IN HAWAII

Falling oil prices hand Barnwell a loss

Barnwell Industries Inc., hurt by a steep decline in petroleum prices, said today it lost $220,000 in its fiscal 2002 third quarter as oil and natural gas revenues plunged 28 percent.

The Honolulu-based company, which operates its energy business primarily in Alberta, Canada, had a gain of $740,000, or 55 cents a share, a year ago. It had a loss of 17 cents a share in the just-concluded quarter.

Morton H. Kinzler, Barnwell's chairman and chief executive officer, said during the first nine months of the company's fiscal year prices decreased 55 percent for natural gas, 51 percent for natural gas liquids and 24 percent for oil from year-ago levels.

Barnwell, which also has a 77.6 percent stake in Kaupulehu Developments on the Big Island, said Kaupulehu is having discussions with third parties about the development of its leasehold land.

Overall, revenues for the company fell 31.4 percent to $4 million from $5.8 million.

Datatronix signs California contract

City Bank parent CB Bancshares Inc. said yesterday that its outsourcing services subsidiary has entered into an agreement with Sacramento-based River City Bank to provide check-processing services beginning in January.

Datatronix Financial Services Inc., which CB Bancshares formed in 2000, also will make available check-imaging services to River City Bank customers via the Internet.

River City Bank, which has assets in excess of $600 million, is the first West Coast financial institution to use Datatronix's services. Datatronix recently opened an item-processing center in San Leandro, Calif., to service the Northern California market.

Hawaiian Airlines passengers up slightly

Hawaiian Airlines' added mainland flights produced a small increase in the total number of passengers last month, as more and longer flights compensated for the continued drop in interisland traffic.

Hawaiian carried 557,453 passengers on its scheduled July flights in its mainland-Hawaii, interisland and Hawaii-South Pacific flights, up 0.8 percent from 553,139 a year earlier.

Occupancy, called the load factor, dropped to 81.6 percent last month from 84.4 percent in July 2001. Revenue passenger miles, the total number of passengers in its system times the distance they traveled, climbed 17.1 percent to 531 million last month from 453 million in July 2001. Available seat miles, the number of seats times the number of miles they were available, rose 21.1 percent.

The airline's public statements do not break out performance for each of its sectors but the numbers support what Hawaiian has been saying, that interisland business plummeted after Sept. 11 while the longer hauls held steady.

HEI execs endorse financial statements

Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc.'s top executives today submitted sworn statements certifying the accuracy of their company's financial statements dating back to their last annual report.

Robert F. Clarke, HEI's chairman, president and chief executive officer, and Robert F. Mougeot, vice president, treasurer and chief financial officer, signed statements under oath to comply with the Security and Exchange Commission's order for the nation's largest publicly traded companies.

In addition, Clarke and Mougeot signed certifications to comply with the recently enacted Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002; as did the CEO and CFO of HEI subsidiary Hawaiian Electric Company Inc.