Despite posting a small first-quarter profit, EvergreenBancorp Inc. in Seattle says its survival is in jeopardy.
The $489 million-asset company earned $108,000 for the quarter, down 97% from a year earlier, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Friday.
But Evergreen said in the filing that there is substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern.
"We have engaged financial advisors to assist the company in its efforts to raise additional capital, sell assets and explore other strategic alternatives to address our current and expected liquidity and capital deficiencies," the filing said. "To date, those efforts have not yielded any definitive options."
In a press release Friday, the company said it managed to post a meager profit because of its "unusually low" provision for loan losses of $55,000, compared with $1.8 million a year earlier. It cited aggressive provisioning of $9.1 million in the fourth quarter.
Nonperforming loans totaled $29.6 million at March 31, making up 6.97% of total loans. A year earlier, nonperformers totaled $507,000.
Evergreen said its banking unit is no longer well capitalized, with a total risk-based capital ratio of 9.22%.
Because of that, regulators have restricted its use of brokered deposits. The company said it has $130.8 million of brokered deposits, 71% of which mature this year. It said it is aggressively trying to find deposits to replace those, including selling certificates of deposit online.
The bank has been under a supervisory directive from the Washington State Department of Financial Institutions since December, but that agreement is expected to be replaced with a consent order with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the company said in the filing. It also signed a memorandum of understanding with the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco in January.
