City Bank's parent has 58% drop in net

Star-Bulletin staff

Fourth-quarter earnings dropped 58 percent at CB Bancshares Inc. because of changes made to improve the company's efficiency, the parent of City Bank and International Savings & Loan said today.

The net profit for the final three months of 1997 was $1.3 million, or 32 cents a share fully diluted, less than half the profit of $3.1 million, or 88 cents a share, reported for the last quarter of 1996.

The company said the initiatives it took toward a stronger performance in 1998 included increasing its reserve for loan losses and upgrading its facilities and its internal systems.

The loan loss reserve went up by $1 million to $16.4 million. The company said it had nonperforming loans of $28.4 million at year-end, up 10.1 percent from $25.8 million a year earlier.

CB Bancshares ended 1997 with assets of $1.44 billion, up slightly from $1.4 billion at the end of 1996. Loans of $1.06 billion were down 3.6 percent from $1.1 billion. Deposits of $974,792 were up 3.5 percent from $942,280.

For the full year, the company reported a profit of $7.2 million, up 1.4 percent from $7.1 million in 1996. Per-share earnings, fully diluted, were $1.98 in 1997, down slightly from $1.99 in 1996.

(Under new rules, companies report diluted earnings, a figure that assumes that securities or other contracts convertible into common stock have been converted. CB Bancshares' undiluted earnings were 37 cents in the latest quarter and $2.03 for the year.)

CB Bancshares' stock fell $2.121/2 to close at $40, with 6,200 shares trading hands on the Nasdaq market, according to Bloomberg News.