Rurban Financial Corp.'s third-quarter earnings rose 250% from a year earlier, to $699,000, up 250%.
The Defiance, Ohio, company's diluted earnings per share rose 275%, to 15 cents.
Earnings for the first nine months of the year fell 83%, to $2 million. Rurban said in a press release Monday that the year-earlier numbers included a $20 million pretax gain from branch sales.
Kenneth A. Joyce, the $415 million-asset company's president and chief executive officer, attributed the improved third-quarter earnings to growth in its fee-based data processing and trust businesses, as well as a balance-sheet restructuring.
Net interest income rose 5% from the same quarter last year, to $2.8 million, after allowances for loan losses. Rurban set aside $319,517 of loan-loss reserves as part of settlements with four borrowers. In the third quarter of last year it did not have a loan-loss reserve.
Rurban has been operating under a regulatory agreement with the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and the Ohio Division of Financial Institutions since July 2002 to improve risk management and clean up its loan portfolio.
