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United Community, Home Savings have best quarter in seven years
By Kalea Hall
YOUNGSTOWN
Gary Small, CEO and president of United Community Financial Corp. and Home Savings & Loan Co., said the first quarter of 2015 was the best quarterly financial report the company has had in seven years.
On Tuesday, UCFC reported net income of $3.7 million or $.074 per diluted common share, compared with $2.1 million or $0.041 per common share for the quarter ending March 31, 2014.
UCFC is the parent company of Youngstown-based Home Savings.
“Core earning improvements were driven by strong loan growth,” Small said on an earnings conference call Wednesday morning.
“It was a good quarter for us. We came out of the gate as expected.”
Encouraged by a 7.8 percent increase in commercial loans, overall loans increased $30.9 million to $1.2 billion from December 2014.
Residential loans also saw an increase of 1.4 percent or $10.9 million.
UCFC hopes to see loan growth of 10 to 12 percent this year.
“We are very pleased,” Small said. “We have a number of loan-growth initiatives underway.”
Also on the conference call, leaders for the bank said despite the decline in the energy industry it has not seen any impact.
The bank’s noninterest income was $4.1 million in the first quarter of 2015.
Total noninterest expense was $12.7 million in the first quarter of 2015, an increase of $755,000 over the fourth quarter of 2014 when adjusted for a $2 million prepayment penalty that occurred at that time. The $755,000 increase is primarily reflective of the cost of funding revenue-producing initiatives.
“We will continue to aggressively manage expenses throughout the year,” said Tim Esson, chief financial officer of UCFC and executive vice president of Home Savings.