United Bancorp, Inc.
Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial
Condition and Results of Operations
The following discusses the financial condition of the Company as of June 30, 2021, as compared to December 31, 2020, and the results of operations for the three and six months ended June 30, 2021, compared to the same period in 2020. This discussion should be read in conjunction with the interim condensed consolidated financial statements and related footnotes included herein.
Introduction
United Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ: UBCP) reported diluted earnings per share of $0.38 and net income of $2,185,000 for the three months ended June 30, 2021, an increase of $0.09 per share, or 31%, over the previous year. For the first six months of the current year, UBCP reported diluted earnings per share of $0.71, an increase of 25%, and net income of $4,093,000, an increase of 26%, over the previous year, which are record levels for the Company.
Even though our economy continues on its road to full recovery from the impact of the events that have occurred over the course of the past fifteen plus months, we are extremely pleased to report on our earnings performance for the first six months of 2021. For the quarter ending June 30, 2021, our Company achieved net income of $2,185,000 and diluted earnings per share of $0.38, which was an increase of $510,000, or 30%, and $0.09, or 31%, respectively over the previous year. For the six months ended June 30, 2021, our Company produced net income of $4,093,000 and diluted earnings per share of $0.71, which was a respective increase of $839,000, or 26%, and $0.14, or 25%, over the previous year. We are exceedingly proud to report these earnings levels, which reflect record performance for our Company for the first six months. Our Company achieved this level of earnings performance even though we only saw marginal growth in our loan portfolio and a fairly substantial decline in our securities portfolio balances. As of June 30, 2021, gross loans were $458.7 million, which was an increase of $12.8 million, or 2.9%, over the previous year. In addition, securities and other restricted stock was $148.3 million, which was a decrease of $47.7 million, or 24.3%, from the previous year. Our loan growth is in-line with our peer and reflective of the limited lending growth opportunities with which our industry is confronted due to the economic challenges that all businesses have faced after the commencement of the pandemic. The decline in our securities and other restricted stock is primarily related to some calls and prepayments on various securities that we hold within our investment portfolio along with the sale of approximately $32.0 million in agency and municipal investment securities, which produced significant gains for our Company in the second and third quarters of last year. We firmly believe that this was a prudent action to take last year to help fortify our loan loss reserve and protect our bottom line net income. But, this action--- along with weaker loan production and declining rates in this current economic environment--- has led to a reduction in the level of both interest income and loan fees generated in the current year. As of June 30, 2021, total interest income, including loan fees, was down $1.95 million, or 13.7%, from the previous year. We are optimistic that as our economy starts to recover more fully, we will have better opportunities to leverage our securities portfolio more in-line with our previous level and ramp-up our loan production to levels at which we are more historically accustomed; therefore, increasing our level of higher yielding earning assets and generating more interest and loan fee income.
As we have previously disclosed, our Company was properly positioned from a liability-sensitivity perspective to benefit from the rapid decline in interest rates last year. Even though we saw a significant inflow of retail funding over the course of the past fifteen months, as most financial institutions have, we were able to lower our interest expense levels to help mitigate the decline in the level of net interest income that our Company achieved in this highly volatile environment. As of June 30, 2021, total deposits increased $12.1 million or 2.1%. We saw low cost retail funding, consisting of demand and savings balances, increase by $35.5 million, or 7.1%, while our higher-cost time deposit balances declined by $23.3 million or 25.2%. Even with the overall increase in our total deposits, we were able to reduce total interest expense by $1.7 million, or 53.4%, for the first six months of the current year as compared to last year. While we were able to substantially reduce total interest expense, our Company still experienced an overall decrease in the level of net interest income that it realized of $287,000, a decline of 2.6%, from the first six month of the previous year; although, our net interest margin was slightly up by $34,000, or 0.6%, year-over-year for the second quarter. We attribute the increase in the most recently ended quarter to some of the loan growth that our Company generated during the second quarter along with the rolling-off of our higher costing time deposit balances.