A new bank created from the combination of FNB Corp. of Christiansburg and Virginia Financial Group in Culpeper is starting out profitably but has had to cover significant merger-related expenses, a company financial report said Wednesday.

StellarOne Corp. said it earned $2.1 million during the January to March quarter, down 48 percent from the same period a year ago, when profit came to $4 million.

The company said merger costs of $3.7 million lowered earnings by an after-tax amount of $2.4 million. If StellarOne could set aside those costs, it would have made a quarterly profit of $4.5 million, or 30 cents a share, the report said.

But that represents only $443,000 more profit from the combined efforts of two banks than VFG earned alone during the same period last year. The caveat is FNB was unified with VFG for only one of the last of the three months.

Slack financial results are common in banking industrywide. For instance, FNB, the parent company of Christiansburg-based First National Bank, posted a 20 percent drop in net income in 2007.

From the latest report, it is impossible to tell how FNB and its branches did specifically in March, independent of VFG. And that appears likely to continue to be the case because the two banks are now one.

According to previously released plans, the merger will be finalized this month with a second closing to merge the banking subsidiaries of the corporations. After that, new signs would go up with the elimination of the old FNB signs and those of Planters Bank and Trust Company and Second Bank and Trust, the VFG monikers.

Shares of StellarOne, trading on the NASDAQ as STEL, closed down 4 cents Wednesday at $16.11.