First Hawaiian, Inc. (NASDAQ:FHB) Q1 2023 Earnings Conference Call April 28, 2023 1:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Kevin Haseyama - Investor Relations Manager

Bob Harrison - Chairman, President and CEO

Jamie Moses - Chief Financial Officer

Ralph Mesick - Chief Risk Officer

Conference Call Participants

Steven Alexopoulos - JPMorgan

David Feaster - Raymond James

Andrew Liesch - Piper Sandler

Kelly Motta - KBW

Jared Shaw - Wells Fargo

Christian DeGrasse - Goldman Sachs

Operator

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the First Hawaiian Incorporated Q1 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers’ presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]

Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mr. Kevin Haseyama. Please go ahead.

Kevin Haseyama

Thank you, Tanya. And thank you everyone for joining us as we review our financial results for the first quarter of 2023. With me today are Bob Harrison, Chairman, President and CEO; Jamie Moses, Chief Financial Officer; and Ralph Mesick, 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.

And now I will turn the call over to Bob.

Bob Harrison

Good morning, everyone. And before I start our normal presentation, I’d like to recognize the efforts of our team members and the loyalty of our customers. The steady performance through the recent disruption in the banking industry really highlighted the strength of our balance sheet and the value of our relationship strategy.

Moving on to an overview of the local economy. the Hawaii economy continues to do well. Statewide unemployment rate in March was 3.5%, the same as the national rate. Total visitor arrivals were 900,000 in March, only 3% below March 2019 arrivals.

Our Japanese visitor arrival to 40,000 or $0.70 -- 70% below the March 2019 arrivals and we continue to expect a gradual return to more normalized levels. Most importantly, the visitor spend in March was $1.8 billion, 23% higher than March 2019.