Key points
- Aehr Test Systems director Howard Slayen filed a Form 144 on August 4, 2026 covering 20,000 shares valued at $2,179,600.
- He bought that same 20,000-share block on the open market on August 2, 2024 at $15.50, a cost of $310,000.
- The notice prices the stock at $108.98, seven times what he paid, for a gain of $1,869,600.
- Of the 14 notices filed that day, his is the only one covering stock an insider bought instead of receiving as pay.
- Slayen sold on three earlier occasions since November 2025 and still reported 166,367 shares on July 30.
Fourteen insiders filed notices to sell stock on Tuesday, and we read those the way you'd read a friend's brokerage statement. Thirteen of them tell one story. Shares vested and got sold, or options were exercised and cashed out the same afternoon. That's what a Form 144 usually is. It's closer to payday than to a market call.
The fourteenth belongs to Howard Slayen, a director at Aehr Test Systems (AEHR) in Fremont, California. Every notice filed with the SEC carries a box describing how the insider got the stock. Where the other thirteen say Restricted Stock Vesting or Stock Option Exercise, Slayen's says Open market purchase.
The date beside that phrase is August 2, 2024, and his Form 4 from that day puts the trade on a single line. Twenty thousand shares. Transaction code P. Fifteen dollars fifty a share. That's $310,000 of his own money, and the Rule 10b5-1 box on it sits unchecked, so Slayen picked the day himself. It took his reported holding to 220,714 shares. Tuesday's notice covers 20,000 shares through Charles Schwab, the same twenty thousand, valued at $2,179,600. Divide it out and you get $108.98 apiece. Two years and two days after buying the block, he's filed to sell it for a gain of $1,869,600.
That distance between $15.50 and $108.98 is why this notice came out of the pile. A director selling stock the company handed him tells you about his pay package. A director selling stock he went to the open market for is closing a position he opened, and here the entry price is public.
He has been selling the whole way up
Seven times your money sounds like a man who waited two years and took his shot. Slayen's other filings describe someone who's been at this since last autumn.
| Date | Filing | What it was | Shares | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 2, 2024 | Form 4 | Open market buy | 20,000 | $15.50 |
| Nov 5, 2025 | Form 4 | Sale | 6,000 | $25.73 |
| Feb 4, 2026 | Form 4 | Three gifts | 15,000 | no consideration |
| Apr 17, 2026 | Form 4 | Sale | 25,000 | $85.00 |
| Apr 22, 2026 | Form 4 | Gift | 1,800 | no consideration |
| May 13, 2026 | Form 4 | Sale | 6,819 | $104.73 |
| Jul 1, 2026 | Form 4 | Share award | 1,658 | no consideration |
| Jul 30, 2026 | Form 4 | Gift | 5,000 | no consideration |
| Aug 4, 2026 | Form 144 | Notice to sell | 20,000 | $108.98 stated |
Three sales at $25.73 in November, $85.00 in April and $104.73 in May, each one higher than the last. Add 21,800 shares given away across three separate gift filings this year, in February, April and July. His reported holding has gone from 220,714 in August 2024 to 166,367 on July 30, and that July figure still counts restricted stock units waiting to vest. Tuesday's 20,000 shares are around twelve percent of what he holds. So Slayen is a director selling down a large stake into a rising stock, and the block going out this week happens to be the one he paid cash for. Both descriptions fit the same man.
What the stock did to get here
Aehr builds test and burn-in equipment for semiconductors, and the demand story attached to it right now runs through AI processors and silicon photonics. The company reported its fiscal fourth quarter on July 14. Revenue came in at $18.8 million against $14.1 million a year earlier. Non-GAAP profit was $0.11 a diluted share where the year before had been a small loss. Quarterly bookings hit a record $60.7 million, and effective backlog counting orders taken since the quarter closed reached $100.6 million.
The full fiscal year reads more plainly than the quarter does. Revenue for fiscal 2026 was $50.0 million, down from $59.0 million. Guidance is what moved the stock. Chief executive Gayn Erickson told investors Aehr has "substantial visibility into projected fiscal 2027 revenue of $130 million to $150 million", which he put at growth of 160 to 200 percent.
Trading on Nasdaq closed at $91.71 on Monday, and Tuesday morning, the day Slayen's notice was filed, Aehr announced another follow-on production order from its lead silicon photonics customer for a FOX-XP system. Erickson called it "another indication that silicon photonics is moving from technology adoption into manufacturing scale-up". The stock closed the session at $109.89, up 19.8 percent on the day. Aehr has now announced three of those photonics orders since June 17, so the run into this week has been built on a steady drip of them.
A Form 144 sets a ceiling on what an insider may sell, and Slayen has told Schwab he intends to sell on or after August 4. The actual sale can come in smaller or be dropped entirely. The Form 4 that follows within two business days is where an executed trade shows up, and it's also where a Rule 10b5-1 plan gets disclosed by checkbox. His notice leaves the plan field blank. So did the Forms 4 behind all three of his earlier sales, which our insider tracker flags as an insider's own call.
The public record stops at the trade itself, which leaves the motive an open question. Directors sell for tax bills, houses, divorces and plain diversification when most of a person's net worth sits in one small-cap semiconductor company, and the filing stays quiet about which of those applies to Slayen. What it does hand you, unusually for a sale, is his cost. We looked at whether following filings like this actually works in a separate piece, and at how prescheduled selling plans differ from a discretionary sale here. Aehr filings land on the company's filings page as they arrive, and the Form 4 confirming this one is due within two business days of whenever he sells.
Sources
- SEC Form 144 for Howard T. Slayen, Aehr Test Systems, filed August 4, 2026 (accession 0001949846-26-000462), stating 20,000 shares, $2,179,600, acquired August 2, 2024 by open market purchase
- SEC Form 4 for Howard T. Slayen filed August 2, 2024 (accession 0001593968-24-001046), transaction code P, 20,000 shares at $15.50
- SEC Forms 4 for Slayen filed November 5, 2025 and April 17, April 22, May 15 and July 30, 2026, covering his sales, gifts and reported holdings
- Aehr Test Systems fiscal 2026 fourth quarter results, 8-K and Exhibit 99.1 filed July 14, 2026
- Aehr Test Systems press release, August 4, 2026, on a follow-on production order from its lead silicon photonics customer
