It's earnings season again and if analysts' forecast are any gauge, it won't be pretty.

Bank of Hawaii Corp. kicks things off today when it reports its fourth quarter earnings while Central Pacific Financial Corp reports on Friday.

That's followed by Alexander & Baldwin Inc. on Feb. 3rd, Hawaiian Airlines on Feb. 4 and Hawaiian Electric Industries on Feb. 11.

It looks like a repeat of the third quarter when five of Hawaii's six largest publicly traded companies reported earnings declines.

Bank of Hawaii's analysts are forecasting fourth quarter earnings of 75 cents, which is off 8.5 percent from the year-earlier's 82 cents per share.

Analysts following Alexander & Baldwin Inc. estimate the company's fourth quarter net at 30 cents per share, which is off sharply from four quarter 2008's 58 cents per share.

Central Pacific, reeling from loans to troubled California homebuilders and local commercial borrowers, is expected to report a 41 cent loss, according to analysts.

The exceptions: Hawaiian Airlines Inc. and Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc.

Boosted by a 4.7 percent interim rate hike in August, analysts said they expect Hawaiian Electric to earn 23 cents per share during the three months ending Dec. 31, up from the year-earlier's 16 cents.

Hawaiian Airlines, benefiting from a cease fire in the interisland fare war, is expected to earn 12.3 cents per share during the fourth quarter, which is up nearly 20 cents from the same period last year.

Project X, Alexander & Baldwin Inc.'s not-so-secret vulture fund for distressed Hawaii real estate, is getting bigger.

In March, the local company disclosed that it had set up a “an opportunistic real estate program” for distressed Hawaii real estate. The entire fund had about $100 million to pursue deals in "10 million to $100 million range."

During conference call with investors Friday, Christopher Benjamin, A&B's Chief Financial Officer, said the company plans to add $20 million to its Project X initiative during the fourth quarter.

The company did not identify potential prospects but it’s no secret A&B is interested in General Growth Properties Inc.’s Victoria Ward lands in Kakaako.

It's certainly a good fit given the potential for building condominium complexes on the 65-acre parcel, complementing the existing mix of retail and commercial tenants.

In 2002, A&B nearly acquired the Victoria Ward properties for about $200 million before General Growth submitted a last-minute, winning bid.

Michigan-based General Growth is currently operating under bankruptcy protection and if they're forced to part with parts or all of the Kakaako project, it could sell for a huge discount from the 2002 price.

Even if the Ward properties stay off the market, there's plenty of opportunity for Project X deals.

Right now there's too much inventory and too little money chasing it.

One long-time vulture investor recently told me that deals in the range of tens of millions of dollar used to attract about a dozen potential buyers who would bid up the properties.

Today's sellers are lucky to get interest from one or two qualified buyer, he said.

Timing may work in A&B's favor.

During Friday's conference call, Stan Kuriyama, A&B's incoming CEO, believes the economy will bottom out next year. Resort development, he adds, will likely pick up in 2011 and get more momentum in 2012 and 2013.

"We want to look at prospects that are fully entitled, in some cases designed and permitted so that we can ready these projects for construction and recovery of the market over the next two to three years," he said.

It may be a coincidence but most of the earnings reports for the third quarter were filed during the week of Halloween. The results have been downright scary.

Bank of Hawaii Corp. kicked off the week by reporting a 23 percent earnings decline for the recently completed quarter, followed by First Hawaiian Bank which posted a 2.3 percent slide the next day.

It got more frightening as the week went on.

Yesterday, Alexander & Baldwin Inc. announced that earnings were off 77 percent from the year-earlier mark while Central Pacific Financial Corp. reported a record $183 million net loss for the three months ending Sept. 30, 2009.

Maui Land & Pineapple Co. today reported a $25.5 million loss.

The exception: Hawaiian Airlines. Last week, the parent of the state's largest carrier largest carrier reported a five-fold increase in its third quarter net income.

Many of Hawaii's publicly traded companies are cyclical stocks, meaning that they reflect what is (or in this case, what isn't) going on in the local economy.

That the companies are still struggling indicates that an economic recovery is still far off.

The global economic downturn has wrecked havoc on Hawaii's resort development business.

Several of the state's largest timeshare and luxury condo projects -- especially on the neighbor islands -- have either stalled due to lack of buyers or a shortage of financing.

But there would a signs of a pick up from an unlikely source: Japanese buyers.

Benefiting from a strong yen, Japanese investors poured some $13 billion into the isle economy during the 1980s and early 1990s, snapping up hotels, golf courses, downtown office properties and and luxury homes.

The pullback hit Hawaii's economy hard and probably prolonged the mid-1990s recession in the isle.

But recently, the Japanese currency has been strong. The exchange rate is about 91 yen to the dollar, giving Japanese buyers more purchasing power in overseas markets.

In a conference call with investors yesterday, Stan Kuriyama, who recently was named CEO of Alexander & Baldwin Inc., noted that there's a renewed interest in Hawaii from Japanese investors.

"Speaking with people who deal with Japanese investors and buyers, I think there's a definite sense  that because of the favorable exchange rate that the Japanese are again much more interested in investing their money in the state," Kuriyama said.

To be sure, there haven't been any meaningful transactions yet. And if they materialize in the next several months, they won't be anything like what we saw during the bubble economy.

But given the weakness in the commercial real estate and high-end market, any new investment activity will make a huge difference in the local economy.

It's proxy season so executive pay figures for 2008 are beginning to trickle out.

At the top of the list, Allen Doane earned nearly $5 million last year as CEO and chairman of Alexander & Baldwin Inc. But Doane's 2008 compensation was down sharply from his 2007 pay of $8.6 billion.

Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc. CEO Constance Lau received a $2 million pay increase, upping her 2008 pay package to nearly $3.9 million.

Lau's increase came in a year the company experience significant challenges, including lower earnings at its American Savings Bank  unit and a Dec. 26 islandwide outage that cut off power to Hawaiian Electric Co.'s 294,000 customers on Oahu.

Rounding out the list, Bank of Hawaii CEO Allan Landon earned about $2.5 million last year, which was down about $100,000 from his 2007 pay.

Look for updates to this list as more local companies file their proxies with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In the future, I'll publish a more listing in the Honolulu Advertiser newspaper once all of the proxies are filed.