The CEO of Telus (TSX:T) has bought just under $10 million worth of shares in the telecom giant this past month, the Vancouver-based firm announced Tuesday (December 22).
Darren Entwistle directly purchased 79,000 shares at an average price of $37.76 last Thursday (December 17) for a total of $2.9 million.
Meanwhile, that same day his family trust bought up 180,000 shares at an average price of $37.86 for a total of $6.8 million.
The purchases all came the day after Shaw Communications announced it was buying Wind Mobile in a deal worth $1.6 billion. Shares of rival telecom companies were down after the deal was announced, with Telus' shares falling 8.22%.
These latest purchases bring his stake in the company up to more than 230,000 shares and more than 390,000 restricted stock units, totalling $24 million.
Entwistle is the seventh highest-paid executive in B.C., according to calculations made by Business In Vancouver.
In 2014, he earned $1.4 million in salary and brought home $6.8 million in share-based awards.
After retiring as Telus’ CEO in 2014, he returned to his old job this past August to replace successor Joe Natale, who decided not to move from Toronto to the company’s headquarters in Vancouver.
Days before Entwistle’s return, Telus reported profits had fallen 10% in the second quarter to $341 million compared with a year prior.
In the first financial results since his return, Entwistle told investors in November the company had a “soft quarter.” Revenue grew 4.2% to $3.16 billion and profit was up 2.8% to $365 million in the third quarter compared with a year prior.
After the opening of Telus’ new $750-million headquarters in downtown Vancouver in September, the CEO told BIV he would likely stick around in the top job for five years.
While Natale said he wasn’t prepared to move his family from Toronto to Vancouver, Entwistle’s twin teenage children already live with him and his wife on the West Coast.
