Matson tops Hawaiʻi’s Most-Profitable Companies List for 5th Year

Hawaiʻi’s transportation and ocean shipping company Matson captured the crown as the state’s most profitable company in the past year, despite being buffeted by shifting U.S. trade policies.

Matson has held the top position in Hawaii Business Magazine‘s annual list for the past five years.

The compilation draws from the Hawaii Business Top 250 list of companies and nonprofits that respond to an annual survey, ranking them according to reported annual revenues. The Most Profitable list draws from these responses but does not include some private companies that choose not to disclose profit figures, or parent companies that do not break out profits for only their Hawaiʻi operations.

Matson, Hawaiʻi’s fifth-largest enterprise by revenue, is the state’s main logistics provider, operating a fleet of ships in the Pacific linking Hawaiʻi, Alaska, Guam, Southeast Asia, Japan, China, as well as the U.S. West Coast.

Matson maintained its profit lead in 2025 with net income of $444.8 million, which was a 6.6% decline from the prior year on annual revenues that dipped 2.3%.

“The primary driver behind raising the outlook for consolidated operating income is the strengthening of freight demand in our China service post-Lunar New Year that we expect now to continue through peak season,” Matt Cox, chairman and CEO of Matson, said during the first quarter 2026 earnings call.

During the company’s second-quarter call, Cox raised the full-year 2026 outlook despite year-over-year weakness in the Hawaiʻi and Alaska segment shipments.

Cox said the company’s China service freight rates exceeded management’s expectations for e-commerce, electronic goods and garments.

Reed Seay, equity analyst at Stephens, says the impact from shifting U.S. tariff policies, which caused significant disruptions to global trade in 2025, was now being taken in stride.

“There was a lot of noise last year on tariffs, and I think it’s kind of gotten to the point where a lot of shippers have decided that China is basically here to stay, at least as part of their supply chain,” Seay told Hawaii Business. “You need really, really high tariffs on China to make it not worthwhile to manufacture there.”

Meanwhile, fuel cost increases due to the U.S. and Israel war with Iran have caused the shipper to increase surcharges on freight loads, Cox said, but noted the company is able to recover from that volatility over time. In its early August second-quarter earnings report, it said: “The company continues to expect to fully recover fuel costs by the end of the year.”

Consistently over the years, Matson has taken advantage of its competitive advantages to become a profit powerhouse. Indeed, Matson’s shareholders have benefited from its industry dominance.

Matson’s stock, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol MATX, nearly doubled in price in the year to August 11.

Seay sums up Matson’s profit strategy this way: Matson is able to charge a premium in the sector for its fast, reliable service due to several factors that give it a unique, niche hold on the market.

In many locations, Matson operates its own ports that give it efficient, rapid turnaround. It also operates smaller ships that can navigate shallower waters in some inland Chinese ports, so they are not affected by tides that cause delays for larger ships. And crucially, unlike competitors, Matson runs cargo in both directions to and from Asia due to its stops in Alaska and Hawaiʻi and between Asian ports.

At the same time, Seay says, even though Matson’s speed and reliability allow it to charge a premium over other ocean shippers, it is also significantly cheaper than air cargo, though not significantly slower.

“Air freight is still, like 80% more expensive than Matson,” he says. “So as long as Matson is going to retain their reliability, it’s basically a discount to air freight, which has similar reliability, but it’s much faster, more like three days where Matson is like 11. But if you can push out your supply chain a week and know that all your freight’s still going to be there on time… they’ll pay that price.”

“It’s their niche market, nobody has been able to replicate it,” Seay adds. “The deliberate nature of the management team just makes it really, really hard to do what they do in the time and with the money that they’re willing to spend to make sure they have the best product. It just goes unmatched.”

Matson also profits from its unique hold over the flow of goods to and from Hawaiʻi, as the dominant non-air logistics company in the state. It declines to say what percent of the state’s commerce is delivered via its ships. (See “Matson’s Unique Ship-to-Shelf Delivery System Keeps Hawaiʻi Well-Stocked,” Hawaii Business Magazine, December 2025)

Also in the logistics sector, Pasha Hawaii, the state’s second-largest shipper, is a private company and did not report profits. However, it ranked 17th in the Top 250 list with revenues of $778 million, compared with Matson’s $3.35 billion in sales. SeaWide Express, which operates between Hawaiʻi and the U.S. mainland, Alaska and Guam, reported profits of $692,000, ranking it in 48th place on the Most Profitable list.

FHB Remains at No. 2

Second on the Most Profitable list was First Hawaiian Bank, with profits of $276.3 million, up 20% from the prior year.

Despite uncertainty over economic policy and interest rates, Bob Harrison, the bank’s chairman, president and CEO, told shareholders: “Our performance in 2025 was not driven by short-term decisions, but by the cumulative impact of investments made over multiple years in data, digital platforms, talent, and culture that continue to differentiate First Hawaiian Bank from the competition.”

He also said the bank had been disciplined about cutting costs.

In a strategic move, First Hawaiian announced in July this year that it would acquire California-based TriCo Bancshares to expand on the mainland where economic growth rates exceed those in Hawaiʻi. See link here: linkedin.com/pulse/first-hawaiian-trico-join-forces-two-strong-banks-hlhec/

The state’s financial sector as a whole profited handsomely in 2025, due to accelerating loan issuance and net interest margin growth. Twelve of the top 20 most profitable enterprises in the state were banks, credit unions or insurance companies.

Besides First Hawaiian Bank, financial firms at the top of the Most Profitable list include Bank of Hawaiʻi (No. 3), American Savings Bank (No. 5), Central Pacific Financial (No. 6) and First Insurance Co. of Hawaiʻi (No. 7).

HEI Returns to Profit

Hawaiian Electric Industries (HEI), which reported a massive loss of $1.4 billion in 2024 as a result of its contribution to the nearly $4 billion settlement following the Maui wildfires, returned to profit in 2025. It posted earnings of $123.1 million, putting it in the No. 4 position.

In his annual report statement to shareholders, Scott Seu, CEO of HEI, said the company had worked “with urgency” to reduce wildfire risk and harden the power grids across the Islands as part of a three-year $480 million Wildfire Safety Strategy.

“I am encouraged to share that we have now resolved the Maui wildfire tort litigation settlement. With the resolution of key appeals, we are moving forward with the vital process of beginning payments to those affected. This is a fundamental step in our collective healing and a reaffirmation of our company’s enduring commitment to the recovery of Maui.”

In April 2026, the company made its first of four $479 million annual settlement payments.

Seu also addressed the issue of affordability for state residents, who pay among the highest electricity rates in the country.

“Affordability will continue to be a core focus as we move forward, particularly as we face affordability headwinds brought on by geopolitical conflict,” he wrote.

Even so, the company has appealed to the utility commission for rate increases in each of 2027 and 2028. Hawaiian Electric, which has 472,000 customers on Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi island, Maui, Molokaʻi and Lānaʻi, faces higher insurance premiums due to the wildfire payments plus inflationary pressures. It also has faced increased costs in 2026 after back-to-back severe storms caused flooding that resulted in outages and damage to infrastructure.

Hawaiian Telcom Remains in the Red

After Hawaiian Electric’s recovery, the new loss leader is Hawaiian Telcom, which is owned by Altafiber (formerly Cincinnati Bell). It reported a loss of $59.2 million in the past year following a $67.8 million loss in 2024.

“Over the past decade, Hawaiian Telcom has invested more than $1.7 billion to build a statewide fiber network and position Hawaiʻi as the first fully fiber-enabled state in the nation,” the company says in an emailed statement. “This transformational investment has required significant upfront capital and substantial spending to modernize communications infrastructure across the islands.

“As a result,” it continues, “the company has prioritized long-term network investment and growth over near-term earnings. The reported losses in both 2024 and 2025 primarily reflect the financial impact of that investment cycle, including depreciation, interest expense, and the costs associated with expanding fiber infrastructure across the state.”

Hawaiian Telcom says the investment will create a foundation for “monetizing the network through continued subscriber growth, higher utilization of its fiber assets, and expanding demand for broadband and digital services.”

Valuable Employees

One measure of an efficient operation is the amount of profit gained from each employee’s contribution. While capital expenditures are typically one-off costs, hiring people is expensive and incurs ongoing costs as long as employees stay with a company. As a result, many companies seek to limit labor expenditures while still delivering quality products and services.

Hawaii Business analyzed the Top 250 data provided by the companies to see which organizations were most efficient by this filter.

Excluding nonprofit organizations, Matson again tops the list, with an astounding $254,754 in profit per each of its 1,746 employees.

Below Matson on that ranking are one insurance company (First Insurance Company of Hawaii, with $183,645 in profits per employee) followed by seven banks and credit unions with per-employee profits ranging from $85,000 to $137,000.

While the source of their revenue streams is very different, Matson is the only non-financial firm in the top 10 companies on the list.

More Profits Per Sale

Ranking companies and nonprofits by another measure, the amount of profit they produce as a percentage of their annual revenue, turns up a different ranking.

That list measuring efficient operations puts two nonprofits at the top: Harold K.L. Castle Foundation, with profit equal to 53.6% of revenue, followed by the Blood Bank of Hawaii at 28.3%. (Nonprofits report “profits” to the Internal Revenue Service using a slightly different accounting method than for-profit companies.)

Rounding out the top 15 organizations listed by this rubric are nine banks or credit unions, with American Savings Bank leading that pack at 27.7%.

When measuring profit as a percent of revenue, the overall profit leader Matson comes in at No. 19, with 13.3%.

Matson is also a perennial leader in the Hawaii Business Magazine list of Most Charitable Companies. It typically vies with First Hawaiian Bank for the distinction of the state’s most charitable organization. It’s a category that state charities and residents love to watch year to year, as companies open their coffers to compete for the distinction of being the organizations that give the most back to the community.

Companies and nonprofits will be reporting their figures to Hawaii Business in the months ahead, and this year’s ranking will be featured in the November issue of the magazine.

The complete Most Profitable Companies list appears exclusively in the September 2026 print issue of Hawaii Business Magazine.

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