Newport Fed sees $417K 3Q profit

By PBN Staff
Twitter: @ProvBusNews

NEWPORT – Newport Bancorp Inc., parent of Newport Federal Savings Bank, posted net income for the third quarter of $417,000, an increase of 50 percent over its 2011 third quarter performance. Earnings per diluted share came in at 12 cents, compared with 8 cents per diluted share in 2011.

The company saw the increase in profits despite posting an 8.3 percent decline in total interest and non-interest revenue to $5.5 million, which was offset by a decline in the quarterly provision for loans losses to $176,000 from $507,000.

The third quarter also brought a drop in the bank’s net interest margin of 40 basis points to 3.33 percent, which was echoed by a decline of 60 basis points for average yield on interest-earning assets to 4.7 percent, although that change was offset in part by a 3.6 percent increase in the average balance of interest-earning assets to $414.5 million.

Newport Fed reported net income for the first nine months of the year of $1.1 million, an increase of 5.3 percent versus the same 2011 period, as total interest and non-interest income fell 8.3 percent to $16.4 million.

Assets for Newport Fed increased 3.9 percent over the first nine months of the year to an average balance of $471.6 million, driven by an $18.4 million, or 5.3 percent, increase in net loans, bringing the bank’s total to $371.9 million. The bank attributed the gain in loans to an increase in residential mortgages of 11.8 percent, or $24.6 million, which was offset in part by declines in home equity loans of 8.4 percent, or $1.6 million, as well as a decline of 2.6 percent, or $3.2 million, of commercial mortgages, among other things.