NBT profit rises nearly 4 percent in first quarter

NORWICH — NBT Bancorp Inc. (NASDAQ: NBTB) reported net income of $18.9 million, or 43 cents a share, in the first quarter, up 4 percent from $18.2 million, or 41 cents, in the year-ago quarter on the strength of loan and deposit growth.

“Our first quarter 2016 results demonstrate our strong financial performance and sustained favorable trends in organic loan and deposit growth and asset quality indicators,” Martin Dietrich, NBT’s president and CEO, said in its earnings report issued on April 25.

NBT Bancorp, holding company for NBT Bank, reported net interest income of $64.6 million in the first quarter, up almost 4 percent from $62.2 million in the year-earlier period.

Its fully taxable equivalent net interest margin was 3.47 percent for the three months ending March 31, 2016, up from 3.42 percent last quarter but down from 3.60 percent for the first quarter of 2015. The increase from the previous quarter was driven by a rise in yields on loans, partially offset by slightly higher costs of interest-bearing deposits, NBT reported.

NBT produced noninterest income of $28.4 million in this year’s first quarter, up almost 7 percent from the same quarter in 2015.

Noninterest expenses for the three months ended March 31, 2016 totaled $58.2 million, up from $57.7 million in the first quarter of 2015. 

Asset quality
NBT reported net charge-offs of $4.8 million in the first quarter, up from $4.6 million for the same period in 2015. The banking company recorded a provision for potential loan losses of $6.1 million in the first quarter, up from $3.6 million in the first three months of last year. NBT said in its earnings report that it did so primarily due to loan growth.

The ratio of annualized net charge-offs to average loans for the first quarter of 2016 was 0.33 percent, compared with 0.34 percent for the first quarter of 2015.

The ratio of nonperforming loans to total loans was 0.69 percent as of March 31, 2016, down from 0.85 percent a year prior.

NBT said past-due loans as a percentage of total loans came in at 0.51 percent as of this March 31, compared to 0.56 percent on the same date in 2015.

The banking company’s allowance for loan losses totaled $64.3 million at the end of this year’s first quarter, compared to $65.4 million a year earlier.

NBT Bancorp had total assets of $8.5 billion as of March 31, 2016, up by $210.3 million, or 2.5 percent, from the end of 2015. It had $6 billion in loans and $6.9 billion in deposits, as of the end of the first quarter.

Stock-repurchase program
NBT said it repurchased more than 675,000 shares of its common stock during the first quarter of 2016 at an average price of $25.45 per share under a previously announced stock buyback plan. As of March 31, it had more than 277,000 shares available for repurchase under this plan, which is set to expire at the end of this year. On March 28, the NBT board of directors approved a new program for the banking company to repurchase up to an additional 1 million shares of its shares outstanding. That plan expires at the end of 2017.

NBT Bank has 155 branches in six states — New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. It ranks second in deposit market share in the 16-county Central New York market, with a 10 percent share of all deposits, according to the latest FDIC data.

Contact Rombel at arombel@cnybj.com