Great Southern CEO trades thousands of shares

Joe Turner now directly holds 137,682 shares in Great Southern.

Great Southern Bancorp Inc.’s (Nasdaq: GSBC) CEO sold thousands of company shares in the only trade so far this month by a company officer.

Joe Turner, the president of Great Southern Bank, on April 22 bought and sold 6,000 shares, according to an April 23 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing. He utilized SEC code M, through which executives can execute their rights to buy shares at set rates and sell them at market prices, netting a profit on the difference.

At $56.25 per share, Turner made $220,319 on the sale, according to the SEC filing.

After the transaction, the SEC reports he directly held 137,682 shares in Great Southern stock. That accounts for about 1% of Great Southern’s 14.2 million outstanding shares, according to Nasdaq.com.

Turner was the highest-paid executive at Great Southern in 2018, bringing in total compensation of $1.1 million. That was an 8.3% decrease from $1.25 million in 2017, according to a proxy filing with the SEC and past Springfield Business Journal reporting.

Great Southern last week reported first-quarter earnings of $17.6 million, a 30.8% increase from a year earlier.

GSBC shares were trading at $57.37 as of 11:01 a.m., compared with a 52-week range of $43.30 to $61.65.