Farmers & Merchants reports Q4 EPS 53c, consensus 67c

Lars Eller, President and Chief Executive Officer, stated, "2022 was a historic year for F&M as we celebrated our 125th year anniversary, achieved record financial results, completed the fifth acquisition in the past three years, and continued to invest in our community banking platform. We experienced strong organic loan growth across our Ohio, Indiana and Michigan markets during 2022 as loans increased organically by $397.0 million, or 21.4% on a year-over-year basis. Robust loan growth, combined with our recent acquisitions, excellent asset quality, and stable net interest margin, drove a 24.4% increase in annual net interest income after the provision for loan losses. These outstanding trends and our focus on prudently controlling operating expenses offset a $2.1 million decline in annual noninterest income and helped F&M achieve another year of record net income and earnings per share. I am proud of our record financial results for 2022, which enabled us to increase our annual cash dividend by 14.4%. This reflects the 28th consecutive year F&M has increased its annual cash dividend and our long-standing commitment to create value for our shareholders."