Farmers & Merchants Bank continues to improve profit

Daily staff reports

F & M Bank Corp. is reporting its earnings have increased for the third straight year.

The parent company of Farmers & Merchants Bank has released its fourth-quarter financials and earnings for 2012.

The bank's net income for 2012 was $4.9 million, up about 4.5 percent from 2011's $4.7 million, according to a news release.

F & M's fourth-quarter 2012 net income was about $1.2 million, down from $1.4 million at the same time in 2011.

"This is our third consecutive year of earnings improvement and, for the first time since 2005, we have achieved record earnings on a nominal basis," F & M President and CEO Dean Withers states in the release. "While we are pleased with these results, this level of earnings does not reflect our pre-recession performance relative to traditional measures of Return on Assets and Return on Equity. We are cautiously optimistic that 2013 will result in the further, slow progress in reducing non-performing loans."

The release states there has been an improvement in loan demand recently. The bank's fourth-quarter 2012 dividend was 17 cents a share, up 1 cent from the previous quarter and fourth-quarter 2011, according to the release.