Huntington Reports Net Income of $632.4M for 2014

Friday, January 23, 2015

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Huntington Bancshares Inc., holding company of Huntington Bank, Thursday reported fourth-quarter net income of $163.6 million or 19 cents per diluted share, and full-year net income of $632.4 million, or 72 cents a share.

This compares to third-quarter net income of $155 million, or 18 cents a share, fourth-quarter 2013 net income of $158.2 million, or 18 cents a share, and $641.3 million, or 72 cents a share -- unchanged -- for all of 2013.

Huntington also announced that its board of directors declared a quarterly cash dividend of six cents per common share payable April 1 to shareholders of record March 18.

In a prepared statement, the chairman, president and CEO of Huntington, Steve Steinour, said, “We met our commitments of positive operating leverage and revenue growth. We continue to invest opportunistically to position ourselves well as we move into 2015 and beyond.”

Huntington cited these full-year 2014 highlights:

• 1.01% return on average assets, 11.8% return on average tangible common equity. Those figures were 1.14% and 12.7% for 2013.
• $100 million, or 4%, increase in fully taxable-equivalent revenues.
• $6.1 billion, or 12%, increase in average earning assets.
• $3.6 billion, or 9%, increase in average loans and leases. Total loans and leases at Dec. 31 were $429.141 billion.
• Net interest margin of 3.23%. It was 3.36% for 2013.
• $124 million, or 7%, increase in noninterest expense, largely driven by $76 million net impact of “Significant Items” related to acquisitions, franchise repositioning, net additions to litigation reserves, and the benefit of pension curtailment in 2013. Noninterest expense includes wages and benefits, rents, marketing, data processing and Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. premiums.
• Net charge-offs fell to 0.27% of average loans and leases from 0.45% in 2013.
• 35.7 million common shares repurchased at an average price of $9.37 per share. The company had 811.45 million shares outstanding at Dec. 31. Huntington shares were trading at $10.07 late Thursday afternoon.

Key measures of performance for the quarters ended Dec. 31, Sept. 30 and Dec. 31, 2013:

• Return on average assets, 1.00%, 0.97%, 1.09%.
• Return on average common shareholders’ equity, 10.3%, 9.9%, 10.5%.
• Net interest margin, 3.18%, 3.20%, 3.28%.
• Efficiency ratio, 66.2%, 65.3%, 63.4%.

Fourth-quarter net interest income was $473.25 million compared to the third quarter, $466.34 million, and $430.63 million for the last quarter of 2013.

Total noninterest expense for the fourth quarter was $483.27 million, up from $480.32 the previous quarter and $446.01 million the year-ago quarter.

Nonaccrual loan and leases fell nearly $22 million, or 7%, to $300.24 million at Dec. 31 from $322.07 million a year earlier. Nonperforming assets fell to $337.72 million at year-end from $352.16 million at Dec. 31, 2013, or 4% of total loans and leases, repossessed real estate and other nonperforming assets.

Net charge-offs as a percent of average loans for the quarter ended Dec. 31 were 0.20%, compared to 0.26% for the quarter ended Sept. 30 and 0.43% the quarter ended Dec. 31, 2013.

Total assets at Huntington were $66.298 billion at Dec. 31, up from $59.467 billion a year earlier.

Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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