First Hawaiian, Inc. (NASDAQ:FHB) Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call April 26, 2024 1:00 PM ET
Company Participants
Kevin Haseyama - IR Manager
Robert Harrison - Chairman, President & CEO
James Moses - Vice Chairman and CFO
Lea Nakamura - EVP and Chief Risk Officer
Conference Call Participants
David Feaster - Raymond James
Steven Alexopoulos - JPMorgan
Timur Braziler - Wells Fargo
Jared Shaw - Barclays
Andrew Liesch - Piper Sandler
Kelly Motta - KBW
Operator
Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the First Hawaiian Inc. Q1 2024 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, Mr. 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 First Quarter of 2024. With me today are Bob Harrison, Chairman, President, and CEO; Jamie 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 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
Good morning, everyone. I'll start with an overview of the local economy. Hawaii economy continues to perform well with the state unemployment rate remaining low, tourism is steady, and the construction industry is healthy. Statewide seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for March was 3.1% compared to the national unemployment rate of 3.8%. The statewide visitor industry is continuing to recover faster than expected following the Maui wildfires, but still remains slightly below 2023 levels.
The legislative session is wrapping up, and additional funding was secured for the Hawaii Tourism Authority, and a new marketing campaign was announced a couple days ago, so things are looking up to that. Through February, total visitor arrivals were down 0.6% and spending was down 1.9% compared to 2023 levels. That was primarily due to declines on Maui. Excluding Maui, arrivals and spending were above 2023 levels. Growth in international visitors have helped offset declining visitors from the U.S. Mainland, with increases in Japanese visitors making up most of the increase in the international arrivals.