First Hawaiian Inc’s shares rose as much as 6.5 percent in their debut on Thursday, valuing the lender at $3.41 billion in the biggest initial public offering by a US bank in almost two years. Now the largest Nasdaq-listed Hawaiian company is Hawaiian Holdings (Nasdaq: HA), with a market cap of $2.03 billion.
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More than 21 Million shares were offered at $23.00 per share, with many members of the First Hawaiian Ohana at his side, Robert Harrison, CEO of First Hawaiian Bank says things are already looking up. The company itself will not receive any proceeds from the sale.
The offering is the largest for a US bank since Citizens Financial Group Inc raised $3.5 billion in 2014, when the number of new issues by USA banks stood at the highest level in a decade, according to Thomson Reuters data. “Even with this disposal, BNP Paribas keeps its development ambitions in the U.S”.
A spokesperson for First Hawaiian did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
All the shares being sold in the First Hawaiian IPO are coming from BNP Paribas, which will be left with a roughly 85 percent stake in the company. The bank hasn’t said how it intends to offload the rest of the unit or whether the process will involve more public share sales. Return on equity, a key profitability measure, was 9.7 percent in the first half.
First Hawaiian Inc operates the First Hawaiian Bank, the largest and the oldest bank in the island state. Its lending and deposit activities are still mostly focused on the state, where it has 57 branches.
The unit posted net income of $213.8 million past year, down 1.3 percent from 2014. Total assets were $19.1 billion at the end of March.
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First Hawaiian’s net income rose 0.5 percent to $54.86 million for three months ended June 30.
