CommerceBank Parent Has Quarterly Loss but It’s Less Than Year Ago

CommerceBancorp, hurt by soured construction and commercial loans and a continued weak economy, said Monday that it lost $158,000 in the third quarter. That compared with a loss of $240,000 for the same period last year.

The Newport Beach bank holding company said its latest loss was equal to 7 cents a share, compared with a loss of 11 cents a share a year earlier. The company’s assets fell 5.9% to $284 million, compared with $301.9 million. CommerceBank, the company’s subsidiary, caters almost solely to business and construction customers and has been hit hard by the recession.

For the first nine months of the year, profit fell to $126,000, or 6 cents a share, from $608,000, or 27 cents a share, for the same period a year earlier. Even so, the company’s loan-loss reserves were $5.7 million, or 2.97% of outstanding loans. Banking regulators generally want the figure to be below 3%.

The company said it is continuing to sell off foreclosed real estate, which cuts into earnings. “We continued to make progress in our efforts to divest our portfolio of non-performing assets in an orderly fashion,” Raymond E. Dellerba, Commerce’s president, said in a statement.

In an effort to diversify, the company has been making more loans to individuals and also has launched a mortgage banking operation.

In Monday’s trading on the NASDAQ market, CommerceBancorp’s stock fell 75 cents a share to close at $15.