2/1/21
Summit Financial Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMMF) today reported fourth
quarter 2020 net income of $10.3 million, or $0.79 per diluted share, both representing a quarterly record. In comparison, earnings for third quarter 2020 were $9.62 million, or $0.74 per diluted share, and for fourth quarter 2019 were $8.15 million, or $0.65 per diluted share.
For the full year 2020, Summit recorded net income of $31.3 million, or $2.41 per diluted share, compared with $31.9 million, or $2.53 per diluted share, for 2019, representing a decrease of 1.7 percent or 4.7 percent per diluted share. The principal factor negatively impacting our earnings this past year was the $13.0 million increase in our provision for credit losses ($9.84 million after taxes, or $0.76 per diluted share) compared to 2019. Recently adopted loan loss accounting rules now require us to record all estimated future losses in our loan portfolio, and this contributed significantly to our credit loss provision for 2020 as we recorded our estimate of loan losses expected to result from the COVID-19 pandemic.