Welcome to the 2023 annual meeting of shareholders of Orrstown Financial Services, Inc. I am Joel Zullinger, chairman of the board, and I will act as chairman of the meeting. I would like to call your attention to the important disclosures regarding forward-looking statements that may be made during today's presentation. I would also call your attention to the disclosure relative to non-GAAP measures cited in today's presentation. Shareholders who are attending via webcast may submit questions during the meeting by clicking the Q&A button, open the question panel, typing your question into the field titled Submit a Question, and clicking Submit. Shareholders also had the opportunity to pose questions before the meeting via email. Questions and answers will be grouped by topic. Substantially similar questions will be grouped and answered together. With me is Bob Coradi, Secretary of the company, who will act as Secretary of the meeting.
I would also like to introduce the other gentleman who will be presenting today, Tom Quinn, President and CEO of Orrstown Financial Services and Orrstown Bank, and Neelesh Kalani, Chief Financial Officer. I also welcome our directors present in person or remotely today, Cindy Joiner, Mark Keller, Tom Longenecker, Meera R. Modi, Andrea Pugh, Mike Rice, Eric Segal , Glenn Snoke, Floyd Stoner, and of course, Tom Quinn. Other distinguished guests attending include Matthew Dyckman, the company's General Counsel, Sarah Kuepper , the company's Treasurer, Jim Oliphant of Crowe LLP, the company's independent auditors. Most of all, I'd like to welcome you, our loyal shareholder. The only persons entitled to vote at this meeting are shareholders of record as of the close of business on March third, 2023, voting record date.
In accordance with Pennsylvania law, the company has prepared a complete alphabetical list of shareholders entitled to vote at the meeting with their addresses and number of shares held on the record date. We have previously received an affidavit that the notice of annual meeting of shareholders and a form of proxy were mailed on or about March 31, 2023 to each shareholder of record as of the close of business on the voting record date. This affidavit will be attached as an exhibit to the minutes of this meeting. The board of directors has previously appointed Matthew Dyckman to act as judge of election at this meeting. The judge has taken an oath to fairly and impartially perform his duties, which oath will be filed as an exhibit to the minutes of the meeting.
We have previously delivered to the judge the certified list of shareholders and all proxies which have been received. Our records show that there were outstanding on the record date and entitled to notice of and to vote at this annual meeting, 10,728,425 shares of common stock. Our records further show that more than a majority of such shares are present at this meeting in person or by proxy. The judge is making an exact count, will submit a formal report on the number of shares represented during the course of the meeting. Based on our preliminary count, a quorum is declared present, subject to the confirmation of that fact by the judge in his report. We have made available electronically the rules of conduct for the meeting.
If you would like to discuss an issue not on the agenda, I encourage you to contact any officer or director of the company after the meeting. In order to save time at this meeting, we propose to arrange the proceedings so that the questions will not be answered and the vote will not be taken until all items have been moved and seconded. If you have previously voted by proxy, you do not need to vote again today. Online voting will remain open until the polls have been closed. First item of business to be acted upon by shareholders at the meeting is the election of four directors. In accordance with the bylaws, Cindy J. Joiner, Eric A. Segal, Glenn W. Snoke, and Joel R.
Zullinger have each been nominated by the board of directors to serve for a three-year term and until their respective successors have been elected and qualified. I therefore declare the board slate to be in nomination. Company's bylaws require that a shareholder provide advance notice to the company of a shareholder's intent to nominate candidates for director. No timely notice of any other nomination having been received, I declare nominations to be closed. The next item of business on the agenda is the approval of a non-binding advisory vote regarding compensation paid to our named executive officers, commonly referred to as say on pay. Chair will entertain a motion to vote on the approval of the advisory vote proposal regarding executive compensation. Ms. Joiner moves. Keller seconds. The next item of business on the agenda is the approval of a non-binding advisory vote regarding the frequency of say on pay.
Shareholders may vote to hold our say on pay vote every one, two, or three years. The board of directors has recommended that shareholders vote to hold our say on pay vote annually. The chair will entertain a motion to hold our say on pay vote annually. Longenecker moves. Ms. Modi second. Next item of business on the agenda is the ratification of the audit committee selection of Crowe LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the fiscal year 2023. Chair will entertain a motion that Crowe LLP be ratified as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the 2023 fiscal year. Ms. Pugh moves. Rice second. At this time, I will take questions relating to proposals one, two, three, and four. If you have a question you haven't already submitted electronically, please do so now.
Mr. Chairman, we have no questions at this time.
Okay. Thank you, Mr. Dyckman. The vote will now be taken on all proposals. Remember, if you have previously voted by proxy, you do not need to vote again now. If you would like to cast your vote now, you may do so electronically. I will now pause the proceedings briefly to provide an opportunity for everyone who would like to cast their vote now. I now declare the polls closed. While the judge is counting the votes, Tom Quinn, our President and Chief Executive Officer, and Neelesh Kalani, our Chief Financial Officer, will report on the results of the company. After their presentations, we will entertain questions from shareholders. Tom?
Thank you, Joel. It's a pleasure to be here again this morning. I wanna start off by just saying thank you to the great team we have. We've experienced three very solid years. I'd like to take a moment to introduce you to them. Neelesh Kalani, who you'll hear from in a minute, is our Chief Financial Officer. Adam Bonanno, our Chief Operations and Technology Officer. Bob Corradi, our Chief Risk Officer. Matthew Dyckman, our General Counsel. Philip Fague, Trust and Wealth Management. Jeff Gamen, our Retail and Mortgage Banking. Christopher Holt, our Market President for the Maryland market. David Hornberger, our Market President for Lancaster. Zachary Khuri, our Market President for the Capital Region and Market South. Heather Knisely, our Chief Human Resources Officer. Adam Metz, our Chief Revenue Officer, and William Ziegler, our Chief Credit Officer.
I'd be remiss at this time if I did not thank them for their contribution, as well as three others who retired at the end of 2022. They would be Mark Bayer, Barb Roberts, and Robert Fignar . Thank them all for what a great year of service they had. As you look at the company today, the little over $2.9 billion. We have $2.2 billion in loans and north of $2.5 billion in deposits. We have established a track record for profitable growth since 2016. The deposits per branch have averaged about $113 million, which is a significant increase over the last few years. We are a company with 419 employees.
As indicated earlier, we have 10.7 million shares outstanding. Our tangible book value per common share, $19.47. Our markets are very distinct. We have a market in the eastern part of the state in Lancaster, Lebanon. Our core market has been Shippensburg, Chambersburg, Carlisle, and with the addition of Harrisburg and York. Finally, our Maryland market years ago, we expanded into Hagerstown with the acquisition down in the Baltimore market. These three geographic regions are connected by a great highway infrastructure. We focus on commercial lending as an organization and gaining deposit relationships. Many of our markets are growth markets and are well-positioned to see continued commercial loan growth and fee income penetration.
To go back to 2016, we do have a track record for profitable growth. Last year, we had $349 million in loan growth or 19%. We were very successful in replacing all of the PPP income from 2020 and 2021. We closed four branches and agreed to sell 1 branch, which will close here in the next month. Our adjusted net income for 2022 was $34.9 million. Diluted earnings per share was $3.25, Dollars a share. We had again, strong loan growth. Our asset quality remains strong. Bob and team have done a nice job. Our allowance to loan loss to total loans is 1.17%. Net charge-offs, $162,000 last year.
We continue to focus on deposit retention, and we have been relatively flat. Our margin expanded in 2022, 56 basis points to 381%. Yields on our interest-earning assets were 65 basis points, and the cost of funds of interest-bearing liabilities was 12 basis points. Neel will cover more specifics as we go forward. We're extremely proud to say that since we reinstituted the dividend, we are up 186%. The dividend now is $0.20 a share. We had 33 consecutive quarters with the dividend since May 2015. The dividend has increased 10 times in the last 33 quarters, and it remains our goal to reward shareholders through dividends and shareholder value accretion. With that, I'll turn it over to Neel. Neel.
Thank you, Tom. Good morning, everyone. I'll begin by updating you on our long-term growth plan on slide 16. We're at the back end of our phase 2 and entering phase 3. In 2022, we took steps to drive our profitability higher. We took actions to reduce our efficiency ratio while still making enhancements internally. We have achieved peer profitability levels, and our relationship banking model has enabled us to maintain a stable deposit base in a challenging environment. Our focus for 2023 and beyond will be on the continued growth of the bank and enhancing the client experience. Moving on to slide 17. Our balance sheet grew by $88 million, primarily due to 9% loan growth. Excluding PPP loan forgiveness activity, total loans grew by 19%. Our deposit balances were relatively flat despite client utilization of remaining PPP funds.
At December 31, 2022, our loan-to-deposit ratio held strong at 87% and 90% of our deposit base was core deposits. From a credit standpoint, our allowance for loan losses to total loans had a strong coverage at 1.17, and we experienced minimal net charge-offs in 2022. Slide 18. This covers our 2022 income statement. After adjusting for the impact of a litigation settlement and restructuring charge both in the third quarter, we had net income of $34.9 million or diluted EPS of $3.25. Our core operations performed extremely well in 2022. The actions we took in the third quarter of 2022 are expected to benefit Orrstown in the long term, and our performance in both the fourth quarter of 2022 and first quarter of 2023 is indicative of that. In 2022, net interest income rose by almost $13 million from 2021.
This is despite earning almost $11 million less in PPP income in 2022. From the onset of PPP, we've noted that our goal was to not have PPP just be a one-time income benefit to our organization. We plan to forge strong relationships with the many new clients to the bank and replace that income through the strength of our relationship-driven business model. We've leveraged that opportunity and in the fourth quarter of 2022 replaced interest income earned at the highest quarterly point of PPP. We expect this to continue to benefit us going forward. Our margin for 2022 was 3.81, an increase of 56 basis points from 2021. Some of our key financial ratios, such as efficiency, return on assets, and return on equity, were strong when excluding the impact of the third quarter charges.
While the bank has been growing, our capital ratios remain above those required to be considered well capitalized by our regulators. Moving to slide 19. This shows some five-year profitability trends. Our normalized net income has experienced a 23% annualized growth rate over that period. Our return on average assets and equity have also seen strong growth as well as a net interest margin. Slide 20 displays our loan growth, which has been at 15% annualized growth rate since 2018. We built an excellent team of lenders, our credit culture remains strong. On slide 21, you can see our solid deposit growth of 12% annualized over five years and core deposits annualized growth of 17%. Given some of the recent disruption in the banking environment, we believe we're well positioned to continue to build our deposit base and serve our client needs.
Looking at slide 22, you can see that fee income continues to be a strong source of earnings for us at 21% of total operating revenue. Despite market-driven declines in mortgage banking and wealth management, we found other opportunities such as client swaps to generate fee income. Our earnings from our wealth management operation were relatively stable in 2022, even when considering the significant stock market declines. Slide 23 highlights our efficiency initiatives that we've taken over the past few years. We've taken a close look at automation opportunities. We've also optimized our branch network with four locations closed in 2022 and one pending sale in the second quarter of 2023. As a result, our efficiency ratio has declined to 63% and our average deposits per branch now exceed $100 million.
In summary, we had another strong year in 2022 and continued the growth trend of the past few years. We began 2023 with a very good first quarter and feel that we're poised to have a strong year in a challenging environment. Now I'll go back to Tom.
Thank you, Neel. As you've all seen or heard about the challenges of the west coast banks recently, Orrstown will continue to focus on its relationship banking model into the future. We know our clients, we know our customers, we know the community. We see them in the shopping centers and in church, therefore, the relationship model will be something we will continue to focus on. We'll manage our margin effectively with disciplined pricing strategy, and we will continue to maintain credit quality levels as or near where they are today. As the world continues to evolve in technology, we will as well. We'll look for not only a number of technology initiatives, but the digital transformation of Orrstown Bank well into the future. We have gone through several process automation initiatives and will continue to do so.
We have a real focus on deposit retention and growth. It's key to the company's success, and we'll continue to focus on it. We will emphasize additional fee income opportunities as they are and exist. We'll be very disciplined in our expense management, and our capital management has to be priority one as we move through the challenging times that we're in today. With that, I wanna thank you all for your support of Orrstown Bank and appreciate the support from the team. Joel?
Thank you, Tom and Neel. We will now respond to any questions submitted by shareholders. Dykeman, have we?
Mr. Chairman, we have not received any questions.
There being no questions, I am pleased to report that the judge has completed his count and will now read his...
Mr. Chairman, as the duly appointed judge of election, I have examined the proxies submitted and hereby confirm that there are represented at this meeting by valid and legal proxies at least 7,811,182 shares of common stock of Orrstown Financial Services. This represents 73% of the voting shares issued, outstanding, and entitled to vote at for the record date. This includes proxies for a number of shareholders who are present at this meeting. There may also be present in person shareholders from whom proxies have not. As the duly appointed judge of election, I hereby certify that I have counted the votes cast for election for the four director nominees to serve a three-year term. The four nominees have received the highest number of votes cast.
I have counted the votes cast in connection with the approval of the non-binding vote on the compensation of our named executive officers, commonly referred to as say on pay. The majority of the votes cast have been cast in favor of this proposal. I have counted the votes cast in connection with the approval of the non-binding advisory vote on the frequency which we will hold our say on pay vote. The majority of the votes cast have been cast in favor of holding the say on pay vote annually. Finally, I have counted the votes cast in connection with the proposal to ratify the appointment of Crowe LLP as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for 2023. The majority of the votes cast have been cast in favor of this proposal.
Thank you, Mr. Dyckman. The report of the judge confirms that a quorum is present at this meeting for all purposes. The report also shows that each nominee has been duly elected as a director of the company for a three-year term, that all other proposals have been approved. The report of the judge is accepted and approved and will be attached to the minutes of the meeting. There being no further business, a motion to adjourn is in order. Mr. Snoke moves. Stoner seconds. Those in favor signify by saying aye. Those opposed, like sign. The motion is carried and the annual meeting is adjourned. Thank you for participating in this year's annual meeting.