Hawaii Fires Turn a Safe Investment Into a Big Risk

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renewable energy build-outs, ultimately means large bills for ratepayers. “There’s obviously been more and more focus on these infrastructure investments given the weather environment," said Andrew Bischof, an equity strategist at Morningstar. Hawaiian Electric has been slow to complete such work despite warning in 2019 that it needed to do more.

For now, teams totaling more than 400 people have fanned out across Maui to repair transmission lines and bring electricity back to schools, water facilities and hotels expected to be used as temporary shelter. The utility said on Thursday that it has restored power to about 80% of customers who lost it last week. Hawaiian Electric Industries, which also owns American Savings Bank, includes three utilities that operate as Hawaiian Electric.

The power companies reported a collective $143.6 million cash on hand in June, a sum that analysts say is more than enough to pay for the current cleanup. Longer term, however, the utility will need to cobble together capital from increasingly wary equity and debt markets. S&P on Tuesday downgraded the company’s credit rating to junk status, citing how the wildfires “destroyed a significant segment of [Hawaiian Electric’s] customer base that will take many years to restore." Some company bonds traded on secondary markets this week at their lowest prices ever, according to the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board.

Using California blazes as a guideline, Guggenheim Partners estimated that the more than 2,000 structures consumed across Maui could carry about $2 million apiece in damages. That potential liability makes it hard to imagine Hawaiian Electric emerging in its current form, Guggenheim analyst Shahriar Pourreza said. “Either the