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Peoples Financial SERVICES CORP . NEWS RELEASE PEOPLES FINANCIAL SERVICES CORP . Reports First Quarter 2021 Earnings 4/23/2021 SCRANTON , Pa . , April 23 , 2021 / PRNewswire / -- Peoples Financial Services Corp. ( " Peoples " ) ( NASDAQ : PFIS ) , the bank holding company for Peoples Security Bank and Trust Company , today reported unaudited financial results at and for the three months ended March 31 , 2021. Peoples reported net income of $ 9.5 million , or $ 1.31 per diluted share for the three months ended March 31 , 2021 , a 79.5 % increase when compared to $ 5.3 million , or $ 0.71 per share for the comparable period of 2020. The increase in earnings over the year ago period is a result of a $ 4.0 million decrease to the provision for loan losses , a $ 1.2 million increase to pre - provision net interest income from lower interest expense , and a $ 1.0 million decrease to noninterest expenses , offset by a higher income tax provision of $ 2.0 million . In addition to evaluating its results of operations in accordance with GAAP , Peoples routinely supplements its evaluation with an analysis of certain non - GAAP financial measures , such as tangible stockholders ' equity and core net income ratios . The reported results included in this release contain items , which Peoples considers non - core , namely gains and losses incurred within the investment securities portfolio . Peoples believes the reported non- GAAP financial measures provide information useful to investors in understanding its operating performance and trends . Where non - GAAP disclosures are used in this press release , a reconciliation to the comparable GAAP measure is provided in the accompanying tables . The non - GAAP financial measures Peoples uses may differ from the non - GAAP financial measures of other financial institutions . Core net income , which we have defined to exclude gains or losses from our investment securities portfolio , for the three months ended March 31 , totaled $ 9.5 million and $ 5.2 million in 2021 and 2020 , respectively . Core net income per share for the three months ended March 31 , 2021 was $ 1.31 , an 87.1 % increase from $ 0.70 reported for the same period in 2020. Core net income in the current period excludes a pre - tax $ 21 thousand unrealized gain on our 1