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Alaska Pacific Bank lost money last year, its first year losing money in recent history.

"We've not had a loss since I've been here," said Craig Dahl, president of Alaska Pacific Bancshares, the parent company of Alaska Pacific Bank.

Dahl has been at the bank for 17 years, but said things may have been worse during the oil bust years in the 1980s, before it was publicly traded. The bank's shares closed Tuesday at $3.60 a share, down from a recent high of $26.

"We take this loss very seriously, but we're still very confident in the core business of the bank," he said.

Bad real estate investments in Oregon, Washington and Utah contributed to a $2.3 million loss in 2008, or $3.54 a share, according to the company's annual report, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission this week.

The bank made $922,000 in 2007, or $1.45 a share.

During 2008, the bank also stopped paying a dividend and came under intense regulatory scrutiny because of its finances. Early this year, it received a $4.8 million cash infusion as part of the U.S. Department of Treasury's Capital Purchase Program.

The bank reported that losses on bad loans in 2008 resulted in charge-offs of $4.1 million, up dramatically from $63,000 in 2007.

At the end of 2008, 6.07 percent of Alaska Pacific's loans were 30 days past due, compared to 2.33 percent at the end of 2007.

The bank is moving pretty aggressively to get its bad loans behind it but still has money to lend and is doing solid business, Dahl said.

Dahl said that other than the bad loans outside Alaska, business is going well.

In the bad loans, Alaska Pacific participated with multiple other banks to finance development projects that failed. Those loans had been reported in earlier quarterly results.

There was little loan activity over the winter, but this spring is going well, Dahl said.

"It's not anything above normal, but at least we're seeing activity," he said. "It's not completely flat like last winter."

One of the Alaska Pacific's key ways of measuring its business, the margin between what it costs to borrow money, such as from deposits and CDs, and what it receives when it makes loans, shrunk during the year.

In 2007, the margin was 5.32 percent, while in 2008 it had decreased to 4.76 percent.

"Our net interest margin had dropped, but not significantly," he said. "Our margin has continued to be higher than a lot of banks in our category."

Accepting the federal money will be expensive, he said, but it will ensure that Alaska Pacific Bank is out lending money, he said.

"We're not going to pay it back until we can see the Southeast economy is past any major concerns," he said. "Obviously, we just came off a terrible year."

• Contact reporter Pat Forgeyat 586-4816 or e-mail patrick.forgey@juneauempire.com.