First Place announces $13M loss for quarter

Staff report

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First Place Financial Corp. posted a $13 million loss for the quarter ending March 31.

The company announced Tuesday the losses represent a significant fall from a year earlier, when the financial-services company reported $2.5 million in profits.

The third-quarter loss primarily was due to increased provisions for loan losses, the company said in a statement released after the markets closed Tuesday.

First Place Financial reported $31.1 million in loan provisions for the first three months of this year, a major increase from $6.8 million in loan provisions for the same period in 2009 and $14 million the previous quarter.

Pretax, pre-provision income increased for the third-consecutive quarter, indicating that the main reason for the losses was the cost of providing for the company’s nonperforming assets.

“We made a concerted effort this quarter to accelerate the resolution of problem assets,” Steven Lewis, president and chief executive, said in a statement. “While this resulted in higher charge-offs, it also increased the volume of loans either restructured or converted to real estate owned, bringing those assets nearer to resolution.”

A charge-off is the declaration by a creditor that an amount of debt is unlikely to be collected.

Lewis pointed to a decrease in nonperforming assets as a positive sign the company has been successful in its efforts to record losses earlier when resolving problem assets.

Nonperforming assets represented 4.61 percent of total assets for the quarter ending March 31, down from 5.18 percent of total assets at the end of the previous quarter.

“We are cautiously optimistic about future quarters as we have seen stabilization in consumer delinquencies and await similar results on the commercial side,” Lewis added.