First Hawaiian, Inc. Q1 2026 Earnings Call - Asset Sensitivity Drives NIM Resilience Amid Rate Uncertainty

Josh, Conference Operator: Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the First Hawaiian, Inc. Q1 2026 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. After the speaker’s presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Kevin Haseyama, Investor Relations Manager.

James Moses, Chief Financial Officer, First Hawaiian, Inc.: Thank you, Josh, and thank you everyone for joining us as we review our financial results for the first quarter of 2026. With me today are Robert Harrison, Chairman, President, and CEO, James Moses, Chief Financial Officer, and Lea Nakamura, Chief Risk Officer. We have prepared a slide presentation that we will refer to in our remarks today. The presentation is available for downloading and viewing on our website at fhb.com in the investor relations section. During today’s call, we will be making forward-looking statements, so please refer to slide one for our safe harbor statement. We may also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. The appendix to this presentation contains reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measurements to the most directly comparable GAAP measurements. Now I’ll turn the call over to Bob.

Robert Harrison, Chairman, President, and CEO, First Hawaiian, Inc.: Thank you everyone for joining us today. I wanted to start by sharing our support for the communities impacted by the recent flooding in Hawaii from the Kona low storms and Typhoon Sinlaku in Guam and Saipan. It’s really important for us to support our communities, and we are actively providing relief and support to help our customers and those affected in the relative communities. Moving on to an outlook. The statewide unemployment rate remained relatively stable at 2.2% in January. That compares to the national rate at 4.3% for the same month. Through February, total visitor arrivals were up 7.1% compared to last year, primarily due to more visitors from the U.S. mainland and Japan. Year-to-date spending through February was $4.2 billion, up 14.8% compared to 2025 levels for the same period.

At this point, it’s too soon to know how tourism and the local economy might be impacted by the recent global events. The housing market remains stable, with the median single-family home sales price on Oahu in March at $1.2 million, up 3.4% from the prior year. The median condo sales price on Oahu in March was $510,000, up 2% from the prior year. Turning to slide two. We had a strong start to the year. Loans and deposits grew, credit quality remained solid, and we remained well capitalized. Our return on average tangible assets of 1.2% and return on average tangible equity of 15.3% for the first quarter. The effective tax rate for the first quarter was 22.5%. Turning to slide three.

The balance sheet remains solid as we continue to be well capitalized with ample liquidity. We remain asset sensitive and well-positioned to benefit from a higher for-longer rate scenario. During the quarter, we repurchased about 1.3 million shares at a cost of $32 million. Turning to slide 4. Total loans grew over 128 million in the quarter, up 3.6% on an annualized basis. We had good growth in CRE and C&I loans, partially offset by runoff in residential loan portfolio and payoffs in the construction loan portfolio. Some of the growth in the CRE portfolio and decline in construction portfolio were due to completed construction projects converting to permanent financing. Now I’ll turn it over to Jamie Moses.

James Moses, Chief Financial Officer, First Hawaiian, Inc.: Thanks, Bob. Turning to slide 5. We delivered solid deposit momentum in the quarter, with total deposits increasing by $262 million, driven primarily by growth in public operating balances. Retail and commercial deposits were modestly higher and, importantly, did not experience the typical seasonal outflows we have seen at the start of prior years, which we view as a positive signal. Public deposits increased $244 million, reflecting higher operating account balances. We continue to see meaningful improvement in funding costs, with the total cost of deposits declining 7 basis points to 1.22%. Our non-interest-bearing deposit ratio remained healthy at 31%, reinforcing the strength and stability of our core funding base. On slide 6, net interest income for the quarter was $167 and a half million, down $2.8 million from the prior quarter.

Net interest margin was 3.19%, a decline of 2 basis points sequentially. This reflects the full quarter impact of the December rate cut. As we look ahead, we expect the balance sheet repricing story to continue throughout the year. Turning to slide 7. Non-interest income totaled $52.8 million for the quarter. The decline from last quarter was primarily attributed to lower BOLI income and swap fee activity, which we view as timing related rather than structural. Non-interest expense was $127.9 million, and there were no material, unusual or non-recurring items in the quarter. Our expense profile remains well controlled and aligned with our full-year outlook. With that, I’ll turn it over to Lea to review our credit performance.

Thank you, James.

Lea Nakamura, Chief Risk Officer, First Hawaiian, Inc.: Moving to slide eight, the bank continued to maintain its strong credit performance and healthy credit metrics in the first quarter. Credit risk remains low, stable, and well within our expectations. Overall, we’re not observing any broad signs of weakness across either the consumer or commercial books. Criticized assets decreased by 21 basis points, and non-performing assets and loans 90 days or more past due were 30 basis points of total loans and leases, down one basis point from the prior quarter, resulting from a decrease in dealer flooring non-accruals. Quarter to date net charge-offs were $4.9 million, or 14 basis points of average loans and leases, unchanged from the fourth quarter. The bank recorded a $5 million provision in the first quarter. The allowance for credit losses increased by just under $1 million to $169 million, with a coverage ratio of 1.17% of total loans and leases.

We believe that we are conservatively reserved and ready for a wide range of outcomes.

Robert Harrison, Chairman, President, and CEO, First Hawaiian, Inc.: Thanks, Lea. Turning to slide nine, we have updated our outlook for key performance drivers. We continue to expect full year loan growth to be in the 3%-4% range. With the markets now expecting no rate cuts this year, we have revised our full year NIM outlook to be in the 3.22%-3.23% range. We expect second quarter NIM to be up two to three basis points from the first quarter. Our outlook for non-interest income remains about $220 million for the year. Finally, we expect expenses to gradually increase throughout the year, and we continue to forecast full year expenses will be about $520 million. That concludes our prepared remarks, and now we’d be happy to take your questions.

Josh, Conference Operator: Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press 11 again. One moment for questions. Our first question comes from Anthony Elian with JPMorgan. You may proceed.

Anthony Elian, Analyst, JPMorgan: Great. Thanks. James, on the outlook, the drivers of the 2-3 basis points sequential increase in NIM in 2Q, could you help us unpack that a little bit? What’s driving that in the range for full year moving higher, and is that entirely coming from no rate cuts this year?

James Moses, Chief Financial Officer, First Hawaiian, Inc.: Hi, Tony. Good morning. The right answer to that is the balance sheet repricing story that we’ve had and seen for the last year or two. Again, just to remind everybody, we have about $400 million of fixed rate cash flows that come off every quarter, that get repriced at about a 155 basis point spread higher on a weighted average basis between loans and securities. Tony, that’s really the driver as we go forward, right? We still are an asset sensitive balance sheet. We will see a decline in NIM if there is a rate cut in any given quarter. The balance sheet repricing dynamics after that will sort of drive the NIM higher as we go forward.

Anthony Elian, Analyst, JPMorgan: Thank you. On expense, so you reiterated the outlook of $520 for the full year, but I think 1Q came in a little bit lower than what we were expecting, which would imply a pretty good pickup over the course of the year. Is that the right way to think about it, and what are the areas driving the increase in expense? Thank you.

James Moses, Chief Financial Officer, First Hawaiian, Inc.: Yeah. It’s going to be kind of broad-based, Tony, in terms of the areas. Hopefully we’ll get some more salary expense in there. As we’ve talked about, we’re looking to hire talented folks to come over and drive revenues for us. So hopefully that’s where we’ll see much of that pickup. Generally broad-based, and I think you are thinking about it correctly in terms of a little pickup and a ramp as we get throughout the year.

Anthony Elian, Analyst, JPMorgan: Thank you.

Josh, Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Jared Shaw with Barclays. You may proceed.

Jared Shaw, Analyst, Barclays: Hey, thanks. Good morning.

Robert Harrison, Chairman, President, and CEO, First Hawaiian, Inc.: Morning.

Jared Shaw, Analyst, Barclays: When you look at the growth, C&I growth has been pretty good. Any specific drivers sort of underpinning that, and can you update us on your appetite for mainland expansion and any of the hires, Jamie, that you’re talking about, should we think are coming maybe off island?

Robert Harrison, Chairman, President, and CEO, First Hawaiian, Inc.: Yeah, Jared, let me start with the loan outlook. Really, the $71 million in C&I growth for the quarter. About $24 million of that was dealer floor plan, and the rest were draws on existing lines of credit, both local companies and mainland companies. It was really pretty broad-based. Good growth in dealer flooring, which we appreciate. We look at that for the rest of the year as being an opportunity along with commercial real estate to continue to grow. On the hiring, yeah, we’re looking for people all over. Of course, we would strongly prefer to hire here locally, but if we are unable to do so, depending on that, we would look to the mainland.

Jared Shaw, Analyst, Barclays: On the floor planning, are you seeing utilization get back to more normal levels? I know it was pretty low for a while. Or is that growth coming from expanding the network?

Robert Harrison, Chairman, President, and CEO, First Hawaiian, Inc.: We added a new dealer relationship during the quarter, but that wasn’t all of it. I think it was a little bit of utilization. A mix of both.

Jared Shaw, Analyst, Barclays: Okay. Maybe separately, the securities yields are still pretty low and with the extra capital you have, would you consider sort of just putting on more of a cost of leverage?

play here or utilize some of the extra deposit growth on securities and sort of pre-fund some of that cash flow that’s going to be coming off? Or should we really just think that you’re going to be reinvesting cash flows as they happen?

James Moses, Chief Financial Officer, First Hawaiian, Inc.: Yeah, Jared, I think the answer to that is the latter piece of that. We’re just going to be reinvesting cash flows as they come off. No plans to do any sort of restructuring or anything at the moment. Again, at the moment, no plans to expand the size of the securities portfolio either. For now, it’s just going to be that. Just cash flows coming off and we’ll reinvest them.

Jared Shaw, Analyst, Barclays: Great. Thank you.

Josh, Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from David Visser with Raymond James. You may proceed.

David Visser, Analyst, Raymond James: Hey, good morning, everybody.

James Moses, Chief Financial Officer, First Hawaiian, Inc.: Morning, David.

David Visser, Analyst, Raymond James: I wanted to touch on maybe the competitive side. You kind of got a unique perspective. Just kind of curious, maybe if you could touch on the competitive dynamics both comparing and contrasting the mainland versus Hawaii. Are you starting to see competition shift from just pricing to more pushing on structures and standards? Just kind of curious if what you’re seeing on that front?

Robert Harrison, Chairman, President, and CEO, First Hawaiian, Inc.: Yeah. David, maybe I’ll start off on that. Yeah, the competitive nature, it’s always been a little bit more competitive. Put it this way, cyclically competitive on pricing. Now we’re getting a little bit more competitive on price, both primarily on the mainland, but a little bit here. It’s always been a bit more competitive on price in Hawaii, given the various banks’ low loan-to-deposit ratios. Everybody’s got liquidity they’re looking to put to work here in Hawaii. That’s always been an issue here. We are seeing it kind of cycle down slightly in our mainland markets. A little bit of that is, say, multifamily construction was higher on a spread a year and a half ago than it is today. I think that kind of speaks to that.

The other thing we’re seeing are the larger banks are taking bigger pieces of deals, and so there’s less available. There is a little bit more competition for deals themselves as some of the larger banks are increasing their hold levels. Does that address your question?

David Visser, Analyst, Raymond James: Yeah. No, that’s helpful. Appreciate you guys reiterated the fee income guide. I was just hoping you could walk through some of the business lines, kind of some of the underlying trends, and some of the puts and takes that you’re seeing there.

Robert Harrison, Chairman, President, and CEO, First Hawaiian, Inc.: Maybe I’ll start on the wealth side. We’re continuing to see really good interactions between our customers and our wealth advisors. That business has continued to grow year after year for many years now, and so I think that’s been a nice opportunity. The fees associated with our credit card business have been pretty stable. There’s movement quarter to quarter, a little stronger in Q4, a little less in Q1, but that’s pretty standard as far as what we would expect in that business. Jamie, anything you would add to that?

James Moses, Chief Financial Officer, First Hawaiian, Inc.: Yeah, I guess the only thing to add is there’s a portion of our BOLI that is market driven, and so that can be somewhat volatile, and we saw that a little bit here at the end of the first quarter with the market kind of underperforming, let’s call it. We took less fees related to that. Swap fee income in our loan book can kind of also be sort of cyclical just depending on what kind of lending we’re doing in a particular quarter and what our customers want. I think combine those couple things with all of what Bob mentioned, I think is where you get to on the fee guide.

David Visser, Analyst, Raymond James: Okay. Maybe just touching on the funding side, you’ve had a lot of success. This quarter was great. A lot of benefit from public funds this quarter. I was hoping you could touch on maybe some competition on the funding side and just how you think about gaining share, and driving market share growth on the deposit front, and what’s going to be the key drivers of that. Do you see more opportunity on the commercial or the retail side? Just kind of curious some of the funding trends you’re seeing?

Robert Harrison, Chairman, President, and CEO, First Hawaiian, Inc.: Yeah, for that and most of it, well, firstly, all of our deposits are here in market in our geography, it’s just a day in, day out, getting out there and meeting with customers and prospects and trying to sell them the different products and services we offer and see how we can make that work for them. It really is a ground game, I would call it, more than anything else. There’s not a lot of magic to it where it would change quarter over quarter. Certainly our folks are out there and trying to meet with customers both on the consumer, small business, the larger business side.

David Visser, Analyst, Raymond James: All right. Thank you.

Josh, Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Kelly Motta with KBW. You may proceed.

Kelly Motta, Analyst, KBW: Hey, good morning. Thanks for the question. Maybe on capital, really solid here. I apologize if it was asked already, but have you guys done any work on the proposed capital changes and the potential impact to your ratios here?

James Moses, Chief Financial Officer, First Hawaiian, Inc.: Yeah, we’ve done a little bit of work on it. We think that it could possibly add maybe 1% CET1 to our capital levels. Again, it’s proposed, and we’re not going to change our capital allocation strategy or our plans based on that. If it goes through the way it is, we think it’s about a 1% add.

Kelly Motta, Analyst, KBW: Got it. That’s really helpful. Otherwise, I mean, you’ve been very consistent here with the share repurchase. It seems like that’s probably, even with the growth having picked up, probably a good expectation. Wanted to hear your thoughts on how you’re thinking about that. Thank you.

James Moses, Chief Financial Officer, First Hawaiian, Inc.: Yeah. Yeah, Kelly, I think you summarized it pretty well for us. Maybe we can hire you to do that again. Yeah. No, I think you nailed it. Yeah.

Robert Harrison, Chairman, President, and CEO, First Hawaiian, Inc.: Yeah. We have the $200 million allocation, and we used $34 million in Q1, and timing-wise, it’s not set for a particular year. We’re just looking at what makes sense going forward.

James Moses, Chief Financial Officer, First Hawaiian, Inc.: Yeah. Just to be clear, the amount of the authorization was $250 million.

Kelly Motta, Analyst, KBW: Oh.

Got it. That’s really helpful. Otherwise, any credit loss provisions, anything, you know, anything you’re watching or pulling away from? Thanks.

Lea Nakamura, Chief Risk Officer, First Hawaiian, Inc.: I don’t think anything we’re pulling away from. Just given the uncertainty in the environment, the volatility, the recent natural disaster events that have happened in our footprint. We’re just watching certain portfolios very carefully, but we haven’t really seen anything so far.

Kelly Motta, Analyst, KBW: Got it. Thank you so much for the time. I’ll step back.

Josh, Conference Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Andrew Terrell with Stephens. You may proceed.

Andrew Terrell, Analyst, Stephens: Hey, good morning.

James Moses, Chief Financial Officer, First Hawaiian, Inc.: Morning.

Robert Harrison, Chairman, President, and CEO, First Hawaiian, Inc.: Morning.

Andrew Terrell, Analyst, Stephens: I want to go back a little bit on the margin. I hear you on the near-term guide and kind of full year guide. The majority of what underpins that is some of the fixed-rate pricing. Can you just talk about it? Is there any level of benefit you’d expect or work to do on the deposit base as you move throughout the year? Just to have some rate cuts, do you feel like you’ve kind of fully exhausted the ability to reprice lower? Any other tweaks you can look to make on the funding side?

James Moses, Chief Financial Officer, First Hawaiian, Inc.: There’s still some ability to work on that, in particular with CD pricing, kind of what sort of rolls over every quarter. We’ve seen a pretty significant decline in sort of the competitive environment around those from, say, a year or so ago. We could still see some benefit from that perspective. The March deposit number, Andrew, was 1.20%, so a little bit lower than what we had in the quarter. Maybe there’s still like you can see the sort of dynamics of the CD repricing around that. I wouldn’t expect it to go too much lower with rates staying the same in totality in terms of deposit costs. The guide for the year on the NIM is inclusive of any sort of rate actions we might take on the deposit side as well as the repricing story.

Andrew Terrell, Analyst, Stephens: Yep. Yep. Okay. Then last quarter you talked about, I think you gave, I forget the specific dollar amount of the fixed cash flows for the year, but roll-off yield 4%, new asset yield 5.5%. There’s obviously been a lot of rate volatility throughout the first quarter, and I’m not asking for total crystal ball, but do you feel like 5.5% blended new asset yield is still kind of fair assumption based on what you’re seeing for loan origination yields and where you’re buying securities at today?

James Moses, Chief Financial Officer, First Hawaiian, Inc.: Yeah. I think so. I mean, it’s going to depend quarter to quarter based on what type of lending activity we do in any given quarter, right? If activity is primarily in lower spread things, then it might be a little bit lower than that. For the year, I think 150 is a good number, and that $400 million per quarter of cash flows coming off and repricing still is a good number.

Andrew Terrell, Analyst, Stephens: Got it. Okay. Thanks. If I could ask just one last one. I think we started talking more about Mainland M&A interest last year, some with you guys, and I just wondered if anything’s changed there? If you maybe rehash any willingness or kind of appetite or your view of the M&A market as it stands right now?

Robert Harrison, Chairman, President, and CEO, First Hawaiian, Inc.: Yeah. At this spot, no updates. We’re still talking to people, see if there’s things that might make sense, but we haven’t really changed our profile or what we’re looking for. We’re really looking for a good fit first and foremost, and then take it from there.

Andrew Terrell, Analyst, Stephens: Great. Thank you for taking the questions.

Josh, Conference Operator: Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press one one on your telephone. Our next question comes from Matthew Clark with Piper Sandler. You may proceed.

Matthew Clark, Analyst, Piper Sandler: Hey, good morning.

Robert Harrison, Chairman, President, and CEO, First Hawaiian, Inc.: Morning.

Matthew Clark, Analyst, Piper Sandler: Just a couple follow-ups here on the cash flows on the asset side. I know it’s $400 million a quarter, but can you give us a split between loans and securities on average? We can guesstimate the rates, but I’m just trying to forecast those individual yields.

James Moses, Chief Financial Officer, First Hawaiian, Inc.: Yeah. I guess the right way to think about it is for the year we expected $600 million of cash flows coming off the securities portfolio. That leaves $1 billion in cash flows from the loans. That spread of 150 that we talked about is inclusive of the roll-off and roll-on yield. In the quarter we added in the securities portfolio in the 4.90 range of yield. A little bit higher than that, 6.20 or so on our loan yields. Yeah, I think that gives you what you need there, Matthew.

Matthew Clark, Analyst, Piper Sandler: Okay, great. Just to drill into the CDs. Same kind of question. How much do you have coming due here in 2Q and roll-off and roll-on rates?

James Moses, Chief Financial Officer, First Hawaiian, Inc.: Yeah. Q2, we’re going to have about $1 billion come due. That’s currently somewhere in the neighborhood of like a 290 or so CD rate. I think that’ll roll over something like in a 250 weighted average range or something like that.

Matthew Clark, Analyst, Piper Sandler: Okay, perfect. Thank you.

James Moses, Chief Financial Officer, First Hawaiian, Inc.: Hard to tell for sure because some folks roll into promos and some folks roll into rack rates. Don’t know for sure around that. Again, I think if you back into the margin guidance that we’ve given, you can kind of get to what you need on the CD side of things.

Matthew Clark, Analyst, Piper Sandler: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, kind of getting to an opinion that’s a little bit above what you’re forecasting for 2Q, so thank you.

Josh, Conference Operator: Thank you. I would now like to turn the call back over to Kevin Haseyama for any closing remarks.

James Moses, Chief Financial Officer, First Hawaiian, Inc.: We appreciate your interest in First Hawaiian, and please feel free to contact me if you have any additional questions. Thanks again for joining us, and have a good weekend.

Josh, Conference Operator: Thank you. This concludes the conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.