Key points
- Tower Semiconductor (TSEM) CEO Russell Ellwanger sold 181,535 shares on Aug 10-11 for about $45.6M, near $251 each.
- A Form 4 footnote ties the sale to a pre-scheduled order he set up on March 12, before the stock climbed to current levels.
- It runs almost 3x his July sale, yet he still holds about 527,000 shares, worth roughly $137M.
- TSEM is up more than 5x in a year after record Q2 revenue and 270% growth in silicon photonics.
Tower Semiconductor (TSEM) chief executive Russell Ellwanger just reported the largest stock sale in his short filing record. He sold 181,535 ordinary shares on August 10 and 11 for about $45.6 million, which is an average of around $251 a share. That's almost three times the sale he disclosed a month earlier.
The number looks dramatic. The filing says the timing wasn't his call. A footnote explains the shares came from restricted stock units "granted more than 3 years ago" and that the sale followed "a pre-arranged, pre-scheduled order instruction established by the Reporting Person on March 12, 2026, when the reporting person did not have material non-public information." He set the plan in the spring, months before the shares reached these prices. It works like a 10b5-1 trading plan, though Ellwanger didn't check the formal 10b5-1 box on the form.
The trades also didn't touch Nasdaq. Tower is based in Israel, and the footnotes show the shares sold on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange "in New Israeli Shekels (ILS)," at about 3.0 shekels to the dollar. The selling ran in dozens of small blocks over the two days, from about $243 up to $264 a share.
His two reported sales this summer line up like this.
| Reported | Trade dates | Shares sold | Avg. price | Value | Direct shares held after |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 15 | Jul 13 | 66,964 | $215 | $14.4M | 708,323 |
| Aug 12 | Aug 10-11 | 181,535 | $251 | $45.6M | 526,788 |
Ellwanger is far from cashing out. His direct holdings now stand at 526,788 shares, worth about $137 million at Wednesday's close of $260.31. He sold about 26 percent of what he held going in. The rest stays with a stock that has risen more than fivefold in a year.
That run has a clear source. Tower posted record second-quarter revenue of $460 million on August 4, up 24 percent from a year earlier, and said silicon photonics revenue grew more than 270 percent as AI data-center orders picked up. It guided current-quarter revenue above $490 million and raised its longer-term targets. The shares are up about 23 percent over the five sessions through Wednesday, and at that level the stock trades near 98 times trailing earnings. Ellwanger sold on August 10 and 11, well into that climb.
A scheduled sale doesn't reveal what Ellwanger thinks about Tower's price. Pre-arranged plans sell on a set calendar or price triggers, not on a fresh opinion, which is the reason executives use them. The Form 4 doesn't disclose the plan's rules either, so the filing alone can't say why this batch ran so much larger than July's. What it does show is a chief executive steadily turning long-held grants into cash after a huge move in the stock. CrowdStrike (CRWD) drew the same kind of notice this summer, when its CEO's sales were preplanned and its finance chief's were not. For help reading these disclosures, see our guide to insider buying and selling.
Sources: Russell Ellwanger Form 4 (filed Aug 12, 2026) and Form 4 (filed Jul 15, 2026), U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
