Univest Financial Corporation (NASDAQ:UVSP) Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call April 25, 2024 9:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Jeff Schweitzer - President and CEO
Mike Keim - President and COO, Univest Bank and Trust
Brian Richardson - CFO
Conference Call Participants
Operator
Welcome to the Univest Financial Corporation First Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. My name is Carla and I will be coordinating your call today. [Operator Instructions]. I will now turn the call over to your host, Jeff Schweitzer, President and CEO of Univest Financial Corporation to begin. Jeff, please go ahead.
Jeff Schweitzer
Thank you, Carla, and good morning. And thank you to all of our listeners for joining us. Joining me on the call this morning is Mike Keim, our Chief Operating Officer and President of Univest Bank and Trust; and Brian Richardson, our Chief Financial Officer.
Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone of the forward-looking cautionary statements disclaimer. Please be advised that during the course of this conference call, management may make forward-looking statements that express management's intentions, beliefs, or expectations within the meaning of the Federal Securities Laws. Univest's actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements. I will refer you to the forward-looking cautionary statements in our earnings release and in our SEC filings. Hopefully, everyone had a chance to review our earnings release from yesterday. If not, it can be found on our website at univest.net under the Investor Relations tab.
We reported net income of $20.3 million during the first quarter or $0.69 per share. During the quarter, we continued to see stabilization in the shift in the mix of deposits along with the cost of deposits. This resulted in stabilization in our net interest margin. Loan growth was muted during the quarter as loans grew $11.9 million, this is due to a combination of lower loan demand from customers given the higher interest rate environment, pay off activity of some problem credits and remaining disciplined down pricing and focusing on relationship customers and prospects.
With that said Q1 is historically a slower quarter and we are seeing pipelines grow as we head into the second quarter. Our diversified business model served as well as the insurance and wealth management lines of business and strong performance in the quarter. We were also actively stopped [ph] buybacks during the quarter as we repurchased 315,507 shares of stock while still growing tangible book value.