Great Southern records $5.9M profits in 2Q

Last edited 2:12 p.m., July 27, 2011

Great Southern Bancorp. Inc. (Nasdaq: GSBC), the Springfield-based holding company for Great Southern Bank, recorded profits of $5.89 million during the second quarter, a 1.1 percent increase compared to net income of $5.82 million in the same quarter of fiscal 2010.

For the quarter ended June 30, Great Southern reported earnings per diluted share of 37 cents, a 2-cent uptick from second-quarter fiscal 2010, according to a news release.

Financial highlights:

• Total gross loans, including Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.-covered loans, have increased by 1.7 percent to $33 million since the end of fiscal 2010.
• As of June 30, nonperforming assets were $83.5 million. Nonperforming loans totaled $25.3 million.
• Deposits were $2.6 billion at the end of the quarter, including a $97.7 million increase in checking account deposits.

President and CEO Joseph Turner called the company's second-quarter financials "solid results."

"We continued to attract new checking deposit customers and saw a continued favorable shift in our deposit mix to lower-cost transaction accounts," he said in the release. "Lending activity increased modestly over the first six months, and we saw some increased loan demand in the second quarter of 2011.

"We remain cautiously optimistic about the second half of 2011," he added. "However, with current U. S. economic and political issues and the bank regulatory environment, we expect the rest of year to be one of challenges for the industry.”

Great Southern Bancorp., which had assets of $3.4 billion at the end of the second quarter, operates more than 76 Great Southern Bank branches and more than 200 automated teller machines in Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska.

As of 9:05 a.m., Great Southern shares were trading at $19.58, compared to a 52-week range of $16.69 to $24.60.[[In-content Ad]]