Last year was like an oasis of calm for Hawai‘i’s economy. The ravages of the pandemic had faded and the economy grew. The destruction on Maui in 2023, which reverberated across the state, had turned into a building boom. And tariffs, funding cuts and deportations weren’t upturning business plans.

About 5,500 jobs were added in 2024, unemployment was at 2.9% and the number of visitors to the Islands had inched up to about 93% of pre-pandemic levels, according to a March 5 report from the state Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism.

As measured by real gross domestic product, Hawai‘i’s economy finally exceeded pre-pandemic levels in 2024, by 1.5%, according to DBEDT.

These economic trends are reflected in the new Top 250 list, which reports 2024 gross revenue for many of Hawai‘i’s largest and most influential companies and nonprofits. The list serves as a bellwether of every important sector of the local economy and tracks the ups and downs of individual organizations.

Companies and nonprofits on the Top 250 list reported nearly 13% more revenue, on average, in 2024 than the previous year, based on self-reported and publicly available data. The nonprofit sector was up 44% on average, and construction and development companies were up 14%. Organizations in finance, health care, transportation, insurance and education saw average revenue increases of 7% to 13%.

Gross revenue in the real estate and retail and wholesale sectors increased more modestly, at about 2%, while tourism slipped by nearly 2%. Energy companies on the list saw the biggest slide, down 12% in 2024 on average from the previous year, in part because of falling fuel prices.

While 70% of Top 250 companies and nonprofits reported gains in 2024, economists are concerned about the current year. The UH Economic Research Organization downgraded projections for 2025 in a May 9 update:

“Hawai‘i’s economic outlook has taken a decisive turn for the worse, as expansive federal policy shifts look poised to tip the local economy into a mild recession. Sharp increases in U.S. import tariffs, sweeping federal layoffs, and volatile fiscal and immigration policies are undermining consumer confidence, raising inflation expectations and worsening the business outlook – both nationally and in Hawai‘i’s visitor-dependent economy.”

Goodfellow Bros.’ gross revenue increased 49% in 2024 in large part because of government infrastructure projects, including preparing a 57-acre site for the Ka La‘i Ola housing development in Lahaina | Photo courtesy: Goodfellow Bros.

How the state’s biggest organizations fared

Among the 10 largest organizations on this year’s list, health insurance giant HMSA, with nearly 800,000 members and $4.35 billion in gross revenue, ranked first – a position it’s held nearly every year over the past decade.

Health care insurers and providers on the list posted healthy gains in 2024, including HMSA at 5.2%. The health insurer traditionally spends most of the revenue it receives, and in its 2023 financial statement – the most recent one available – net income was just 0.2% of gross revenue.

Looking forward, health care providers such as Kaiser Permanente (No. 7), The Queen’s Health Systems (No. 9) and Hawai‘i Pacific Health (No. 10) could be affected by the domestic policy bill passed by Congress that calls for deep cuts to the federally funded Medicaid program.

About 21% of Hawai‘i residents are enrolled in Medicaid, and cuts would hurt beneficiaries as well as strain state spending, health care and nursing facilities, and clinicians, according to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Servco jumped to the No. 2 spot on the Top 250, posting $3.86 billion in gross revenue in 2024 – a 20% increase from the previous year. According to an email from Servco executives, the growth comes from acquiring car dealerships in Hawai‘i and Australia: Big Island Toyota, with dealerships in Hilo and Kona, and the Motorama Dealership Group, with 18 locations across the state of Queensland.

In third position is Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines, which for the first time reported combined income for its Hawai‘i-based operations: more than $3.8 billion in 2024. Alaska Air Group Inc. completed its acquisition of Hawaiian Holdings Inc. on Sept. 18, 2024.

But a slowdown in international travel is expected to impact all the airlines serving Hawai‘i. A DBEDT report from May 28 says the total number of air seats to Hawai‘i will likely drop by 0.5% in 2025, based on airline flight schedules.

In contrast to the higher Alaska-Hawaiian revenue in 2024, Hawaiian Electric Industries (No. 6) sold 90.1% of its ownership interest in American Savings Bank at the end of last year. The company excluded ASB’s revenue when reporting 2024 data for the Top 250 list, which shows gross revenue down 12.6% from the previous year, at $3.2 billion.

Scott Seu, president and CEO of HEI, announced on Dec. 31, 2024, that the sale allows the company “to use the proceeds to reduce holding company debt, increasing flexibility for how HEI funds the HEI and Hawaiian Electric wildfire settlement contributions and key utility initiatives.”

In February of this year, the company agreed to pay about half of a $4 billion settlement to compensate victims of the 2023 Maui wildfires. In the profit/loss section of the Top 250 survey, HEI reported a nearly $1.43 billion net loss in 2024.

Matson (No. 5) had a strong year, with more than $3.4 billion in gross revenue in 2024, up 10.6% from the previous year. The main factor driving growth was its shipping lines between China and Long Beach, Calif., which saw a small increase in volume and a more significant increase in freight rates, according to the company’s fourth-quarter conference call with investors.

Rates were hiked globally last year after Yemen-based Houthis launched attacks on ships in the Red Sea, which disrupted the critical international trade route and caused delays and congestion, longer alternate routes and higher insurance costs.

In late February of this year, Matson released upbeat statements about the company’s 2024 results and projections for the current year. But those projections changed on May 5 when it posted its first-quarter results for 2025, about a month after the Trump administration imposed “reciprocal tariffs” on trading partners:

“Currently, there is significant uncertainty regarding tariffs and global trade, regulatory measures, the trajectory of the U.S. economy and other geopolitical factors. Since the tariffs were implemented in April, the company’s container volume has declined approximately 30% year over year,” wrote Chairman and CEO Matt Cox.

As of May 14, average U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports were 51%, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, after spiking to 145% on April 9.

In a final note about the top 10 organizations on this year’s list, the University of Hawai‘i System (No. 8) reported $2.2 billion in gross revenue in 2024, up 8.4% from the year before. But the flagship research campus at UH Mānoa, in particular, is now dealing with federal funding cuts, many targeting scientific research.

In a May 22 statement, UH President Wendy Hensel said that 69 federally funded grants had been terminated, representing about $83.4 million in funding and impacting more than 90 employees. Other grants received stop-work orders or drawdowns.

“As expected, the number and scale of terminations is accelerating and will undoubtedly take a significant toll on the university,” the statement said.

Construction remains a bright spot

Even in the depths of the pandemic, Hawai‘i’s busy construction companies were a lifeline in a flagging economy. The industry continues to be strong, with expectations for growth in 2025.

On this year’s Top 250 list, gross revenue among construction and development companies was up 14% on average in 2024. The number of payroll jobs in construction increased 9.2% in 2024 compared to 2023, according to estimates by DBEDT.

UHERO’s May 9 report says that public infrastructure projects and rebuilding on Maui have contributed to the industry’s growth, which can be seen on the Top 250 list.

Hensel Phelps (No. 20), for example, reported a 47% increase in gross revenue last year over the previous year, to about $560 million. In a note to Hawaii Business Magazine, the company says it expanded into education and health care construction, including major projects with Kaiser Permanente, UH Mānoa and the state Department of Education.

Maui-based construction company Goodfellow Bros. (No. 25) also saw huge growth in 2024, with gross revenue rising 49% to $452 million. Hawai‘i Division President Edward Brown says government contracts made up about 60% of the company’s business last year.

Among its projects, the company worked with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to clear the Lahaina burn zone last year. It also worked with the state on infrastructure for the Ka La‘i Ola housing development, including building a massive water tank, blasting rocks and grading the site, and installing transmission lines.

It was a major undertaking – “a seven-day-a-week, 10-hour-days, fast-track project,” he says. The first occupants received keys to their temporary homes a year after much of Lahaina was destroyed.

And Goodfellow Bros. has been inundated with military projects, says Brown, including updates to water and sewer lines at housing complexes, as well as work on a “massive facility” to repair submarines on O‘ahu and a major Space Force facility on Maui.

“You’re going to see a huge influx of money coming in from the military in the next few years,” he says.

On Moloka‘i, the company is creating residential lots for the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands. And on Lāna‘i, it’s working with Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, who owns 98% of the island, on updates to his vast estate, as well as community improvements such as roads, water lines, a health center and amphitheater.

Brown says tariffs haven’t affected Goodfellow Bros.’ business yet, and the immediate future looks promising. But some challenges persist: “It still takes a lot to get things going in Hawai‘i. Permits take a long time, entitlements take a long time. People who are successful here are the ones who are patient.”

DBEDT forecasts that construction will be strong in coming years. It says the number of residential housing units authorized in 2024 increased by 78% from 2023, and more than 1,000 hotel units were under construction or expected to start construction soon.

But a UHERO forecast sees tariffs on imported materials plus labor constraints weighing on future activity, with construction employment starting to recede by 2027.

Maui recovery lifts CNHA and other nonprofits

Some of the largest nonprofits on this year’s Top 250 list are also actively involved in Maui recovery efforts.

The state’s biggest nonprofit, the Hawai‘i Community Foundation (No. 76), raised more than $114 million in 2024 and awarded $92 million through its Maui Strong Fund to organizations working in housing, health and social services, and other initiatives.

But its overall revenue in 2024 was less than half of what it was in 2023, when a surge of donations poured in from around the world after the Aug. 8 wildfires.

Other nonprofits involved in the recovery saw dramatic growth in 2024, including the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement (No. 96), the Maui Food Bank (No. 102) and Maui Economic Opportunity (No. 130).

CNHA’s revenue jumped 91% in 2024, to nearly $86 million, putting it third among charitable nonprofits after HCF and the UH Foundation. The organization has diversified its operations and uses a “fee for hire” model instead of billing for services at completion, says CEO Kūhiō Lewis.

He says the increase in revenue is directly related to its expansion on Maui, which includes opening in-person resource centers and temporary housing units and helping people with rental assistance, building permits and legal advice.

“When there’s a need, we jump at it and make it happen, and people want to support that work. The work comes to us,” says Lewis.

In recent years, the organization has moved into tourism management with large contracts from the Hawai‘i Tourism Authority, expanded loan programs that it oversees as a federally funded community development financial institution, and increased offerings at its Hawaiian Trades Academy.

“We’re creating an ecosystem,” says Lewis. “We have a loan fund that supports business development. We have workforce development, which supports construction-related projects that we’re working on. All of the different tentacles support our growth.”

Another growth area is the organization’s asset portfolio, which now includes apartment buildings and landholdings, says Lewis. In 2024, for example, CNHA acquired 44 acres in the Kaumana neighborhood in Hilo, where it plans to develop workforce housing.

Lewis says he and his organization try “to fill the voids” in Hawai‘i and develop programs based on their lived experiences, including the difficulties of trying to support a family or buy a home – hardships that Lewis faced himself as a young single father.

“I like to challenge the status quo, to refine the way of doing things,” says Lewis. “I’ve seen how things don’t work, so we’re doing things differently.”

As for the future, he says, the organization has spent the post-pandemic years becoming more self-sufficient through private- and public-sector contracts and revenue-generating operations. “We might lose $1 million or $2 million in 2025, but we have lots of other legs to stand on.”

The complete Top 250 rankings are only in the August print issue of Hawaii Business Magazine.

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Hawaiian has been at the bottom of the Most Profitable Companies list for the past four years, though its fortunes could turn with its pending sale to Alaska Airlines. Matson, which dropped from first to fifth place on the Top 250 list – from $4.3 billion gross revenue in 2022 to $3 billion in 2023 – still remains the most profitable company headquartered in Hawai‘i, according to Hawaii Business Magazine’s research.

In 2023, Matson earned $297.1 million in profit, which was considerably less than the $1 billion reported in 2022. In its 2023 annual report, Matson explains its approach to investing current profits for future growth.

In 2022, Matson signed a $1 billion contract with a Philadelphia shipbuilder for three new “Aloha-class” container ships for its China-Long Beach line. At the end of 2023, the company “had funded 67% of the new Aloha Class build program through nearly $600 million set aside in our tax-advantaged CCF (capital construction fund),” according to Matson’s annual report.

Hawai‘i’s largest shipping company expanded during the pandemic years, adding transpacific shipping lines and services such as trucking and warehousing. Matson’s 2023 report states that the company has “built a highly diversified shipping and logistics platform capable of generating sustainable, long-term growth.”

Hawaiian Airlines is also focused on long-term growth and high-quality service, but has experienced downturns in international travel from Japan, as well as schedule changes and cancellations caused by “ongoing struggles with the reliability and availability” of the engines that power its West Coast fleet, according to its 2023 annual report. The airline reported a nearly $260.5 million loss in 2023, up from the $240 million loss reported in 2022.

In encouraging news, Hawaiian Airlines launched a freighter service for Amazon in 2023, opened service to the Cook Islands and returned to Fukuoka, Japan. More significantly, the company announced in December 2023 that it would merge with Alaska Airlines, giving it access to far more destinations.

“The beloved Hawaiian Airlines brand will live on as a part of the combined company,” states Hawaiian Airlines’ annual report. “Together, we believe we will be able to compete more effectively against the giant airlines … and invest more in sustainability, workforce development, and community.”

At the time of writing, Alaska Airlines was still awaiting approval from the U.S. Department of Justice for its purchase of Hawaiian Airlines.

Nonprofits Are Healthier

The top-ranked nonprofit on this year’s list is Honolulu-based Elemental Impact, formerly known as Elemental Excelerator, which has funded more than 150 “climate companies” in Hawai‘i and around the globe. Funded projects range from generating water in arid regions of Texas and providing electric shuttle buses in New York City’s “transportation deserts” to producing the world’s first low-methane goat cheese, made by Hawai‘i Island’s Blue Ocean Barns.

Elemental’s previous appearance on this list was in 2022 (reporting 2021 figures). That year, it ranked 186 on the Top 250 list with $17.2 million in gross revenue, and 44 on the Most Profitable list with $1.13 million in net income. This year, Elemental rose to 150 on the Top 250 list with $36.2 million in gross revenue, and No. 9 on the Most Profitable Companies list with $15.6 million in net income to invest.

More traditional nonprofits also reported healthier profits in 2023, giving them strong buffers against future funding drops. Catholic Charities reported $12 million in surpluses after a nearly $2.3 million loss in 2022. Easterseals reported nearly $4.7 million in surpluses in 2023, but only $6,000 the previous year.

The Hawaiian Humane Society, Blood Bank of Hawaii, Waikiki Health, Hale Kipa, Boys & Girls Club of Hawaii and Child & Family Service all reported healthier year-end balance sheets in 2023 compared to the previous year. But Parents And Children Together and the Hawai‘i Foodbank – large organizations serving many tens of thousands of residents – reported deficits.

Losses on Maui

On the most recent Top 250 Companies list, many small and medium companies with Maui operations reported revenue drops as a direct result of the Lahaina wildfire. They include VIP Foodservice, the Pacific Whale Foundation, JR Doran/Ceramic Tile Plus, Atlantis Submarines and The Art Source.

But only one of them, Maui Clothing Company, also divulged its profit/loss figures. The network of clothing stores reported a $490,361 loss in 2023, compared with a gain of $887,732 in 2022. The company lost a store on Front Street in Lahaina; 21 of its employees were displaced and five lost their homes.

How We Compile the List

Each spring, Hawaii Business Magazine surveys companies and nonprofits to gather key information, such as gross revenue, profits or losses, executives and new acquisitions. Those organizations that reported their profit/loss figures are included on the Most Profitable Companies list, which is supplemented with publicly available data. To request surveys for future lists, please email cynthiaw@hawaiibusiness.com.

Most Profitable Companies 2024



The 41st annual ranking of Hawai‘i’s companies and nonprofits shows a growing economy that has largely recovered from pandemic-era turmoil. While last year’s wildfire decimated businesses in Lahaina, many Top 250 companies largely weathered the disaster by having multiple locations and diversified offerings.

In a return to normal, HMSA has landed at the top of the list again, reporting a modest 3.1% increase in revenue in 2023. The local health insurance giant had occupied the top spot for seven straight years, until global events shifted the fortunes of other large Hawai‘i companies on last year’s list.

Par Hawaii was first on the Top 250 list in 2023, reflecting 2022 gross revenue, as energy prices surged after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent U.S. boycott of Russian oil. Matson ranked second for gross revenue on that list after opening a new shipping line from China to California, and capitalizing on intense consumer demand for goods as the pandemic disrupted supply chains.

While Matson’s revenue fell nearly 29% in 2023 compared to the prior year, Chairman and CEO Matt Cox anticipated the drop when he told Hawaii Business Magazine in 2022, “I’m 100% sure that this super cycle we’re in will end and supply and demand gets back in balance.”

Matson’s 2023 year-end report notes that “consolidated operating income declined primarily due to lower volume and freight rates in our China service as the transpacific marketplace transitioned from the pandemic period.”

Par’s revenue was down 9% in 2023 amid a drop in global crude oil prices, which drive gross revenue at Hawai‘i’s sole petroleum refinery and leading distribution company.

But about 75% of companies and nonprofits on this year’s Top 250 list reported revenue gains in 2023 over 2022. Revenue was up in most sectors represented on the list, including a 20% gain among nonprofits, a 17% gain among construction and development companies, and a 16% gain in the financial sector.

The results reflect an overall solid economy. Hawai‘i’s real gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity, grew by 3.6% in 2023, according to data from the UH Economic Research Organization. Inflation-adjusted visitor spending rose last year. And unemployment in the Islands was just 2.9% by the end of 2023, lower than the national average.

Click here to jump to the Top 250 list of 2024 >>

Yet Pessimism Abounds

Despite these rosy figures, many business leaders in Hawai‘i are worried about the current economy, marked by stubbornly high prices. The cost of housing pushed Honolulu’s consumer price inflation to 4% through much of 2023 – higher than the U.S. rate of about 3%, according to UHERO.

In a related story in the August 2024 issue of Hawaii Business Magazine, the BOSS survey of 407 local business owners and executives found that optimism about the future has steadily dropped in multiple surveys after peaking in April 2021. In the latest survey, only 16% of respondents thought the local economy would improve in the coming year or two, while 42% thought it would get worse. And just 42% were completely confident that they would be in business three years from now, compared to 56% a year earlier.

Some other trouble spots in Hawai‘i are population declines that translate into a smaller labor force and less economic growth than you would get from a growing workforce. Lagging visitor numbers – driven largely by fewer arrivals to Maui and a weak international market – are expected for the whole of 2024, along with a spending drop of about $1 billion, says Carl Bonham, executive director of UHERO, in his second-quarter economic forecast.

Bright spots are building efforts on Maui and federal construction spending, says Bonham in the 2024 forecast. In 2023, the two top construction companies on this list, Hawaiian Dredging and Nan, reported gross revenue gains of 36% and 37%, respectively, over the previous year – a trend that may drive the state’s economy in 2024.

Lahaina’s Far-reaching Impact

Many companies on the list were affected by the destruction of Lahaina on Aug. 8, 2023. In our November 2023 issue, Hawaii Business reported on Kaiser Permanente’s destroyed clinic and the rollout of its mobile clinics, and on First Hawaiian Bank’s ruined Lahaina branch and vault retrieval.

Photo: Aaron Yoshino

While these large organizations are often able to withstand calamity, pending lawsuits against Hawaiian Electric Industries, Hawaiian Telcom, Kamehameha Schools and others for alleged negligence in allowing the wildfire to start and spread could deliver a harsh financial blow.

Kaiser Permanente ranked 7 on this year’s list, and First Hawaiian ranked 12. Kaiser’s revenue was up in 2023 by more than 7% and First Hawaiian’s by more than 33%. Bank of Hawai‘i, the second-largest bank on the Top 250 list after First Hawaiian, also lost a branch on Maui but reported a nearly 31% revenue gain last year, though both banks reported lower profits in 2023.

In the middle of the list are organizations such as Maui-based VIP Foodservice – ranked 103 on this year’s list – which reported a downturn of 3.3% from the previous year’s revenue. For two months, the company lost use of its Lahaina grocery store, Island Grocery Depot, and its food-distribution service to clients such as hotels, restaurants and schools in Maui County was badly hurt.

The Pacific Whale Foundation, a nonprofit based on Maui that employs 120 people, is a marine research and conservation group that hosts educational programs for grades K-12. It also owns an eco-tour business and store near Mā‘alaea Bay to help fund its mission. From August through the end of 2023, the organization lost half its business, says executive director Kristie Wrigglesworth; gross revenue for the entire year was down more than 15%.

Smaller companies on the list, such as JR Doran/Ceramic Tile Plus, based in Kahului, saw a 15% drop in revenue over the prior year – a direct result of less business after the wildfires. Atlantis Submarines’ revenue was down 20% in 2023 after it shut down its submarine tours off Lahaina, although its Waīkikī and Kona operations continue.

Click here to jump to the Top 250 list of 2024 >>

Loss of Most Profitable Store

Another local company, The Art Source, ranked 179 on this year’s list, lost its single most profitable CocoNene store, which was located on Lahaina’s Front Street. CEO Kent Untermann and his wife, VP Lori Untermann, are also half owners of the building, making the loss a “double hit,” he says.

“Just before the fire, we were hitting our stride,” he says, with the Front Street store bringing in about $300,000 a month in revenue. About $130,000 a month went to support local jobs, including store employees, factory workers and artists; the company’s average pay is $33 an hour, says Untermann.

In true Untermann style, the company leapt into growth mode. “There are different ways to approach it. One is to be more conservative and the other is to be more aggressive,” he says. “I have the tendency to be more aggressive.”

Untermann says he had generous business-interruption insurance that helped the company get back on its feet. He immediately added $800,000 in equipment to the manufacturing operations in Kapolei.

At the 43,000-square-foot facility, The Art Source produces custom cabinets, closets, frames, gifts and home décor for its numerous brands, including Pictures Plus, Plus Interiors and CocoNene. It’s one of the few durable-goods manufacturers in Hawai‘i, where nondurable goods are more commonly produced; the small manufacturing sector makes up only 1.63% of the total output in the state, according to the National Association of Manufacturers.

Untermann says that while manufacturing is difficult in pricey Hawai‘i, it’s not impossible. “We believe with good automation, good people and training, and unique products that we can make things on the island, and we’re proving that you can do it.”

The company’s diversified products help it weather the economy’s highs and lows by selling to the construction industry, affluent local consumers and the tourist market, which he sees as a growth area for CocoNene.

Two new stores are opening in the coming months, adding to the seven now operating across the Islands, and more are planned. The stores sell Hawai‘i-made gifts and home décor for both the visitor and local markets, and are a recent evolution away from the slipper stores formerly operated under the brand Island Sole.

Untermann is now working with other local business leaders to advocate for restoring Front Street, which he calls “one of the richest miles of commerce in Hawai‘i.” He says that most tourist dollars in Lahaina stayed with the people who lived and worked there.

“If we don’t rebuild, we’re going to lose it,” he says. “Or worse, if it went to mainland enterprises, then all that money would leave the Islands.”

At the end of 2023, The Art Source had made up the $1 million loss it suffered last year from the Lahaina fire, reporting $22.4 million in gross sales – an increase of 3.2% over the previous year’s numbers.

Biggest Gains

Ranked by percentage change in gross annual sales/revenue

For the complete printed list, get your copy of the August 2024 issue here.

Join next year’s Top 250. If you would like to receive Top 250 surveys in the future or update your contact information, please email cynthiaw@hawaiibusiness.com.

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Top 250 Companies 2024

This complementary list reports on 2022 profits and losses for 65 of those companies. Most of the data is self-reported, but some is pulled from annual reports.

Click here to jump to the 2023 Most Profitable Companies list >>

Shipping Remains Strong

At the top of the list again is Matson, a pandemic-era powerhouse that deftly expanded its capacity as demand for goods from China surged. Matson opened a second China-to-Long Beach, California, line in 2020 and a new service from China to Oakland, California, in 2021.

The expansion paid off. Matson reported $4.34 billion in gross revenue in 2022 and an unprecedented $1.06 billion in net profit – the largest amount ever reported in our Most Profitable Companies list.

But those outsized numbers are expected to fall in 2023. Rising inflation and interest rates cooled spending last year, and retailers cut back on inventory. Matson discontinued its newest line in the third quarter of 2022 as demand lagged on the China routes – a development that Chairman and CEO Matt Cox predicted a year ago when he told Hawaii Business Magazine that supply and demand would return to normal once the “supercycle” had ended.

By the close of 2022, Matson reported an 11.7% decrease in container volume on its China routes, and a 5.8% decrease in Hawai‘i service. Global container shipping rates also fell throughout the year, ending just slightly above pre-pandemic rates.

Despite the declines, Matson maintained its profit margin of about 24% in both 2022 and 2021. Much of the money was returned to investors, but last year more than half was funneled into a capital construction fund to purchase new fuel-efficient ships. Another $100 million payment went into the fund in February 2023, and the company pledged to add anticipated tax refunds to it as well.

“This remarkable generation of cash has allowed us to pre-fund nearly twothirds of our expected $1 billion in capital investments for the next generation of Matson vessels,” writes Cox in the company’s 2022 annual report.

In November 2022, Matson announced that it had commissioned the building of three new vessels. The cargo ships will operate on cleaner-burning liquified natural gas and will feature fuel-efficient hulls, both of which will help Matson meet its environmental goals of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030, and reaching net zero by 2050.

In addition to the new vessels, which are expected to be delivered in 2026 and 2027, Matson plans to equip three of its 20 company-owned vessels to run on liquified natural gas. The LNG installations are expected to be completed in the next two years, according to the annual report, with more conversions possible in the future.

Hawaiian Airline Improves

At the bottom of the list for the third year in a row is Hawai‘i’s other global transportation company, and the anchor of its tourism industry, Hawaiian Airlines.

In good news, Hawaiian Airlines reported gross revenue of $2.64 billion in 2022, up 65% from the year before. The results reflect the resurgence of tourism: 9.2 million visitors arrived in the Islands in 2022 – a 36.5% increase from the year before, according to UHERO data.

But Hawaiian also reported a net loss of $240 million in 2022 as it continued its long financial recovery.

One of the pressures last year included higher fuel prices, which were largely triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent boycott of Russian crude oil. The average cost per gallon for the carrier’s aircraft fuel was $3.42 in 2022, up from $2.02 in 2021 and $1.52 in 2020, according to Hawaiian Airlines’ 2022 annual report. Fuel as a percentage of operating expenses went from 10.8% in 2020 to 28.7% in 2022.

Other pressure came from fierce competition. Southwest Airlines, which entered the Hawai‘i market in 2019, increased its interisland flights in 2022 and began offering $39 tickets, triggering a fare war with Hawaiian. While cheap tickets are great for passengers, Hawaiian took a financial hit in its effort to stay atop the interisland market.

But perhaps the biggest challenge in 2022 was the lack of visitors from Japan, once “a large percentage of our pre-pandemic international revenue,” according to the airline’s most recent annual report. Even as the Japanese government eased travel restrictions in the fall of 2022, visitors were hampered by a terrible exchange rate, which reached 150 yen to 1 U.S. dollar in October 2022; in January 2021, the rate was 103 to 1.

Hawaiian cut back its service to Japan, and kept some lines suspended. As of August 2023, the yen remained weak against the dollar, but Airline Weekly reported that Hawaiian’s bookings from Japan were finally accelerating.

To strengthen its bottom line, Hawaiian Airlines took a number of steps to improve service and diversify. In October 2022, the company announced it had entered an eight-year contract with Amazon to lease 10 Airbus A330-300 freighters and fly cargo for the retail giant. The service is expected to start this year or next.

The airline hired hundreds of new employees last year as it scaled up to pre-pandemic levels. And looking forward, Hawaiian Airlines has partnered with Par Hawaii to develop sustainable aviation fuel, and is working on all-electric “seagliders” for interisland travel with a Massachusetts company.

Local Banking is Healthy

The FDIC said U.S. banks reported a 5.8% decline in profits in 2022, but were still doing better financially than before the pandemic.

National results align with the data that banks and credit unions reported to Hawaii Business Magazine. All 11 financial institutions on the list enjoyed net profits in 2022, with an average gain of over 26%. Overall, profits in the sector declined by 4.7% in 2022 from the prior year, which was smaller than the national 5.8% decline.

Hawai‘i’s top-ranking financial institution is First Hawaiian Bank, which reported nearly $843 million in gross revenue last year and nearly $266 million in net income – a 31.5% profit margin.

In 2021, the bank reported more than $734 million in gross revenue and also about $266 million in net income – a 36.2% profit margin. In its 2022 annual report, First Hawaiian Bank announced that it finished the year with a record $14.1 billion in loans and leases, $21.7 billion in deposits and $24.6 billion in total assets.

Click here to jump to the 2023 Most Profitable Companies list >>

Many Nonprofits Struggle

Near the bottom of this year’s list are some of Hawai‘i’s largest nonprofits that provide critical services to people in need.

Hawai‘i Foodbank, Catholic Charities Hawai‘i, Child & Family Service and Hale Kipa reported losses last year, the result of operating with far less revenue than during the height of the pandemic, when federal funding and charitable contributions were high.

In 2022, Hawai‘i Foodbank reported $17.7 million less gross revenue than in 2021, Catholic Charities Hawai‘i reported $14.8 million less and Child & Family Service reported $6.6 million less.

Most Profitable Companies 2023

The 40th annual Top 250 list reflects Hawai‘i’s steady economic recovery in 2022. Unemployment fell to 3.5% from 6% the year before. Real GDP was up 2.5% in 2022, with nearly every major sector seeing gains, according to the UH Economic Research Organization’s dashboard.

The state Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism pointed to the “declining inflation rate, continued recovery in tourism, catching up of construction activities and continued double-digit growth of tax revenue collection” as key areas of improvement last year.

Among the Top 250 companies, 2022 results were especially strong. Average year-over-year gross revenue was 18% higher than in 2021. All sectors on the list, except technology, reported a jump in average revenue, from a small uptick in the construction industry to a more than doubling of revenue among tourism companies.

Top-line performance, of course, doesn’t reflect the costs and pressures companies may face, and higher revenue can be coupled with negative profits. But in terms of business activity and influence, the Top 250 list gives a broad picture of what’s happening in Hawai‘i’s largest, most prominent companies and nonprofits.

Each spring, Hawaii Business Magazine surveys companies, then ranks them by their reported gross revenue in the previous year. We supplement the surveys with data drawn from public sources, such as annual reports and government databases.

Click here to jump to the Top 250 list of 2023 >>

Year Over Year Revenue Gains by Sector

Top 250 Facts

• 19 employed 1,000 people or more
• 16 were founded in the 1800s
• 32 are located on Neighbor Islands

The signature August issue featuring the Top 250 companies in Hawaiʻi is available for print purchase. Click here!

Energy Soars, with Par Hawaii on Top

Par Hawaii‘s Kapolei refinery has been processing crude oil purchased from around the world into fuel for cars, airplanes and Hawaiian Electric Co.’s energy generation for 51 years and is now the state’s only oil refinery.

Last year, Par Hawaii posted $4.4 billion in gross revenue – a figure that pushed the company into the first place spot on the Top 250 list.

Par Hawaii operates the state’s only oil refinery, located in Kapolei. | Photo: Aaron Yoshino

The 60% rise in revenue over the previous year is a direct result of the global spike in crude oil prices, says President Eric Wright. Price increases were triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Wright says the company immediately stopped importing crude oil from Russia – then about a quarter to a third of its supply – in response to the aggression. They shifted sourcing to Alaska, West Africa and South America.

By March 8, the Biden administration had banned imports from Russia. Prices continued rising as global markets scrambled to locate other sources for crude oil, which reached $139 a barrel in March 2022 before cooling significantly.

“Our business is priced o the world market, so as crude moves, our revenue will also move,” Wright says.

The eight other energy companies on the list also reported gains, including Hawaiian Electric up 31% and Island Energy Services up 63%. The smallest energy company in the list, Independent Energy Hawaii, founded in 2020, was up 258% to reach $5.7 million in gross revenue.

Higher crude oil prices in 2022 meant higher prices for processed fuels, which consumers saw at the gas pump, in airline ticket prices and electricity bills.

Click here to jump to the Top 250 list of 2023 >>

A “Lower-Carbon Future”

The search for alternative fuel sources is now moving in new directions, says Wright. In June 2022, Par Hawaii and Hawaiian Airlines announced a joint e ort to begin replacing traditional jet fuel, now 39% of Par’s business, with cleaner renewable fuels.

Par invested $90 million for new refinery equipment to process plant-based oils and waste oils and turn them into renewable diesel and jet fuel. They hope to start commercially producing the fuel in about two years.

“It’s a new era for the refinery,” says Wright. While the initial goal is to produce 60 million gallons of renewable aviation fuel a year, or about 5% of total production, Wright notes that this is a significant achievement.

“There was hardly any sustainable aviation fuel produced last year. Our refinery will be one of the largest sustainable aviation-fuel facilities in the world,” he says.

Par refinery employees check equipment as part of their proactive maintenance. | Photo: Aaron Yoshino

Seed oils and waste oils will be imported at the start, but Par is currently testing biofuel crops that can be grown in Hawai‘i. In partnership with Pono Pacifi c, a natural resources management company, Par is now working with camelina, a promising oilseed crop. “It has nitrogen-fixing properties so it rejuvenates the soil, and it doesn’t compete with food-based crops,” Wright says. “We’re really excited to be part of the (solution) here in Hawai‘i as we transition to a lower-carbon future.”

Tourism Industry Rebounds

For revenue gains, the standout industry on the Top 250 list was tourism. Overall, Hawai‘i GDP data shows accommodation and food services was a $9.7 billion industry in 2022 – 19% higher than the year before.

All 17 companies in the Top 250’s tourism and leisure category reported increases in 2022, with an average gain of 93% in gross revenue. These companies ranged from dinner cruises and submarine attractions to luxury global hotel chains.

Visitors returned in droves last year. The UHERO dashboard shows 9.2 million visitors arrived in the Islands in 2022, a 36.5% increase from the year before. That was close to the 10.38 million who arrived in the peak year of 2019.

Most visitors came from North America. The anticipated return of visitors from Japan stalled, and is only a quarter of what it was before the pandemic, according to a March 2023 report released by UHERO.

“The long-awaited removal of Japanese travel restrictions has finally enabled a modest improvement in Japanese visitor arrivals for the first time since the pandemic began,” says the UHERO report, “but there is still a long way to go in resurrecting this market.”

And U.S. tourists who came in 2022 may be running low on “excess savings” accumulated during the pandemic, leading to challenges ahead, says the report. By April of this year, for instance, fewer visitors were arriving from the West Coast than the year before, according to DBEDT.

While many residents have a “love-hate relationship” with tourism – weary of the crowded beaches but happy for the jobs – the visitor industry remains a leading driver of Hawai‘i’s economy and was a bright spot in 2022.

Click here to jump to the Top 250 list of 2023 >>

How We Compile the Top 250

Top 250 companies and nonprofits are ranked by gross sales or gross revenue, key indicators of market strength and influence.

Each spring, Hawaii Business Magazine surveys companies in our database and gathers updated financial figures, employee counts, names of executives and other information.

Businesses are asked to calculate gross sales using generally accepted accounting principles, while nonprofits report revenues from contributions, funding for services or proceeds from activities that support their missions. All provide the name of an executive who verifies the self-reported figures.

Companies headquartered in Hawai‘i report sales from all their subsidiaries worldwide; those based elsewhere report Hawai‘i figures only. While we prefer calendar year data, some organizations operate on a fiscal year.

To supplement the survey process, we draw on public records such as annual reports, financial statements, databases of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and National Credit Union Administration, and insurance figures from the state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs.

Some companies with a large local presence don’t appear on the list. The omission is o en because an offshore parent company can’t separate data for its Hawai‘i operations, or because the company is privately held and does not disclose financial information.

Top 250 executives are surveyed and profiled in our Black Book issue each December.

The signature August issue featuring the Top 250 companies in Hawaiʻi is available for print purchase. Click here!

Top 250 Companies 2023

The latest Top 250 list, published in August, tracks organizations and industries in the rebound year of 2021. Tourism and airlines made significant gains, while real estate and shipping exceeded revenue figures from the boom times of 2019.

Click here to jump to the 2022 Most Profitable list!

This Most Profitable list gives a fuller financial picture of 70 of those Top 250 companies, both for-profits and nonprofits. The profit/surplus and loss/deficit figures listed are mostly self-reported; annual reports and other public data were consulted for companies marked with an asterisk.

Matson topped the list this year by a long shot, reflecting the explosive growth in international shipping and soaring freight rates across the industry.

The company’s $3.925 billion in gross revenue and more than $927 million in profit were largely the result of adding two weekly services between China and the U.S. West Coast to its existing line, and capturing more of the lucrative pandemic- era market.

Matt Cox, Matson’s chair and CEO, says he expects the company to drop one of its three China-to-California services once demand for goods normalizes and freight rates fall. But he anticipates strong revenues and profits to continue, if at less elevated levels.

“We were doing just fine before this super cycle, paying off debt and doing vessel construction projects and giving high dividends to shareholders,” says Cox.

HMSA Leads Nonprofits

HMSA, the No. 1 company on the Top 250 list yet again, continues to dominate the local health care sector. With 765,000 members, the insurance company reported nearly $4.3 billion in gross revenue in 2021 – up 5.4% from the previous year.

But unlike 2020, when HMSA reported a more than $31 million deficit, in 2021 the organization collected nearly $49 million more in revenue than expenses. Financial sheets from the two years show that administrative expenses and taxes were lower in 2021 compared to the previous year, thus creating the surplus.

Click here to jump to the 2022 Most Profitable list!

Hawai‘i nonprofits are a lifeline for people in tumultuous times, as they were in 2020. As private and public money poured into their offices for distribution to the community, many nonprofits reported high revenue but small end-of-the-year surpluses or even actual deficits.

But in 2021 many of those organizations boasted stronger end-of-year balance sheets, with much healthier financial cushions, including Child & Family Service, YMCA of Honolulu, Catholic Charities Hawai‘i and Easterseals Hawaii.

Employee-Owned

Tiny profits aren’t always a sign of weakness, though, even in the private sector. In 2021, T&T Tinting Specialists reported just $655 in profit, in contrast to the previous year’s more than $143,000.

Founder Tommy Silva says the company became an employee-owned S corporation at the start of October 2021 and the smaller figure reflects “all of the adjustments and ESOP (employee stock ownership plan) setup costs, along with payroll and bonuses paid out.”

With the new structure, T&T Tinting’s 32 employees share the rewards of their work and boost their retirement funding, while the company is exempted from paying business taxes.

“It’s a great way to transition a business from an owner to the loyal staff that helped create the business, kept it alive during the hard times and kept it growing in the good times,” says Silva.

He expects innovation and productivity to take off as employees experience a “shift in realization that everything they do now, each day going forward, is for them, not for the boss or the one owner.”

Click here to jump to the 2022 Most Profitable list!

Read more about T&T Tinting and other local employee-owned companies.

Hawaiian Telcom & Hawaiian Airlines

Two giants in the Islands, Hawaiian Telcom and Hawaiian Airlines, enjoyed huge gains in revenue during 2021 but also sustained losses.

Hawaiian Telcom reported a more than 400% jump in gross revenue in 2021, to almost $1.7 billion – the result of a merger with Macquarie Infrastructure Partners V. Despite the revenue jump, the company reported a loss of $108.5 million.

Suzanne Maratta, VP and corporate controller at Hawaiian Telcom’s parent company, Cincinnati Bell, explained that Hawaiian Telcom had “additional depreciation and amortization expenses in 2021 related to the increased value of property, plant and equipment, and intangibles as a result of recording amounts at fair value as of the merger date.”

Hawaiian Airlines made serious strides in 2021 – up 89% in gross revenue from 2020 – but continued to post losses. In 2021, the airline ended with a nearly $145 million loss, which is still significantly better than the nearly $511 million loss in 2020.

Once Japan eases travel restrictions, Hawaiian Airlines is expected to recover to earlier levels, although high fuel prices could take a bite out of profits.
 
 

Most Profitable List 2022

The 39th edition of the Top 250 list offers a welcome picture of an economy in rebound. This annual survey tracks fluctuations in the fortunes of individual companies and specific sectors, as well as the overall business climate in Hawai‘i.

Each year, Hawaii Business Magazine asks hundreds of companies and nonprofits to share their gross revenue figures from the previous year. Most of the information we collect is self-reported, while some comes from public sources. Locally based companies report all their gross revenue; companies based elsewhere report their Hawai‘i revenue only.

Every sector was up in 2021, which is great news after a difficult 2020. Not only that, but few companies in our database had closed and few emails went undelivered.

Eugene Tian, chief state economist with the Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism, says there’s no published government data on business closures last year. But in a survey completed in March 2021, 55% of local businesses reported being fully open, while 45% said they had cut their hours or were temporarily closed.

Only 1.8% – about 600 companies – planned to permanently close, says Tian. Of those, 81.8% were businesses with 10 employees or fewer, and 27.3% were in tourism-related industries such as retail and restaurants.

In another sign of strength, many more companies participated in Hawaii Business Magazine’s Top 250 survey this year. Last year, some companies did not complete the Top 250 survey – possibly because they did not want to report their weak 2020 numbers.

Another good sign: No. 250 on this year’s list reported $3.7 million in gross revenue. The 250th company on 2021’s list reported $1.3 million.

Tourism Makes Big Gains

Hawai‘i’s visitor industry came back strong in 2021, with the crowds to prove it. UHERO data shows that about 6.8 million people arrived by air in 2021, up from 2.7 million in 2020 but well below the nearly 10.4 million in 2019.

More tourists meant more spending, which was up 152% in 2021 over the year before, at nearly $13 billion, according to DBEDT. The first half of 2022 shows even more visitors and spending this year.

The return of tourists led to markedly better results for companies that rely on them. Among the 13 tourism companies that reported data for the Top 250, 2021 gross revenue was up by an average of 124% over 2020.

Total gross revenue among the group was more than $951 million in 2021, compared to just $397.5 million in 2020. While that’s less than the $1.5 billion reported in 2019, the gap is closing.

Click here to jump down to this year’s Top 250 list!

Hotel Companies and Airlines

The largest tourism company on the Top 250 is Kyo-ya, which owns the Royal Hawaiian, Sheraton Waikiki, Moana Surfrider and Sheraton Maui Resort & Spa, among others. The company’s gross revenue was up nearly 120% from 2020, at $405.3 million, though still below $713.3 million in 2019.

Second-largest Prince Resorts reported $195 million in gross revenue in 2021, only slightly below its $196 mil-lion in 2019. And Kawailoa Development LLP, which owns the Grand Hyatt Kauai Resort & Spa and Poipu Bay Golf Course, reported $104.5 million in gross revenue in 2021 – down about 20% from 2019.

The airlines transporting people to the Aloha State saw similar gains. Hawaiian Airlines reported an 89% increase in gross revenue in 2021 over 2020, and Alaska Airlines reported an almost 147% rise. Both, however, still trailed 2019 results.

Matson’s Best Year Ever

While airlines were still working their way back to pre-pandemic levels, the shipping industry reported phenomenal growth in 2021.

Matson, Hawai‘i’s largest shipping company, saw gross revenue rise by nearly 65% in 2021, to $3.925 billion. In 2020 and 2019, the figures were $2.38 billion and $2.2 billion respectively. Net profit in 2021 was more than $927 million, up from $193 million the year before.

Matt Cox, chair and CEO of Mat-son, says the bulk of that growth came from a spike in demand for goods from China.

“Half the world’s air cargo was carried in the bellies of passenger planes. When the pandemic hit, half of the capacity disappeared in literally a week,” he says. So many goods, including scarce personal protective equipment, had to be transported by boat.

Expanded China Routes

Matson was poised to act. The company runs an established week-ly trans-Pacific line that launched in 2006 between the mammoth ports of Xiamen, Ningbo and Shanghai in China and Long Beach, California.

In 2020, Matson quickly opened a second weekly China-to-Long Beach line, and in 2021, the company launched a third service from China to Oakland, California. According to earnings reports, Matson’s container volume from China to the West Coast increased 55.4% in 2021 over the previous year.

International shipping is big and competitive, and Matson is “quite a small player in global markets,” says Cox. “We don’t strive to have a world-wide footprint.” But he says the company recognized sooner than other shippers that consumer demand was rising despite the economic uncertainty of a pandemic.

“We made a very significant move and leased every ocean container in the world that we could get our hands on and positioned ourselves well,” he explains.

Click here to jump down to this year’s Top 250 list!

Bypassed Congestion at West Coast Ports

In addition to chartering containers and ships, Matson owns its own fleet of vessels, and its three trans-Pacific lines are faster than competitors, says Cox. The company also operates 2022 its own West Coast terminals, partners with trucking companies, and owns containers and chassis, thus bypassing much of the congestion at the ports.

“Given the chaos and turmoil in the supply chain, we stand out head and shoulders better,” says Cox. All told, “2021 was our best year in the company’s 140-year history.”

Another factor adding to Matson’s earnings was a dramatic rise in international freight rates, which more than quadrupled since 2019.

“There was an explosion in e-commerce and people doing things like remodeling houses, resulting in a ton of spending on goods, which overwhelmed cargo capacity,” explains Cox. “Every ship had significantly more demand than it could possibly carry.” The result was ballooning freight rates.

However, Cox notes that rates for domestic shipments from the U.S. mainland to Hawai‘i and Alas-ka have been rising at a more modest 3% or 4% a year, along with charges for escalating fuel costs.

“We used the launch pad of Hawai‘i to expand. But Hawai‘i is always our home and our first place of responsibility,” says Cox.

Other local shipping companies also experienced growth. Pasha’s gross revenue was up 18.2% in 2021, while Young Brothers was up 36.6%.

Construction Holds Steady

In 2020, construction was a stabilizing force in the state’s economy, making up 6.2% of GDP. While tourism languished, projects such as new and remodeled homes, hotel renovations, infrastructure work and military construction continued through the shutdown.

Last year, construction remained strong. The 36 construction and development companies on the current Top 250 list reported an average 11.3% rise in gross revenue over 2020. The companies’ average gross revenue was more than $110 million in 2021, compared with $96 million in 2020.

Employment was flat, with the average number of full-time employees at about 187 in 2021 and 182 in 2020.

Real Estate Grows Frenzied

Bidding wars, cash-only offers and houses selling in just nine days on average: Real estate went nuts in 2021.

According to a Hawaii Business Magazine report from March 2022, sales of single-family homes and condos in 2021 jumped 29% over the pre-pandemic highs of 2019. And prices rose even more. The total sales volume in 2021 was $22.2 billion – 64% higher than in 2019.

The heated market, combined with limited inventory, has created a housing crisis for many residents. But for many sellers and real estate professionals, the picture looks quite different.

Among the 15 residential and commercial real estate companies on this year’s list, 2021 gross revenue averaged more than $102 million – up from $87 million in 2020 and $96 million in 2019.

Auto Dealership Gain $1.1 Billion

Across the country, supply chain snarls have made cars and trucks increasingly difficult to find and expensive.

That translates to higher revenue for the Top 250’s 14 auto dealerships – including top-ranking Servco Pacific, which also has branches in musical instruments and venture/growth capital. Total gross sales for the group was $5.1 billion in 2021, compared with about $4 billion in 2020 and $3.7 billion in 2019.

Jim Falk Automotive Group, the second largest auto dealer company on the Top 250, reported $411 million in gross sales in 2021. Even the smallest, Hilo-Kona Mazda Subaru Hyundai, reported nearly $38.8 million in gross sales. Gross sales for the two companies were up 24% and 11.4%, respectively, over the prior year.

Click here to jump down to this year’s Top 250 list!

Punahou Doubles Its Gross Revenue

Among the 10 schools and universities on the 2022 list, most reported gross revenue that was fairly stable, ranging from 10% down at the UH System to 22% up at Hawaii Baptist Academy.

But Punahou School reported a dramatic gain of 104%, with about $232 million in gross revenue in 2021 versus $114 million in 2020. Similar to Kamehameha Schools’ 88% jump in the 2021 edition of this list, school officials say they adopted an accounting change that affects how they report investments.

An added factor was that Punahou “saw favorable returns on our endowment investments, which are used to support school priorities such as financial aid,” the school says in a statement. The total market value of endowed funds was $361 million in 2021 – a one-year rise of $36.4 million.

Newcomers to the List

The Top 250 welcomes many newcomers to the list that come from a wide array of sectors. Listed by gross revenue size, the companies and organizations include:

Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation, The Elite Companies, Corcoran Pacific Properties, Hale Koa Hotel, WestPac Wealth Partners Hawaii, Waikiki Health, Hawaii Baptist Academy, Hawaiian Humane Society, Elemental Excelerator, National Tropical Botanical Garden, Maunalani Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, Century 21 iProperties Hawaii, Mālama Solar, Aloha Green Holdings Inc., Life Cycle Engineering, ATN Construction, Alana Investment Group, Boys & Girls Club of Hawaii, Vivia Cares Inc., Integrated Facility Services Hawaii and Kona Coast Property Management.

“I’m 100% sure that this super cycle we’re in will end and supply and demand gets back in balance.”

– Matt Cox, Chair and CEO, Matson

Rising Inflation Looms

While the gains made in 2021 are heartening, inflation has been rising quickly, casting a shadow on Hawai‘i’s recovery.

Higher interest rates designed to lower inflation are cooling the housing market and visitor numbers could start dropping again as fares rise. Spending in general could fall as essentials like rent, food and gas get more expensive.

For the shipping industry, the insatiable demand for electronics, furniture and fashion from China is expected to dampen, potentially untangling supply chains but also slowing trade.

Matson’s Matt Cox nicely sums up prospects for 2022 and beyond: “I’m 100% sure that this super cycle we’re in will end and supply and demand gets back in balance.”

Top 250 List of 2022

The Top 250 honors organizations that are making a positive impact in the Islands and provides valuable insights into the local economy. Plus our annual Black Book in the December issue publishes profiles only of executives from the Top 250 and Hawaii Business Magazine’s other awards programs.

In late March, Hawaii Business Magazine will start surveying organizations for the Top 250 data. To participate for the first time or update an email address, please contact Cynthia Wessendorf at cynthiaw@hawaiibusiness.com.

Illustration: Kelsey Ige

It’s summertime. Tourists are back and the economy is revving up. Many businesses, including our own, are eager to leave the challenges of 2020 behind.

But a numbers-based retrospective can also offer lessons for the future. What industries were most resilient? Which organizations grew despite the shutdown, and why? Who might be positioned to grow in the long term?

For 38 years – through Japan’s asset price bubble of the late 1980s, the shockwaves of 9/11 and the Great Recession to a once-in-a-century pandemic – Hawaii Business Magazine has tracked the state’s economic highs and lows in our annual Top 250 list. The latest list serves as a record of a tumultuous year, from the pain felt in the tourism sector to the ongoing construction boom.

To create the list, we surveyed organizations and searched public sources to gather 2020 gross revenue figures for many of the largest, most influential companies and nonprofits in Hawai‘i. The list is a partial picture, though, as it doesn’t capture all the smaller businesses that struggled with stay-at-home orders or the many companies in tourism and other sectors that did not report their numbers to Hawaii Business Magazine or public sources.

2020 was rough. The UH Economic Research Organization reported that Hawai‘i’s unemployment rate in December 2020, at 11.6%, was the second highest in the nation, trailing only Nevada. Compare that to 2019’s unemployment rate of just 2.5%. The state Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism found that Hawai‘i’s real GDP fell 8% in 2020.

Among Top 250 companies as a whole, the year was much less dire. Employee numbers in 2020 were down just 6%, and revenue fell even less. While gross annual sales in 2019 rose 9% on average over 2018, the 2020 decline was just 0.58% among organizations on the list – a far smaller contraction than the overall economy’s.

The relatively strong showing is, in part, a result of the self-selecting nature of the list; some companies that did not report their 2020 financial results to Hawaii Business Magazine may have suffered difficult years. But even among those companies that did report results, not everyone sailed through unscathed.

Battered Tourism Sector

Only eight companies in the tourism and leisure category reported their 2020 figures:

• Kokusai Kogyo Kanri Kabushiki Kaisha, which owns Waikīkī landmarks such as the Sheraton Waikiki, Royal Hawaiian and Moana Surfrider
• Halekulani Corp.
• The Polynesian Cultural Center
• Kualoa Ranch Hawaii Inc.
• Wailea Golf LLC
• Star of Honolulu Cruises & Events
• Tanaka of Tokyo Restaurants Ltd.
• Pacific Fleet Submarine Memorial Association

Among them, revenue in 2020 fell an average of 71.8% – a precipitous drop for a sector that, in 2019, comprised 23% of Hawai‘i’s GDP, according to UHERO economists.

Figures were similar for Hawaiian Airlines and Alaska Airlines, which respectively reported revenue drops of 70.2% and 72.6%. Aloha Air Cargo, on the other hand, saw a gain of nearly 21%, a benefit of moving goods instead of people.

Construction a Bright Spot

Unlike tourism, construction was deemed an essential industry and powered through the pandemic with hotel renovations, new and remodeled homes, county and state infrastructure projects, and military construction.

Hawaii Business Magazine’s Noelle Fujii-Oride reported in February 2021 that the construction sector – including mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction – made up 6.2% of the state’s GDP in the first three quarters of 2020. That’s almost the same size as health care and the military, according to economist Paul Brewbaker, who calls the industry “remarkably resilient.”

Photo: Getty Images

From March to November 2020, total jobs in the sector were stable at roughly 36,000 to 38,000 positions, according to DBEDT monthly data.

The Top 250 list reflects these broader trends. Forty companies on the list are in the construction and development category, with an average gross revenue of about $96 million in 2020 – a 15.4% increase over 2019. The average employee count in 2020 was nearly 182, a rise of 3.2% from the previous year.

Health Care Overcame Challenges

Health care proved to be equally resilient in 2020. According to DBEDT data, the health care and social assistance sector makes up about 6.8% of Hawai‘i’s GDP, and big players such as Kaiser Permanente, The Queen’s Health Systems and Hawai‘i Pacific Health ranked seven, eight and nine on the Top 250 list. Insurance giant HMSA landed the top spot for the sixth year in a row.

Both Kaiser and Queen’s reported 5.9% gains over 2019’s gross revenue, a remarkable feat in a year when many patients canceled appointments or delayed health care, and tens of thousands of unemployed people and their families were forced into Medicaid, which pays far less than private insurers.

Paul McDowell, executive VP and CFO of The Queen’s Health Systems, says that exceptionally strong pre-pandemic performance helped the organization weather the storms. He notes that Queen’s had opened a surgical unit at its West O‘ahu facility, expanded the emergency room at its Waimea hospital on Hawai‘i Island and acquired Island Urgent Care’s string of clinics.

“Queen’s was experiencing market share gains and growth in our patient volumes as a result,” writes McDowell in an email. “Once the full impact of the pandemic was felt, our financial performance was significantly impacted.”

Added expenses included paying caregiving staff even when they were asked to stay home, adding new positions such as screeners, building a $12 million infectious disease unit, serving more Medicaid patients, and buying lots more gloves, masks and isolation gowns.

“In the early days of the pandemic, hospitals were effectively bidding against each other for the limited supply of PPE. That drove up prices dramatically,” McDowell writes. “We were buying N95 masks by the shipping container.”

While Queen’s didn’t report 2020 net profit/loss figures that would reflect these unexpected costs, the solid uptick in gross revenue provided a cushion.

An Outlier in Education

Among the eight independent schools and universities on the Top 250 list, most reported small variations in revenue from 2019 to 2020, with Punahou reporting the largest drop, at 11.6%. At the opposite end, Kamehameha Schools’ revenue rose more than 88% – the result of a deliberate accounting shift to more accurately show earnings from its $12 billion endowment.

“We are finally getting aligned with our peer institutions across the country, which are primarily nonprofit, educational institutions, mostly higher ed with large endowments,” says Timothy Slottow, executive VP of finance and CFO at Kamehameha Schools.

The schools’ 2020 audited financial statement now reports the $471 million distributed from the endowment, which is made up of a diversified global financial portfolio and a smaller Hawai‘i-based commercial real estate portfolio. The 4% annual payouts are based on five-year averages to smooth out market fluctuations, says Slottow.

“It’s not about how much we have, but what we do with it.” – Timothy Slottow, Executive VP of finance and CFO, Kamehameha Schools

But unlike many wealthy institutions that draw 20% to 50% of their annual operating budgets from their endowments, Kamehameha relies on it to cover more than 90%, says Slottow. Nearly all goes toward running three K-12 campuses and a multitude of preschool, public school, scholarship and community initiatives, particularly as tuition is set low – below $7,000 annually – and most students receive financial aid. “Financial aid equals about 80% of what we charged,” explains Slottow.

“It’s not about how much we have, but what we do with it,” he adds. “Actually, we don’t have nearly enough money to improve the educational outcomes for every Native Hawaiian,” which is what Kamehameha Schools would like to do.

“We’re not here just to figure out education today. We have to figure out how to educate Native Hawaiians in perpetuity,” says Aron Dote, Kamehameha’s strategic communications manager. “And that makes it even more complex. So we have to be more diligent in our reporting, diligent in our spending and diligent in our revenue generation.”

Nonprofits Were a Lifeline

Rounding out this overview are many of Hawai‘i’s nonprofits, which fed, housed and cared for both the chronically poor and the tens of thousands of newly jobless people who struggled through dual health and economic crises.

The nonprofit category includes 24 organizations, which reported an average revenue increase of more than 15%. Many were lifelines to people in need, including the Hawai‘i Community Foundation, the Hawaii Foodbank, Aloha United Way, Catholic Charities Hawai‘i, Goodwill Hawaii, Child & Family Service, and Parents And Children Together.

Newcomers to the Top 250’s nonprofit category include Easterseals Hawaii, Hale Kipa, American Red Cross of Hawaii, Legal Aid Society of Hawai‘i, Make-A-Wish Foundation of Hawaii, Aloha Harvest and The Food Basket Inc. Based in Hilo, the Food Basket’s revenues jumped more than 200% in 2020 – a telling indication of both a difficult year and a generous community.

Along with these nonprofits, a number of smaller but ambitious companies made the cut this round. We’re pleased to see so many up-and-comers who are growing and prospering.

Check out this year’s Top 250 list below:

How We Compile the Top 250

Top 250 companies and nonprofits are ranked by gross sales or revenue, key indicators of market dominance and influence.

Each spring, Hawaii Business Magazine surveys companies in our database and gathers updated financial figures, employee counts, names of executives and other information.

Businesses are asked to calculate gross sales using generally accepted accounting principles, while nonprofits report revenue from contributions, funding for services or proceeds from activities that support their mission. All provide the name of an executive who verifies the self-reported figures.

Companies headquartered in Hawai‘i report sales from all their subsidiaries worldwide; those based elsewhere report Hawai‘i figures only. While we prefer calendar year data, some organizations operate on a fiscal year.

To supplement the survey process, we draw on public records such as annual reports, financial statements and databases of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and National Credit Union Administration.

Some companies with a large local presence don’t appear on the list. The omission is often because an offshore parent company can’t separate data for its Hawai‘i operations, or because the company is privately held and does not disclose financial information.

Join Next Year’s Top 250: If you would like to receive Top 250 surveys in the future or update your contact information, please email cynthiaw@hawaiibusiness.com.

The Most Profitable Companies list digs deeper into 65 of those organizations, revealing profit and loss figures that add context to the 2020 revenue numbers. Most of the profit/loss figures were self-reported by organizations participating in the Top 250 survey; annual reports and other public data were consulted for those marked with an asterisk.

Two enduring Hawai‘i companies switched places in the profitability ranking this round: Hawaiian Airlines and Alexander & Baldwin. As travel cratered in 2020, the airline suffered a 72.2% drop in gross revenue, falling from 2019’s more than $2.8 billion to about $845 million in 2020. The airline also posted a nearly $511 million loss last year, according to its 2020 annual report, after enjoying nearly $224 million in profit in 2019.

But the future looks much brighter for Hawaiian Airlines, whose recovery has already begun thanks to the vaccine rollout this year and a surge of Mainland visitors to the Islands. In last year’s roundup of 2019 profits, Alexander & Baldwin fell to the bottom of the list, showing a loss of more than $209 million. The pandemic year saw a change in fortunes, as the company rose to No. 14, reporting $5.2 million in profit.

According to A&B’s annual report, the huge gain was a result of selling off some non-core assets and focusing on its commercial real estate business – mostly grocery-anchored shopping centers across the Islands. “We ended the year with total portfolio occupancy of 93.5%,” states the A&B report.

In a pandemic development, more nonprofits landed on the most profitable list this time – 13 in total – as donations poured in and created surpluses that the charities can draw on in the future. However, many other nonprofits reported slim margins as the money they received flowed back into the community. Child & Family Service in ‘Ewa Beach, for example, reported $30.5 million in gross revenue in 2020, with just $452,561 left over.

In a final observation, HMSA ranked first in the Top 250 list for the sixth year in a row, with more than $4.1 billion in gross sales. But unlike 2019, when HMSA gained more than $57.4 million in profit, the insurance company reported a $31 million loss in 2020. According to the company website, HMSA paid $175 million in pandemic-related support for things such as COVID-19 testing, treatment and services, while waiving patient copayments.

Special thanks to Cory Kubota, managing partner at Accuity LLP, for his help analyzing corporate financial reports.