HE - Hawaiian Electric bumped by BofA downgrade to Sell-equivalent

Hawaiian Electric ( NYSE: HE ) -1.5% in Thursday's trading as Bank of America downgraded shares to Underperform from Neutral with a $43 price target, as the core utility business is challenged by inflationary and supply chain pressures, with the company guiding to the lower half of full-year utility guidance.

Hawaiian Electric's ( HE ) utility bills already are the highest in the U.S., and BofA's Julien Dumoulin-Smith sees "increasingly regulatory risk from the unpredictable commission that could challenge its ability to earn returns," while also noting the company's apparently limited benefits from the new Inflation reduction Act.

"Decelerating capex and elevated O&M are likely to limit EPS upside while performance incentive mechanisms are proving punitive thus far," the analyst wrote.

Hawaii Electric ( HE ) is "an underperformer in an outperforming industry YTD," Fade The Market writes in a bearish analysis published on Seeking Alpha .

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