James Ajello
Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Thanks, Connie. I will first briefly address the Hawaii economy. Hawaii's tourism industry is a significant driver of Hawaii's economy continued to reflect a trend of positive growth from 2010. Year-to-date June, tourism continued its strong recovery with visitor arrivals up 4.7% and visitor expenditures up 18.4% as compared to last year. June 2011 was the 14th straight month of increases in visitor spending. Hawaii's visitor arrivals from Japan declined 9% year-to-date through June compared to the same period last year, but this decline was more than offset by the increase from all other markets, which was up 8%. The Hawaii Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism expects 2011 visitor arrivals to increase by 3.8% from last year and visitor spending to increase 10.8% and believes visitor spending is currently on pace to reach the record level set in 2007. Some of the optimism surrounding the tourism recovery in the second half of 2011 revolves around the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit also known as APEC. Being held in Hawaii in November, APEC is estimated to bring in approximately 20,000 visitors to the islands. Hawaii's unemployment rate of 6% has come down 0.3% from the beginning of the year and continues to track significantly better than the national rate of 9.2% in June. Statewide residential home sales and median prices were down in June. Tighter inventory levels and mix of homes being sold and the elimination of the 2010 federal tax credit have often been sited of these factors in the softer sales in median prices. Overall, Hawaii's economic recovery is expected to strengthen as improvement spreads beyond the tourism sector over the remainder of 2011. Moving to Slide 7, at the utility, net income for the second quarter of 2011 was $17 million compared to $17.6 million in the second quarter of 2010. The various after-tax components of the $0.6 million net income decline are detailed here, and I will highlight just a few. O&M expense was up 6%, in line with our prior guidance for a full year increase of 7%. We had $2 million of unusual items that are unlikely to recur including a 2011 filling adjustment and 2010 fuel cost recovery of previously recognized biofuels costs. $1 million in lower fuel efficiency savings is attributable to the implementation of the heat rate deadband, which became effective with decoupling. This variance could fluctuate from quarter-to-quarter depending on how we operate our systems. The quarter benefited from several key developments, including $2 million in rate relief granted in our 2010 Hawaii Island and Maui rate cases and $2 million lower depreciation expense from the change in depreciation rates and methods for our Hawaii Island and Maui County utilities. Decoupling revenue for our Oahu utility including one month of the RAM, which commenced in June was essentially flat with second quarter 2010 revenue. At the bank, net income for the second quarter of 2011 was $15.2 million compared to $13.9 million in the linked quarter and $16.1 million in same quarter last year. The $1.3 million increase from the linked quarter included, on an after-tax basis, $1 million of lower provision for loan losses from continued improvement in credit quality and portfolio mix, $1 million in higher noninterest income from a nonrecurring insurance gain and higher fee income. These are partially offset by $1 million in higher noninterest expense. Now we'll look at the utility. Slide 9 reflects key earnings drivers for the remainder of the year. We expect HECO interim rate relief to improve earnings in the second half of the year. The interim decision include several items requiring additional review and consideration for the final decision. The timing and outcome of the resolution of the pending matters could impact our ability to narrow our ROE gap as well as improve earnings. Commission will review HECO's labor costs and the deferral of cost for yet to be completed projects for their final decision. PUC allowed the deferral of cost, depreciation expense and carrying charges for 2 projects totaling $75 million that were not approved in base rates pending an independent regulatory review. For accounting purposes, HECO will record the equity portion of the carrying charge when it is allowed in electric rates. We cannot predict the timing and outcome of these matters. With decoupling, HECO Oahu net revenues will be set to the 2011 rate case. 2011 RAMs that commenced in June have been incorporated into the HECO interim rates, which became effective on July 26. 2012 RAMs will be effective in June 2012. While the implementation of these mechanisms is very helpful, we hope to make them more compensatory in the future. Since HELCO and MECO continue to await decoupling implementation, we are updating our prior kilowatthour sales guidance for those 2 utilities. Based on year-to-date results, we now expect full kilowatthour sales to be flat as 2010. On O&M, we are lowering our original expectation for a 7% increase as a result of management actions we will have to implement to reduce costs relative to our original plan. The goal is to manage costs to levels that are consistent with our recent rate positions. As a result, we are targeting O&M to be flat for the year compared to the prior year. Consequently, in the second half of 2011, we expect a decline in O&M expenses compared to the same period last year. Our 2011 rate base growth is now expected to be 1% in 2011 instead of 2% previously guided. This is primarily due to changes in our estimates for the impact of bonus depreciation on rate base. Our 5% compounded annual growth rate over 5 years remains unchanged. Slide 10 shows our actual ROEs for the trailing 12 months. It also demonstrates the opportunity we have to repair our under-earning situation and narrow the gap between our earned values versus allowed ROEs. With the rate relief granted over the last several quarters, HELCO and MECO are showing improvement. Since HECO Oahu just implemented its 2011 interim rates in the third quarter, we expect to repair its severely earning -- under-earning situation going forward. Our goal for HECO Oahu will be more difficult to achieve than we originally anticipated but it remains unchanged. We continue to work towards achieving ROE within 100 basis points of our allowed of 10% for the calendar year 2012. In May 2011 RAM decision, which delays 2012 RAM implementation to June 2012 and the July interim rate case decision in order, which significantly reduced expense levels, requires us to pursue mitigating strategies to overcome these challenges. Now we'll look more closely at the bank performance metrics. On Slide 12, our net interest margin was 4.07% and remains well above our industry peers. Compared to prior periods, we recognized a lower level of deferred loan fees from both lower commercial loan prepayments and lower mortgage refinancings and growth in lower yielding assets such as commercial, variable rate loans and home equity loans continue to mix the overall asset yield down at present, which should provide a lift as interest rates rise. These impacts were partially offset by lower liability costs. As you can see here, our liability cost of 35 basis points is less than half that of our banking peer average. This is driven by our low-cost deposit base, a key differentiator for ASB and the Hawaii banking market versus the industry as a whole. Turning to Slide 13. The bank recorded $2.6 million of provision for loan losses in the second quarter. This was down $2 million from the linked quarter, consistent with the absence of any commercial loss, large commercial loss, continued modest asset quality improvement and faster run-off of our higher risk residential land loans portfolio. Turning to the bank's balance sheet on Slide 14. Here we show you asset and funding mix of our peer banks and ASB. We compared ASB's June 30, 2011, balance sheet to the last complete available data set for our peers at March 31, 2011. 96% of our loan portfolio was funded with low-cost core deposits, a significantly higher percentage than our peer banks of 81%. We are able to reduce our cost of funds further in the second quarter, as we reduced our higher costing CDs and grew our low-cost deposit to $3.5 billion, an increase of $53 million from the linked quarter and $223 million from the same quarter last year. We also increased total loans by $31 million from the linked quarter for a total loan balance of $3.6 billion. As Connie mentioned, this is the third consecutive quarter of loan growth in the bank. We remain well capitalized with a Tier 1 leverage ratio of 9.1%, tangible common equity to total assets of 8.5% and total risk-based capital ratio of 13.3%, all at June 30, 2011. At the same time, ASB continues to pay a healthy dividend to HEI. In the second quarter, ASB paid $14 million of dividends and expect to pay annual dividends of almost $60 million to HEI in 2011. Moving to credit quality on Slide 15. ASB's nonperforming assets ratio declined to 1.69%. The 13-basis point decline from the linked quarter was primarily due to decreases in the land loan and residential 1- to 4-family mortgages portfolio. Our primary credit risks continue to be in the 3 shrinking portfolios that we have described to you previously and are now down $100 million or 19% over the last year to $419 million in aggregate. These include $52 million of residential land loans, primarily on the neighbor islands, $281 million of neighbor island 1- to 4 mortgages produced from 2005 to 2007 and $86 million of the run-off portfolio of mainland residential loans purchased. On Slide 16, our net loan charge-off ratio of 45 basis points remains low and improved further over the linked quarter by 4 basis points. The allowance for loan and lease losses currently represents roughly 1.1% of outstanding loans, consistent with the linked quarter at $39.3 million. This is $1.5 million lower than the linked quarter at $40.8 million but higher than the prior year level of $37.1 million. Slide 17, you can see our focus remains on modest loan growth concentrated in adjustable rate products such as home equity lines of credit and commercial accounts. We're moderating the rate of decline in our fixed rate residential portfolio. We are on track for mid-single-digit loan growth for the year and continued modest decline in the net interest margin as lower yield assets are added to the portfolio. Our biggest operating challenge remains mitigating the impact of continuously evolving regulations on our noninterest income. Based on our experience to date and current implementation of the guidance, we now expect overdraft fee income to decline by approximately $9 million pretax total for the year from the $21 million recognized in 2010. This represents a $3 million decline expected in the second half of 2011 compared to the same period last year. One regulatory change that will not affect us relates to debit card interchange fees. Based on our asset base, American Savings Bank is exempt from the new cap established by the Federal Reserve Board on what fee issuers can charge per debit card transaction. While we are not directly impacted, it is too early to tell whether competitive market pressures will indirectly affect exempted banks. We also expect lower second half noninterest income when compared to the second half of 2010 as we do not expect the repeat of that period's residential mortgage refinancing loan and the associated gain on sale of those refinanced mortgages to the secondary market. As a result, the downward pressure of these 2 elements on our noninterest income, we now expect 2011 pretax pre-provision income to be in the range of $105 million to $110 million, just below our near-term performance target of $110 million to $120 million. We still expect our low-cost funding base, efficient cost structure and lower risk profile to continue to deliver strong results compared to the industry. Moving to Slide 19. Given HEI's outlook for our equity needs going forward, management decided to temporarily satisfy the demand for shares for our dividend reinvestment, retirement savings and other plans through open market purchases rather than new share issuances. We expect this to be effective in late August until the end of the year and should result in a reduction in common equity issued of approximately $20 million for the balance of 2011. Management will then evaluate the matter on a quarterly basis thereafter. Our projected equity needs have declined due to the timing of capital expenditures as a utility. In addition, we continue to maintain a solid capitalization ratio of 51% and strong liquidity positions. We have prefunded much of our $100 million senior notes that matures later this month, and we have $300 million of untapped credit facilities between HECO and HEI. Even with the switched open market purchases for DRIP, we expect short-term borrowings to be comfortably within our credit facility limits. And On August 1, Moody's reaffirmed HEI's current Baa2 senior unsecured debt rating and stable outlook. And that would be Baa1 for HECO and stable outlook. Under these assumptions, we do not require additional equity other than possibly through DRIP through the latter part of 2012. Now I'll turn it back to Connie.