| Independent Bank Corp., the parent company of Rockland Trust, posted a 15.6 percent year-over-year increase in net income, boosted largely by new business in its commercial loan portfolio.
"Our fundamentals once again lead the way in this quarter, as evidenced by our revenues, strong loan and core deposit growth, excellent credit trends and rising capital levels," President and CEO Christopher Oddleifson said during a conference call discussing the company’s second quarter earnings. "More specifically, commercial loans continue to rise at a very healthy rate. Our team is simply doing a great job at generating new business in a competitive environment."
Net income in the second quarter totaled $14.7 million, compared with $12.8 million in the year-ago period. Total loans increased year-over-year $355.4 million, or 7.9 percent, to $4.9 billion at June 30. Year-over-year, the company’s commercial loan portfolio increased 8.8 percent to $3.5 billion at June 30, or 7.3 percent on an annualized basis. The company highlighted commercial and industrial lending as particularly strong, posting a year-over-year increase of almost 15 percent, and in a conference call, executives attributed much of this increase to new business, rather than an increase in utilization of existing lines of business.
Total assets increased $495.7 million, or 8.5 percent, to $6.3 billion at June 30, from the year-ago period.
Net interest income increased 7.5 percent to $49.1 million in the second quarter. During the second quarter, the company’s net interest margin remained relatively consistent with the prior quarter, dropping only one basis point to 3.48 percent as it benefited from stable asset yields and continued low funding costs.
Total deposits increased $621.7 million, or 13.3 percent, to $5.3 billion from the year-ago period.
The securities portfolio decreased slightly from the prior quarter by $9.8 million to $714.0 million at June 30, and represented 11.2 percent of total assets at that date.
Responding to a question about possible acquisitions, Oddleifson characterized the spate of recent IPOs as "random events" and noted, "There’s so relatively few publicly traded banks left. If any of those teams were ever to want to raise their hands, we’d love to be at the table to talk about it."
"It hasn’t escaped our attention that there’s an awful lot of capital being raised in the marketplace," he added. "But we’re going to remain very disciplined and we’re not following folks down the path of lower rates and looser returns… Probably twice as many deals go into our pipeline as go out, and a lot of the deals we let go because we’re not comfortable with the terms that we see out there."
