Peter Ho
Analyst · D.A. Davidson
Thanks, Janelle. Hello, everyone. We appreciate your interest in Bank of Hawaii. First quarter was a good start to 2022 for the organization. As is our custom, I'll share with you some thoughts on the broader market here in the islands. I'll then turn the call over to Dean to talk about the financials and then we'll turn the call over to Mary to give you some perspective on the credit side, and then I'll close with some concluding thoughts, and then we'd be happy to take your questions. So beginning with the economy, things appear to be shaping up, stable, and improving is what I would call it. Here, you see our unemployment numbers, unemployment now down to 4.1%. I think when you look at the forecast numbers out that UHERO has put in there, obviously, I think, clearly, those are due for adjustment, and I think probably impacted by some of the changes of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. So, all in all, I think a pretty good performance unemployment wise. When you look at the -- some of the high-frequency data that the university also puts out what they call their economic pulse, which is an aggregation of a bunch of high-frequency data, you'll see that really that rating is up to its highest level ever in the new environment that we find ourselves in. So as of the past couple of weeks, that ratings hit 81 points to give you some frame of reference, our prior peak was 75 in the summer of 2020 just before Delta hit. And then those numbers took a dip with Delta and then Omicron now. So, nice to be back, up at a high and hopefully moving forward from there. Switching to real estate. Here, you see that the real estate market, at least here on Oahu, our primary market, continues to do quite well. So price point still elevated at very high levels, both single-family as well as condominium. And also, you see that the pervasive inventory or shortage of inventory continues to be the case and not likely to see much change in that environment anytime sooner, then therefore I wouldn't expect to see too much erosion in price points, certainly not in '22. Next slide, switching over to the visitor side, this is really an evolving story. You see -- you can see in the chart that 2022 levels are getting closer to 2019 levels of pre-pandemic levels. The numbers are from an arrival down point down, still 25% from 2019. But that's really the tale of two marketplaces. U.S. arrivals, both East and West U.S. arrivals, are up year-to-date 8% from 2019, but clearly the drag was dragging down the entire market are the Japanese down 98%, Canada down 61%, and other international marketplace is down 70%. Interestingly, when we look at spending patterns, the news isn't quite as bad there. Spending is down. And remember, I told you, arrivals were down 25%, but spending is only down 9.9% this year-to-date through February. And this reflects a very robust U.S. consumer. So U.S. spending, our U.S. market spending in the islands year-to-date February is up 27% and offset somewhat by Japan, Canada and other international. Just to finish off on the visitor side, RevPAR performance, which, as you can imagine, has been quite difficult through the pandemic is really starting to look up. So, the last three months beginning in December, RevPAR in the state was actually plus 7.6% versus 2019 levels. January was off slightly at minus 1.3% versus 2019, and February bounced back nicely to plus 4% versus 2019. So all in all, what we see in the visitor segment is kind of a reasonable performance given what's happening in the various marketplaces like a good -- a fair amount of -- a fair case for optimism as we look forward and hopefully welcome the Japanese visitors back hopefully towards the tail end of this year. So that's it for my open. And let me now turn the call over to Dean to share the financials. Dean?