Maui Land & Pine’s
net sinks

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

Maui Land & Pineapple Co. today reported a big drop in second-quarter earnings compared with last year's but said the difference was due to a land sale that brought extra profits in the 1997 quarter.

The company said it had a profit of $123,000, or 2 cents a share, in the three months through June 30, compared with $1.6 million, or 22 cents a share, in the year-earlier quarter.

The results in the 1997 quarter had included a $2.6 million net profit from the sale of the company's half interest in 12 acres next to the Kapalua Bay Hotel. Without that, the company would have had a loss of about $1 million in last year's quarter.

Aside from the land transaction, revenues and operating profits were higher this year, the company said.

Since the company is in the land development and sales business, however, the land deal was not reported as an extraordinary item, but as part of ongoing business operations. That resulted in the company reporting a 9.1 percent decline in second-quarter revenues to $30.1 million this year from $33.1 million last year.

Second-quarter revenues from pineapple were down 1 percent but the company said it had a 38 percent increase in operating profits from pineapple compared with the 1997 quarter, due to a higher fresh-fruit sales volume and the lower production cost.

Losses from the company's investment in Kaahumanu Center Associates, operators of a shopping center, were higher this year but ML&P sold two pieces of land in the latest quarter, producing about $200,000 in income. The result was an operating loss of $20,000 in the company's commercial and property segment.

Reporting resort operations for the first six months of the year only, the company said its golf operations at Kapalua and other resort activities brought in $2.8 million in operating profits this year, compared with $1.2 million in the first half of 1997.