Citadel’s Earnings Triple : Banking: The fourth-quarter profit boosted its battered stock. But the holding company’s 1991 net income plunged.

Helped by a wider interest-rate margin and a onetime gain from the sale of some real estate loans, Citadel Holding Corp. in Glendale said its fourth-quarter profit nearly tripled from a year earlier. But for all of 1991, its net income plunged 88% due to higher loan-loss provisions.

Citadel, the parent of Fidelity Federal Bank, earned $12.3 million in the fourth quarter, up from $4.4 million during the same period a year earlier. For the year ended Dec. 31, Citadel earned $2.7 million compared to $23.3 million in 1990.

The higher fourth-quarter earnings gave a boost to Citadel’s battered stock. The stock surged $4.625 a share last Tuesday and closed Friday at $32.25 a share in American Stock Exchange composite trading. (Financial markets were closed Monday in observance of Presidents Day.)

Citadel also said it has restructured a $15-million loan that was to have come due Feb. 3. The loan is from Los Angeles-based Craig Corp., a company controlled by James J. Cotter, who is also Citadel’s chairman.

Last month, the federal Office of Thrift Supervision allowed Fidelity Federal to pay off $7.5 million in notes that Fidelity owed Citadel. That payment in turn gave Citadel the funds to pay off half of its $15-million Craig loan.

At the same time, Craig agreed to extend the due date on the remaining $7.5 million to June 30. Citadel said it may pay off the remaining debt through a securities offering to existing shareholders that it hopes will raise $20 million to $25 million.

Citadel blamed the 1991 earnings slump mainly on the $58.4 million it added to its loan-loss reserves last year. By contrast, its loan-loss provisions in 1990 totaled $12.6 million.

“We are now amply reserved,� said Philip R. Sherringham, Citadel’s executive vice president and chief financial officer.

But Citadel’s ratio of non-performing assets to total assets jumped to 2.43% as of Dec. 31, compared to 0.85% on Dec. 31, 1990, which Sherringham blamed on the recession and the real estate slump.

Citadel’s higher fourth-quarter earnings were in line with results at many of the area’s other major savings and loans, which benefited from wider “spreads� between the interest they take in on home loans and the interest they pay out to depositors. The S&L; industry in general has been on an upswing because most of the biggest failures have been seized and sold off by the government.

Meanwhile, another seat has changed hands on Citadel’s board of directors. Jerome A. Forman, president of Pacific Theaters Corp., resigned from the boards of Citadel and Fidelity, citing time demands of his business obligations. He will be succeeded by Melvin Goldsmith, a consultant and real estate investor.