First Hawaiian, Inc. (NASDAQ:FHB) Q3 2022 Earnings Conference Call October 28, 2022 1:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Kevin Haseyama - Strategic Planning & IR Manager

Robert Harrison - Chairman, President & CEO

Ralph Mesick - Interim CFO, Finance Group, Vice Chairman & Chief Risk Officer of Risk Management Group

Christopher Dods - Vice Chairman, Digital Banking & Marketing Group and COO

Conference Call Participants

Steven Alexopoulos - JPMorgan Chase & Co.

David Feaster - Raymond James & Associates

Andrew Liesch - Piper Sandler & Co.

Timur Braziler - Wells Fargo Securities

Christopher Larmoyeux - Holocene Advisors

Kelly Motta - KBW

Laurie Hunsicker - Compass Point Research & Trading

Operator

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the First Hawaiian, Inc. Q3 2022 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to Kevin Haseyama, Investor Relations Manager. Please go ahead.

Kevin Haseyama

Thank you, Tanya, and thank you, everyone, for joining us as we review our financial results for the third quarter of 2022. With me today are Bob Harrison, Chairman, President and CEO; Ralph Mesick, Chief Risk Officer and Interim CFO, and other members from the management team.

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 1 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'll turn the call over to Bob.

Robert Harrison

Thank you, Kevin. Good morning, everyone. I'll start with a brief update on the local economy. Hawaii economy continues to be resilient. In September, the statewide unemployment rate fell to 3.5%, which is in line with the national unemployment rate. Total visitor arrivals were 703,000 in September of this year, which is 4.5% lower than September 2019 arrivals. This is a strong result considering the Japanese visitor arrivals were 3.4% of the total this year compared to 19.6% of the total in September 2019. Japanese visitor arrivals represent a significant upside when they return to more normalized levels.

Despite the lower number of arrivals, visitor spend in September was $1.48 billion, which was 18.5% higher than September 2019. While higher interest rates have caused a slowdown in the housing market, continued demand and lack of supply have kept prices stable. In September, single-family home sales on Oahu were down 34.4% from last year, but the median sales price was $1.1 million, 4.8% higher.