You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: We're grateful for the healthcare workers and the many others on the front lines providing supplies and services as we collectively weather this pandemic.
Today I'll start with COVID-19 impacts in Hawaii plans for reopening our economy and how our companies are positioned.
Hawaii is facing an unprecedented challenge from COVID-19 and we're especially mindful of the essential roles our companies play.
Through our utility we provide reliable electricity to keep our hospitals homes and essential businesses running.
And through our bank we help ensure money keeps flowing through our economy.
Continuing to provide these vital services while protecting the health of our customers as well as our employees has been a core focus.
In Hawaii we talk about our special culture of Aloha and of Kuleana our responsibility to others.
It's a culture that we've described previously in terms of our community coming together to take care of each other and of the land and environment.
And it's a culture that has served us well in managing the public health impacts of COVID-19.
Our government's early actions to impose statewide stay at home work from home orders and mandatory 14-day quarantines for all incoming travelers both visitors and residents alike and a whole of community response have succeeded in flattening the curve in Hawaii.
As of May 4 we have had sadly 17 deaths and a total case load of 621 but also 16 days where new cases were in the single digits.
On our most populous island of Oahu where population density is comparable to cities like San Jose California.
We've even had multiple days of no new cases.
These numbers are encouraging and have enabled us to start reopening our economy.
While this is a difficult time we believe we will get through this crisis.
Although Hawaii's tourism industry has been significantly impacted by the stay at home orders and the travel quarantine the beauty of our state and the Aloha of Hawaii's people will not change.
Post 9/11 and post the Great Recession tourism came back strongly.
It was clear that people still wanted to travel but they wanted to travel to a safe destination.
In this crisis we have the opportunity to rebrand Hawaii as the safest place on Earth.
We believe that we can demonstrate that our state will be a welcoming and safe place for visitors and that Hawaii will continue to be a very attractive place for tourism.
Hawaii will also remain continue to remain of strategic importance for the military and federal state and local government will continue to play a major role here.
Our housing market has also proven resilient.
It was relatively stable during and after the Great Recession and continues to be characterized by robust demand for a limited supply.
The public and private sectors here are collaborating to responsibly reopen our economy for both residents and visitors and also to shape what we want our economy to look like in the future.
Our company's leaders are deeply involved in these efforts.
In addition Alan Oshima former CEO of Hawaiian Electric who stepped down just a couple of months ago was appointed by our Governor Ige to coordinate and navigate our state's economic and community recovery in a collaborative fashion.
The overarching plan has three phases: Phase one stabilization of the number of COVID cases; Phase two a gradual reopening and recovery of our economy; and Phase theree making our economy even more resilient with strong business and job growth.
Parks and golf courses have reopened elective surgeries have resumed and low contact businesses such as car dealerships and automated service providers were allowed to reopen May 1.
We anticipate economic activity will increase over the coming weeks and months with meaningful activity resuming mid-to-late summer and significant recovery by year-end.
Yesterday our University of Hawaii Economic Research Organization updated their forecast for Hawaii's economic recovery.
And they believe that local economic activity will return by 35% to 45% in May and June and 75% by year-end.
Tourism will take longer likely beginning to return late July with arrivals by year-end reaching half of their normal levels.
This reopening gives our state a unique opportunity to consider the future of our economy and there too we're looking at doing it responsibly and ensuring that the choices and investments we make move us toward a more sustainable economy.
We're thinking about the right level of tourism that ensures a good experience for visitors and is sustainable for our environment our lands our economy and our communities.
As a company we're working to support and advance our state's recovery.
At our bank we're focused on building the innovation economy to diversify and expand job opportunities.
At our utility we continue to partner with stakeholders to progress clean energy projects and identify opportunities to rebuild with Hawaii's green economy goals in mind.
And we remain committed to our state's 100% renewable portfolio standard and carbon neutrality goals.
Protecting the health and safety of our employees helping our customers and supporting our community through this time have been core goals for our companies.
To protect employees and customers we implemented a mandatory work from home policy for employees who are able and we instituted the use of discrete work teams to increase physical distancing for those employees who must be on the job such as our linemen and power plant operators.
We also scaled back our open bank branches and implemented extensive cleaning and physical distancing precautions for those that remain open.
The bank has seen strong increases in online account enrollments and mobile usage which is encouraging and should help keep reducing costs for routine transactions over time.
As the state and county stay-at-home orders get phased out over time we will likely phase back into full operations albeit with new practices to maintain health and safety.
We've been pleased that our liquidity and balance sheet strength of our utility bank and consolidated enterprise have enabled us to support our customers in this uncertain time.
Our utilities has suspended disconnections for nonpayment through the end of June and urged customers experiencing hardship to reach out so we can help with payment arrangements.
We also remain very focused on affordability of customer bills.
We are mindful of the need to operate even more efficiently given the economy and how it may impact pending rate requests.
One bright spot has been fuel costs which are largely a pass-through item for our customers.
Our customers are seeing some benefits of lower fuel prices just when they need it most.
For example on Oahu in May lower fuel costs would reduce a 500-kilowatt hour per month bill by more than $12 compared to March.
We expect lower fuel prices to continue to benefit customers for the next few months.
But longer term we remain concerned about the volatility of oil and its impact on customers.
So we're still focused on moving off oil as rapidly as possible.
At our bank we made a huge push with teammates working round-the-clock shifts to secure loans under the Paycheck Protection Program or PPP to help small businesses pay employees and other essential bills like utilities.
We're proud that Americans secured over $370 million for approximately 3600 small businesses employing roughly 40000 individuals.
And that Hawaii banks in total obtained funding for 78% of our states eligible payrolls in the first round placing Hawaii in the top five states in the nation.
American is also helping customers by providing loan deferral and forbearance options and waiving a number of fees.
Like Hawaii as a company our fundamentals remain strong and that serves us well to weather the challenges of COVID-19.
On a consolidated basis we're comprised of stable operating companies in essential industries.
Our utility has delivered power for our state for over 125 years through many different economic and social conditions.
During this COVID period we do expect higher bad debt expense and lower kilowatt hour sales.
And indeed in the last week of March we saw lower loads 7% lower on Oahu and Hawaii Island and 14% lower on Maui.
Given the utilities fully decoupled regulatory structure the primary financial effect relates to liquidity.
Although decoupling enables the recovery of target revenues approved by the PUC despite lower loads cash collections under that mechanism would be delayed until 2021 under the revenue balancing account.
We've taken steps to meaningfully strengthen the utility's liquidity position including through an expanded revolver and a private placement which priced last week and which included our first green bond offering.
The lower loads also impact our renewable portfolio standard or RPS performance albeit in a positive fashion since the lower kilowatt hour sales reduces the denominator in the RPS calculation and we expect to comfortably exceed our 2020 RPS goal of 30%.
Our utility and regulators continue to move regulatory processes forward with minimal disruption.
The performance-based regulation or PBR docket remains on track for final decision by year-end with workshops proceeding remotely.
Our Hawaiian Electric 2020 rate case is also moving forward although the schedule for an interim decision and order is now October rather than July.
As part of that rate case the PUC implemented a management audit.
That's been a constructive process and the audit report is still expected in May.
On April 29 the PUC published an order terminating the mandatory triennial rate case cycle.
As such we are no longer required to file a Maui Electric rate case and we're evaluating our options there.
Our bank has served our state for 95 years and has a conservative risk culture lending practices and loan portfolio.
These attributes helped ASB perform well compared to other banks during the 2008 2009 financial crisis and position it well for the challenge at hand.
While net interest income will decline due to lower rates across the curve and credit losses will rise due to the economic slowdown the bank remains a good contributor to HEI.
ASB independently maintains strong liquidity and capital and regularly conducts stress testing implemented after the banking crisis of the Great Recession including under scenarios more severe than what is anticipated from COVID-19.
Our bank also has limited exposure to industries such as accommodations food services and retail with a commercial and industrial loan portfolio that is highly focused and secured by real estate.
At this point we do not see a scenario that would require HEI to inject capital into the bank.
However to maintain its target leverage ratio while supporting increased lending under the Paycheck Protection Program the bank will retain capital it otherwise would have paid in dividends to the holding company.
At the holding company we have enhanced our liquidity to ensure that we can be a source of strength to our subsidiaries in the unlikely event that it is needed while maintaining our investment-grade capital structure and our shareholder dividend.
We have paid uninterrupted dividends since [1901 including during the Great Recession and maintaining the stability of our dividend is no less important today.
We have a strong leadership team with the experience and judgment to guide our companies through this period.
I was CEO of HEI through 9/11 and the Great Recession.
Rich led a publicly traded Korean bank through that crisis.
Our bank CFO led a recapitalization of another bank here in Hawaii and our utility and executive teams have decades of experience and are well versed in incident and crisis management.
Our Board members with whom we've been very actively engaged in this period include former utility and bank executives who steered their companies through the financial crisis as CEOs CFOs and Chief Risk Officers.
Despite our company's strengths and the essential services we provide we do expect impacts from COVID-19.
We saw the beginnings of those in the first quarter including higher bad debt expense at our utility and higher allowance for credit losses at our bank.
With the exception of bad debt COVID-19 related costs were not significant for the first quarter but may increase in the next few quarters.
As a result the utility has filed a request for deferral treatment of COVID-19 related costs and plans to seek recovery of those costs at a later time.
The first quarter was impacted by items other than COVID-19 in particular higher-than-planned utility O&M expense.
Utility O&M expense management has been an area of focus for us.
And while we have a number of efforts under way we do have more work to do.
I'll now ask Greg to discuss our first quarter results our liquidity and our guidance.
I'll speak briefly on our Q1 results before moving to our outlook.
On slide nine our Q1 earnings were $0.31 per share compared to $0.42 per share in the prior-year quarter.
COVID-19 expense impacted earnings at both the utility and the bank including $2.5 million higher utility bad debt expense pre-tax than Q1 of last year and additional provisioning for COVID-19 of over $4 million at the bank.
Bad debt expense at the utility also impacted utility ROE.
And we expect that bad debt expense will continue to impact our income statement until deferral treatment is granted for future recovery.
Although we did have negative impacts from COVID-19 during the quarter we also had a very strong start to the year prior to the pandemic.
Loads were strong and showed increases over the prior year of nearly 5%.
We started the year with one of the nation's lowest unemployment rates and the strength of the pre-COVID Hawaii economy makes us optimistic about our future once we're through the crisis.
On slide 10 utility earnings were $23.9 million compared to $32.1 million in the first quarter of 2019.
The most significant drivers of the variance were: $3 million revenue increase from higher rate adjustment mechanism revenues $1 million revenue increase from the recovery of West Loch and Grid Modernization projects under the major project interim recovery mechanism; and $1 million lower interest expense due to debt refinancings at lower rates.
These items were offset by $7 million higher O&M expenses compared to Q1 2019 primarily due to increased bad debt expense due to COVID-19 the absence of onetime of a onetime benefit in Q1 2019 due to deferral treatment for certain previously incurred expenses and an increase in vegetation management work and higher outside service costs.
In addition we had approximately $1 million higher depreciation expense $1 million lower net income from the absence of renewable procurement performance incentive mechanism.
And we received that we received in 1Q 2019 $1 million from the absence of mutual assistant work reimbursement from the first quarter of 2019 and $1 million lower AFUDC as there were fewer long duration projects in construction work in progress particularly after the West Loch was placed in service in November.
Turning to the bank.
American's net income was $15.8 million in the quarter down from $28.2 million in the previous quarter.
Although as a reminder 4Q the fourth quarter of 2019 included $7.7 million of net income from the sales of the former of former properties.
Net income was also down by $5 million versus the first quarter of 2019 mostly due to the provision taken due to COVID-19.
Following our adoption of CECL and the additional provision in the first quarter relating to COVID we believe we are well positioned and our allowance for loan and lease losses ratio of 149 basis points is above our local peers who average about 126 basis points.
We also saw a strong loan growth during the quarter of 4.7% annualized with solid loan growth in commercial and commercial real estate portfolios as well as strong deposit growth of 7.1% on an annualized basis.
I'd like to spend some time on how we're prudently positioning ourselves to withstand the impacts of COVID as it runs its course.
In April we executed financing transactions at both the utility and the holding company that increased committed credit capacity and allowed us to migrate away from commercial paper markets.
HEI issued $65 million a $65 million 364-day term loan freeing up the full capacity of our $150 million credit facility.
The strong pro forma holding company liquidity allows it to serve as a source of strength for the combined enterprise and ensures 2020 cash needs can be met.
Hawaiian Electric added $75 million of capacity through a new revolver and launched and repriced and priced $160 million private placement $95 million of which was used to free up credit capacity on its revolver.
The private placement also included a $50 million green bond portion.
The utility will be refinancing an existing 364-day term loan with an extended maturity into 2021 freeing up liquidity in 2020.
When the customer challenges due to COVID will likely have the most impact.
With these transactions we will have increased liquidity at the utility by over three times.
With full availability of our credit facilities at both the utility and the holding company post-closing of the utilities private placement and ample liquidity at ASB through the Federal Home Loan Bank or FHLB.
We believe our consolidated company has ample liquidity.
We're in a strong position to support our state's economic recovery and maintain our commitment to investment-grade ratings.
Looking at maturities over the our long-term debt maturities over the remainder of 2020 only $14 million remains at the utility.
We have a modest holding company maturity of $50 million in the first quarter of 2021 which we expect to refinance in advance of that maturity.
Turning to the bank.
ASB's commitment to a strong balance sheet and conservative capital ratios is why it's so resilient during challenging times such as this.
The bank has strong liquidity with approximately $3 billion available from the combination of the FHLB and unencumbered securities.
The bank is self-funding and we don't expect it to need capital from the holding company under any scenario including very severe stress scenarios that we've refreshed during the quarter.
We expect ASB's dividend to the holding company this year will be reduced as we expect ASB to focus on retaining capital to support loan growth and important customer programs such as such as PPP and to cover higher credit costs during this period.
On slide 14 we don't expect our dividend from the utility to change meaningfully from the level previously communicated.
Although the dividend from ASB is lower we expect that its profitable operations will continue to contribute to earnings.
We remain committed to investment-grade rating and can turn on our dividend reinvestment program if needed which can cost effectively generate about $30 million of cash and incremental equity annually based on historical levels.
However we don't currently believe we have a need to issue equity this year.
We expect to maintain our external dividend while growing the dividend in line with longer-term earnings growth.
Although we have run scenarios around the pandemic's impacts and we maintain a healthy capital liquidity and dividends under these scenarios.
Turning to the outlook for the year.
We're currently forecasting approximately $22 million of COVID-19 related expenses at the utility.
Whether we get deferral treatment is an important driver for the year we've requested a decision by June 30.
On the regulatory front timing for the Hawaiian Electric rate case interim decision has shifted to October.
We had originally requested 4% revenue increase or about $78 million.
However we recognize how difficult the current economic environment is for customers and we recognize that we did not receive an increase in the Hawaiian Electric Light interim last year.
And that some of our peers are not being granted increases by the regulators.
We are tightening our belts like everyone in our community to find expenses to offset and expense offsets for any lower revenue increase while maintaining our utility earnings to outlook.
Full decoupling at our utility will help provide earnings stability for the year.
COVID-19 impacts were mainly in the latter half of March as stay-at-home orders and air travel quarantines went into effect.
While we are insulated from the impacts of lower load on revenue we don't get true-ups for incremental bad debt expense which was up considerably in March versus last year.
We have had an unprecedented level of federal stimulus coming into the states including funds loan through the Paycheck Protection Program.
And we expect that this will provide some upside as customers get more breathing room to pay bills.
The lower fuel prices are also bright spot for our customers.
We are now approximately we now forecast approximately $330 million to $360 million of Capex in 2020.
As we see about $30 million of potential downside due to COVID related delays.
As I mentioned we've delayed some scheduled maintenance to avoid outages for residential customers now working from home.
However we're maintaining our longer-term Capex and rate base guidance.
In the 2021 through 2022 period we expect Capex to average approximately $400 million per year or about 2x depreciation.
This does not include potential self-build projects that made it through the first round of the Renewable Energy and Storage stage two RFP process.
We'll find out whether any of those projects are ultimately selected later this week.
We continue to expect the utility to be able to self-fund its forecasted Capex and through 2020 via retained earnings and access to debt capital markets.
Turning to ASB's guidance and key drivers.
Our bank guidance for the year of $0.73 to $0.80 is shown on the left on the left lower left.
And that is and that included our standard elements including asset growth net interest margin provision and return on assets.
I should say our prior bank guidance which is no longer in effect.
Experience tells us that it's difficult to know how an event such as COVID-19 will impact asset quality until we have a better sense about the timing and manner in which our local economy will reopen.
Given that uncertainty it is too early to provide guidance on provision.
And consequently we are unable to provide earnings per share or return on asset guidance as well for the bank.
However we do have sufficient visibility to provide guidance on a pre-tax pre-provision level which is comprised of net interest income noninterest income noninterest expense which also provides you a snapshot of the continuing profitable operation of the bank in this economic environment excluding the credit impacts of COVID-19.
We estimate the pre-tax provision income range to be from $90 million to $110 million for 2020.
That income along with our existing bank reserves and strong capital position gives us significant headroom to absorb the uncertainty of COVID related credit impacts.
While rate moves by the Fed in March had a modest impact in the first quarter we expect the low interest rate environment to have a greater impact on asset yields in Q2.
And thus further pressure in net interest margins.
Floating rate debt such as LIBOR-based and prime linked loans repriced based on the change in the benchmark to which they are tied.
We saw some effect in Q1 from lower LIBOR rates on our commercial portfolios and expect to see the full impact in Q2.
We also saw some Q1 impact from the lower prime rate to which our home equity line of credit those lines of credit are now at their floor price.
And consequently we do not expect we would expect minimal incremental impact from further repricing of that portfolio.
Fixed rate debt such as 30-year fixed rate mortgages were really priced at a much more slowly through refinancing of existing mortgages.
Given our already very low-cost of funds at 24 basis points in the first quarter there is little room to move lower and improve to improve net interest margins.
ASB's net charge-offs have consistently been below the national average.
This was true during the financial crisis as Hawaii's residents continue to pay their mortgages and other loans.
If you look at the 2008 through 2011 period our provision expense averaged 0.52% of our loan portfolio and peaked at 0.81%.
If you apply that to a portfolio of our size today you'd have approximately you'd have an average credit cost of $27 million and a peak of $42 million.
Turning to slide 20.
We've walked through each of the key drivers for our utility and bank.
So now I'll bring it all together.
At the utility we are reaffirming our guidance range and we currently expect the utility to be at or below the midpoint.
This assumes the deferral of COVID-19 related cost is granted during 2020 for later recovery at the bank because provision is tied to uncertainties regarding impacts of COVID-19 and the economic recovery we are providing guidance at the pre-tax pre-provision line.
We expect pre-tax pre-provision income which includes net interest income noninterest income and noninterest expense to range from $90 million to $110 million.
We continue to expect low to mid-single-digit earning asset growth.
Given our current low interest rate environment we expect net interest margin in the 3.45% to 3.55% range.
Our holding company guidance is unchanged at $0.27 to $0.29 earnings per share loss.
Given that it's too early to determine the bank provision we are unable to provide consolidated earnings per share guidance at this time.

user
compname reports q1 earnings per share of $0.31.
q1 earnings per share $0.31.
board maintains quarterly dividend.

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