Maui Land & Pineapple profits up

By John Duchemin
Advertiser Staff Writer

Profits and sales rose last year for Neighbor Island conglomerate Maui Land & Pineapple Co. thanks to a strong fourth quarter and millions of dollars in land sales at the company's Kapalua Resort.

Maui Land & Pineapple had net income of $7.6 million last year, compared with less than $500,000 in 2000. Revenues rose 22 percent to $173 million.

But the company's pineapple and retail subsidiaries continued to struggle, each reporting higher losses in 2001 than in 2000, according to earnings information released yesterday.

The mixed results have become a regular pattern for the company, which owns one of Maui's largest shopping centers, the state's last pineapple cannery and more than 28,000 acres of land.

As Maui construction, tourism and land values have boomed, the resort division has reaped millions in income each quarter.

But lower pineapple prices and stiff international competition have led to millions in losses for the Maui Pineapple Co. Much of the survival of the company's cannery has been thanks to U.S. government intervention that forces foreign importers to pay anti-dumping duties.

Another subsidiary, Kahului shopping mall Queen Ka'ahumanu Center, has also struggled to break even through the 1990s.

All of the company's 2001 income was derived from the Kapalua Resort, 50-percent-owned by Maui Land & Pineapple, where the sale of several dozen single-family lots and luxury condominiums led to operating profits of $18.5 million last year, compared with $8.8 million in 2000.

The pineapple operations lost $3.2 million last year compared to $2.9 million in 2000. Results would have been worse, but the company got a $1.8 million payment in the fourth quarter from the customs service, which has started to distribute proceeds of anti-dumping duties to the U.S. companies protected by those duties.

The commercial and property operations lost $1.4 million last year, up from $400,000 the previous year.