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When the chips are down, insiders don’t sell stock.

Memory-chip maker Micron Technology (ticker: MU) has been hammered this year by lower demand and soft pricing.

Even with that dim backdrop, Micron shocked investors late Tuesday with surprisingly weak guidance for the fiscal second quarter ending March 1. Through Thursday, Micron stock has tumbled 24% in 2018. The underperformance follows an outsize run: Micron stock surged 55% in 2016 and rocketed 88% last year.

The plunging stock price has changed the behavior of Micron executives and directors. None have sold shares since late July, which was about when their steady decline began. As a consequence, the dollar value of insider sales of Micron stock this year is only a little more than half of last year—$17.0 million this year compared with $32.4 million in 2017.

Micron didn’t respond to a request to comment on insider stock sales.

The falling stock price is now uncomfortably close to the cost of converting stock options into stock. Scott DeBoer, executive vice president of technology development, exercised options to buy shares for $28.77 each in May. Shares closed at $31.28 on Thursday, and if they continue falling, it may be cheaper to buy stock on the open market than using certain options.

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DeBoer has sold a total of 53,240 Micron shares for $2.9 million, an average of $55 each, so far in 2018, after exercising options. He sold most of those shares in automated transactions through a so-called Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Such plans are intended to remove any potential bias an insider could have from the knowledge of material nonpublic information. The insider sets parameters including price and volume, and when those are met, the trade is automatically executed. Plans can be used to buy or sell stock, but they are overwhelmingly used to execute sales.

DeBoer now owns 164,722 Micron shares. Last year he sold 171,644 shares for $6 million, an average of $34.71 each.

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Micron Chairman Robert E. Switz has unloaded even more Micron stock. He sold 100,000 Micron shares for $5.4 million, about $54 each, through automated transactions from July 2 through 13. Previous to this year, Switz’s last stock sale was in May 2014, when he sold 25,000 shares for $689,000.

Steve Thorsen, who retired as Micron’s senior vice president of world-wide sales on Oct. 1, was another big seller. Thorsen sold 68,089 shares for $3.6 million, an average of $52.33 each. His latest reported sale was July 20, the most recent time any Micron insider sold stock.

With his retirement from the company, Thorsen is no longer obligated to report transactions in Micron stock. Last year, he sold 355,865 shares for $11.6 million, an average of $32.71 each.

Lawrence Mondry, a Micron director since 2005, is resigning from the board immediately before the shareholders meeting set for Jan. 17. Mondry sold 50,000 Micron shares for $2.2 million, about $43.47 each, on Valentine’s Day. He was one of the few insiders who sold more this year than last. In 2017, Mondry sold 25,000 Micron shares for $765,485, or $30.62 each.

When will Micron stock rise again and, presumably, inspire more insider selling? Credit Suisse analyst John W. Pitzer rates the chip firm at Outperform, but wrote in a Tuesday research report that the industry’s malaise will continue for now. There have been several cost and product cycle drivers in the second half of calendar 2018, but “there is still no definitive proof of a hard bottom.”

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Write to Ed Lin at edward.lin@barrons.com