotels -- the Lodge at Koele and the Manele Bay Hotel -- helped Lanai resort operations show an operating profit of $1.9 million in this year's first quarter, a turnaround from a loss of $1.7 million in the year-earlier period.

The company said it closed 11 home and lot sales on Lanai in the latest quarter for about $10.4 million.

On Oahu, the company delivered 72 homes in the first quarter for $19.1 million, an average of $265,000.

In the year-earlier quarter, there were 76 deliveries on Oahu at an average of $281,000, for a total of $21.4 million.

Total mainland and Oahu residences delivered were worth $229.1 million, up 3.4 percent from a year-earlier $221.6 million.