Brookline Bancorp posted $10.4 million in net income during the first quarter this year, increasing about 13 percent from $8.8 million in the year ago period.

Those first quarter results included a $1.6 million gain on the sale of a building, Brookline Bank’s former main office at 160 Washington St. in Brookline, as well as $2.1 million in additional accretion related to a reforecast of certain acquired loans. Those gains were offset, however, by $1.3 million in charges related to the consolidation of an operations center, discontinuance of two branch locations and chief financial officer recruitment.

While Paul Perrault, president and CEO, and the company’s new CFO Carl M. Carlson expressed optimism about Brookline Bancorp’s start to the year, Perrault did not sound like he was considering a merger or acquisition – at least not right now. In a January conference call, Perrault said the company would consider a "merger of equals."

"I don’t know that there’s a lot of opportunities per se," he said, responding to an investor’s question concerning opportunities in the M&A marketplace during the company’s first quarter conference call this week. "We are managerially and mechanically ready to do something, but as I’ve said before, we don’t feel that we need to do anything."

"I don’t see any big shift in the tempo of things. There’s a deal here and a deal there, but I don’t feel any groundswell of deal-making coming up," Perrault said.

Brookline Bancorp’s total assets increased $308.4 million year-over-year to $5.4 billion on March 31. That growth was driven largely by loans and leases, which increased $99.5 million to $4.5 billion, representing 9.1 percent growth on an annualized basis. In particular, the company’s commercial real estate and commercial loan and lease portfolios, totaling $3.3 billion, comprised 73.6 percent of total loans and leases, compared with $2.9 billion and 69.3 percent for the same period last year.

The total commercial loan and lease portfolio grew $45.8 million during the first quarter, 19 percent on an annualized basis, and helped offset a $26.6 million decline in the company’s indirect auto loan portfolio during the same quarter.

Net interest income in the first quarter of 2014 increased $4 million year-over-year to $47.7 million. Net interest margin increased to 3.82 percent for the three months ended March 31, from 3.7 percent for the same period in 2013.