You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: After almost 17 years as CEO, this is the most optimistic I have been on Puerto Rico and OFG.
We're certainly not out of the woods yet, but the island has been a far better place today than we were last year and our outlook is much better than the previous almost two decades.
Looking at the macroeconomic environment, we're a lot more optimistic about the flow of federal stimulus and reconstruction funds, the increased liquidity for individuals and small- and medium-sized businesses, the rate that people are getting their vaccination and the airlines bankruptcy resolution.
All these resulted in the overall improvement of Puerto Rico's economy.
I hope this perspective helps investors understand the inflection point we are in and our potential to deliver consistent solid result as more of the macro distractions of the past finally are being resolved.
At OFG, all our businesses are gaining very good momentum and we are in an excellent strategic position to grow our market share in the years to come.
Combined with the continued success of our strategies focused on our agility and service, we generated very strong first quarter results while also increasing our dedication and purpose to help our customers, our people and our communities through the pandemic and beyond.
For our customers, our proprietary digital PPP portal once again facilitated access by small businesses to another $126 million in credit to keep their doors open and staffs employed.
Our teams helped our former Scotiabank customers to on board and take advantage of our more robust online mobile ATM and ITM offerings.
For our people, we enabled vaccination for our staff.
And so far, more than 40% have been inoculated.
We continued our COVID-related spending to protect our staff and customers, and we stepped up our investment, as planned, to create a more secure hybrid infrastructure to make it easier for our teams to work seamlessly from the office or home.
For our communities, we established a new outreach program to provide advice to small businesses affected by the COVID situation.
We want to help them find better ways to manage through the pandemic.
We also provided a series of virtual seminars doing Women's History Month and we sponsored virtual seminars for the next generation of college entrepreneurial leaders to help them better understand how innovation can solve business and community challenges.
Please turn to Page 4.
Confirming our multi-year strategy to bring digital solutions to our customers and help them simplify their lives, our overall digital adoption continue to grow.
You can see this -- you can see it in this slide the adoption levels across different digital solution.
These adoption levels confirm how much we have advanced our digital strategy, especially during COVID but more importantly how customers are sticking to digital online solutions even as restrictions subside and the economy reopens.
A great example is how our customers are continuing to use our online or mobile platforms to schedule branch appointments.
During the first quarter, we scheduled approximately 8,800 such appointments.
Our goal is to convince customers that it is easier and more convenient to use our digital online technology for routine transactions, allowing our people to provide customers more [Technical Issues] service, build stronger relationships and in the process, increase business development opportunities.
Please turn to page 5 to review our first quarter results.
We reported $0.56 in earnings per share compared to $0.42 in the fourth quarter and breakeven in the year ago quarter, which was the first quarter to be impacted by the pandemic.
Total core revenues were $128 million.
Net interest income of $98 million benefited from PPP loan fees and lower cost of deposits.
Provision was $6.3 million, primarily due to improved economic and credit trends.
This included the release of some COVID-related loan reserves, partially offset by provisioning for a commercial loan in workout before COVID.
Allowance remain virtually the same.
Net interest margin picked [Phonetic] up to 4.26% from the fourth quarter.
Banking and wealth management revenues totaled $29 million.
That's roughly equal to what we did in the fourth quarter when you eliminate seasonal items.
First quarter fee revenue reflected strong mortgage banking activities as we have consistently generated a higher level of origination and servicing fees, both benefits of the Scotiabank acquisition.
Non-interest expenses totaled $78 million.
This was relatively flat after excluding merger expenses in the fourth quarter and non-core items in this first quarter.
First quarter expenses were also in line with our previously announced plans for spending this year.
The effective tax rate was 32% compared to 22% in the fourth quarter.
Looking at the balance sheet compared to December 31, assets increased reflecting higher cash balances.
Loans declined due to higher mortgage refinancing activity and to a lesser degree, businesses with higher liquidity levels paying down lines of credit.
Loan production total an impressive $528 million.
We have good pipelines and momentum going forward in all business lines.
We also saw strong deposit growth due to new PPP loans and COVID relief payments.
Capital continued to build nicely and we are starting to return some of that to shareholders via increases in common dividends and optimization of the capital stack via redemption of preferred shares.
In January, we increased the regular quarterly cash dividend -- common cash dividend 14%.
In March, we announced the redemption of all three outstanding series of preferred stock in addition to improving our capital structure.
This enables us to effectively deploy excess liquidity and increase net income available to shareholders -- to current shareholders by $6.5 million on an annualized basis.
Stockholders' equity climbed to $1.11 billion.
I would like also to point out that as of the first quarter, we more than earned back all the tangible book value per common share dilution anticipated in the Scotiabank acquisition significantly ahead of schedule.
To sum up, the first quarter demonstrated another strong performance supported by the island's economic recovery, solid loan generation, improving payment activity and credit credit trends, and good banking and financial services fees.
Now here is Maritza to go over the financials in more detail.
Please turn to Page 6 for our financial highlights.
First quarter core revenues were $127.7 million.
This compares to $132.8 million in the fourth quarter.
First quarter revenues included $1.6 million in interest income from $92 million of PPP loans that were forgiven.
First quarter revenues included three items: $3.9 million in non-interest income from annual insurance commissions; $3.1 million in interest income from acquired loan prepayments; and $2 million in mortgage sales that were held back from the third quarter.
When you take all that into consideration, core revenues increased $2.3 million or 1.9%.
This was driven by $1.4 million in lower cost of deposits and higher mortgage banking activities.
First quarter non-interest expense totaled $7.7 million.
This compares to $89 million in the fourth quarter.
The first quarter reflected previously announced cost savings.
It also included $1.8 million primarily in gains on sales and improved valuation of foreclosed properties.
The first quarter included $10.1 million in merger and restructuring expenses.
As a result, the efficiency ratio improved to 60.84% from 67.06% in the fourth quarter and 66.49% in the year ago quarter.
Our objective is to return to the mid-50% range.
Looking at our performance metrics.
Return on average assets increased to 1.21% from 94 basis points in the fourth quarter and virtually nil in the year ago quarter.
Our objective continues to be a -- to be on return on average assets above 1%.
Return on average tangible common equity rose to 13.11% compared to 9.99% [Phonetic] in the fourth quarter and virtually nil in the year ago quarter.
Our objective continues to be achieving return on average tangible common equity of above 12%.
We were pleased to see that all of our key performance metric significantly improve.
Tangible book value was $70.39 per share.
That's an increase of 11.5% year-over-year and 2.5% from the fourth quarter.
The CET1 ratio increased to 13.56%.
Please turn to Page 7 for our operational highlights.
Average loan balances were $6.6 billion, a decline of 1% from the fourth quarter.
Most of that was in our mortgage portfolio.
This is to be expected considering the high level of refinancing activity in Puerto Rico and our own strategy of selling most of our own new production.
Average core deposits were $8.5 billion, an increase of 1% from the first quarter.
This reflected continue high liquidity in the economy from federal stimulus, which is especially meaningful in Puerto Rico, as well as our first quarter PPP lending.
As Jose mentioned, loan generation totaled $528 million or $401 million excluding PPP originations.
In addition to PPP production, loan generation was driven by a strong year-over-year increases in mortgage, auto and commercial lending.
Mortgage reflect that new home sales and refinancing.
Auto reflected the strong sales of new and used car.
Most of our commercial lending was with small- and medium-sized businesses.
Loan yield was 6.61%, an increase of 6 basis points from the fourth quarter, largely due to PPP loan forgiveness.
As anticipated in our last call, a reduction in CD balances helped drive the decline in cost of funds.
Cost of core deposit was 48 basis points, a decline of 5 basis points from the fourth quarter.
We expect cost of core deposits to continue to improve this year as more CD balances be priced lower.
During the first quarter, we acquired $127 million of mortgage-backed securities for our held-to-maturity portfolio.
The result was that NIM increased 2 basis points from the fourth quarter.
We expect a stable NIM this year.
Please turn to Page 8.
Although credit trended positive across all portfolios, our credit metric is also in line with general improving trends we have been seeing on a fairly consistent basis.
Total net charge-offs were $9.1 million or 55% of total loans.
This is a decline compared to net charge-off of $44.8 million or 2.67% in the fourth quarter, which included $31.2 million to charge-off to acquire Scotiabank loans that were substantially and previously reserved.
With the exception of the fourth quarter of 2020, the charge-off rate has been improving steadily from the fourth quarter of 2019.
I would like to highlight the auto net charge-off rate.
This fell to 0.85% in the first quarter from 1.56% in the fourth quarter and 2.31% in the year ago quarter.
Our non-performing loan rate on our early and total delinquency rate all fell as well from the fourth quarter.
In particular, the early delinquency rate fell to 2.15% in the first quarter from 2.68% in the fourth quarter and 3.16% in the year ago quarter.
Provision declined from $14.2 million in the fourth quarter.
It should be noted that the fourth quarter included $4.7 million to cover the unreserved amount of disclosure loans that we [Technical Issues].
First quarter provision included a reserve release of $3.7 million.
This reflects changes in our probability weight to the results of simulation using Moody's S3 and baseline scenarios.
The first quarter also included a provision of $3.5 million for our commercial loan in workout prior to the pandemic.
Excluding the large COVID-related provision in the year ago, provision also has been declining steadily from the first [Phonetic] quarter of 2019.
Now here is Jose.
Please turn to Page 9 for our conclusion.
Culture, history, team and our facil, rapido, hecho approach are continuing to prove both successful and adaptable.
As I said earlier, we're building good momentum in all our businesses.
Our excess low-cost core deposits continue to provide us with significant dry powder.
Our most recent capital actions solidify our record of deploying and returning capital to shareholders.
Our agenda remains the same.
We will continue as plan to invest for the future in transforming our business model.
Our goal is to further simplify operations to improve efficiency and enhance our ability to serve customers.
Our business focus is to utilize our excess liquidity, increase loan generation and grow fee income.
We still face challenges from COVID, high unemployment levels, our government's ability to effectively deploy federal stimulus and reconstruction funds, and high cost of electricity, but the future is looking brighter.
The island is experiencing early signs of recovery with individual and businesses benefiting from COVID relief and stimulus, vaccination being extensively deployed, reconstruction projects getting under way and a consensual agreement in principle to restructure Puerto Rico's debt and an end to out-migration last year with signs of possible in-migration this year.
At OFG, we're more than ready to benefit from and play a major role in the recovery of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
We want to help our customers rise up and fulfill their lives again.
Operator, please start the Q&A.

user
q1 earnings per share $0.56.
quarterly total core revenues were $127.7 million.

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