Not according to what I've been reading.
While a lot of people don't live there, military facilities public services and businesses specifically dealing in tourism will remain present. Also, rumor mill indicates a lot of a big money players are trying to take over the island as a sort of billionaire paradise. For all of this it only costs 12 a share right now... that's a steal. What's your thoughts on all this? I see a wait time of 1-3 years most likely 18 months for a huge turn around.
@Twirler, I’d encourage you to read sources like Civil Beat, a non-profit journalism project that files more FOIA requests than any other media company in the islands. If you haven’t already read HECO’s regulatory filings, those will become more detailed in the next few quarters.
This will be much more relevant as the various regulatory agencies (and the courts) sort out the chronology and the liabilities. Despite what you’re reading right now, nobody’s testified about their actions in depositions under oath— and there’s considerable confusion on that chronology among Maui’s first responders as well as the island’s government. People who were jumping into the harbor as their cars burned have reported many discrepancies with the official narratives to date.
HECO’s residential customer base has the nation’s highest per-capita use of photovoltaic and solar water heating. Military base housing complexes (particularly Schofield) are among the nation’s largest PV & solar water neighborhoods. All of the state’s airports generate the majority of their power from PV. HECO’s simultaneously losing revenue (due to their legacy net-metering contracts) while having to modernize the grid (legislation and initiatives) to accommodate large-scale photovoltaic projects and residential PV penetration. I’m pretty sure the PUC won’t approve rate hikes to pay lawyer bills.
As an example, my net-metering electric bill has risen from $16/month in 2005 to… $27/month in 2023. You’d want to compare my rising electric bills to HECO’s long-term revenue growth. It doesn’t matter what residential electric utility rates are when residents could get compensated for photovoltaic production at the retail rate. The legacy net-metering contracts were closed to new customers in 2015, but as PV (and battery) costs drop then residents can still slash their electric bills with the new net-metering contracts.
Another house on our street generates an annual average of 900 KWHr/month from their PV array and solar water heating, with summer months of over a MWHr/month. They have free air conditioning (let alone free electricity for the rest of their residence plus their electric vehicles) for as long as they keep the house.
HECO also has a billing system from the 1990s, still employs manual meter readers (despite powerline networking), and is still struggling to update meters meters for time-of-day rates. They’re currently waffling on a storage-battery initiative that would have facilitated some of their grid-modernization expenses. They’re right to waffle on it because it’s a bad deal for the residential homeowners, but HECO’s the corporation that spent all the time & effort (and operating revenue) to develop the program and market it.
I don’t know what you’d want to benchmark your investment against to decide whether you’re beating the market, but… good luck.