Wells Fargo & Co., the biggest U.S. home lender, reported its fifth straight quarterly profit this morning and said credit costs have “turned the corner” as the economy struggles toward recovery, Bloomberg reported.

First-quarter net income fell 16 percent to $2.55 billion, or 45 cents a share, compared with $3.05 billion, or 56 cents a share, in the same period a year earlier, the San Francisco-based company said. That beat the 43-cent average estimate of 24 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. After paying preferred dividends, Wells Fargo’s net income available to common shareholders was $2.37 billion.

Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf is trying to limit loan losses and steer the bank through the last stages of the credit crisis. He’ll have to overcome an unemployment rate stuck near 10 percent and home prices almost 30 percent below their peak. Wells Fargo wrote off $5.3 billion of loans, an $83 million decrease, while fee income grew 7 percent and lending margins widened from a year earlier.

“Though the economy continues to present challenges, and we’ve yet to see consumers and businesses resume past levels of spending and borrowing, our teams at Wells Fargo still found opportunities,” Stumpf said in a press release. “We’re encouraged by signs of improvement in the credit cycle.”

Wells Fargo stock price reached a 52-week high yesterday, closing at $33.69 on the New York Stock Exchange. It dropped to $32.90 in early trading today. The shares gained 15 percent during the first quarter, trailing the 22 percent return on the 24-company KBW Bank Index. The biggest stakeholder is Berkshire Hathaway Inc., the insurance and holding company run by billionaire Warren Buffett.

Wells Fargo held $123.8 billion in home-equity loans at the end of last year, second behind Bank of America Corp. Wells Fargo wrote off $4.6 billion of those loans last year, almost a quarter of 2009’s total write-offs. Results have been helped by the 2008 purchase of Wachovia Corp., with costs of the integration coming in lower than the bank’s forecast.

Wells Fargo is expanding its equity-underwriting business and may add as many as 10,000 advisers to the third-largest U.S. retail brokerage. Both businesses were picked up from Wachovia.