First Bancorp Shares Outperform as Co. Announces Deal to Sell $532M of Unpaid Principal Balance in Classified, Non-Performing Commercial Loans

First Bancorp FBP announced that the Bank has entered into three separate agreements to sell a total of $532 million of unpaid principal balance in commercial loans or $315 million of book value for a total price of $201 million, or 38 percent of unpaid principal balance. These transactions will result in a pre-tax loss net of reserves of approximately $65 million. At the completion of the transactions, FirstBank will reduce its nonperforming assets by approximately 23 percent or $282 million. FirstBank's pro-forma non-performing asset to total asset ratio as of December 31, 2012 decreases from 9.45 percent to 7.30 percent.