PHOTRONICS INC

Vaughan Nelson Investment Management, which controls 71% of the $48.9 million in institutional value 13F Insight tracks in Photronics, trimmed its stake 9.6% this quarter — a real sale worth roughly $3.7 million, the largest trade in the filing by a wide margin. It's also, by dollar size, close to the only real selling of note: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Public School Employees' Retirement System and Merit Financial Group both cut modestly, but nothing else in the register comes close to Vaughan Nelson's scale. Set against that trim, seven brand-new institutional positions opened this quarter — Moody National Bank Trust Division ($592,957), Procyon Advisors ($498,555), Byrne Asset Management ($217,008) and four smaller entrants — a meaningfully broader base of fresh interest for a stock with only 25 tracked holders. Wedge Capital Management made the quarter's largest genuine buy among existing holders, adding 44.1% to its stake ($1.09 million in real purchasing), and LVZ, Inc. and Empirical Wealth Management both built meaningfully too (up 21.1% and 15.1%). Even with its dominant holder pulling back, Photronics' institutional base looks like it's widening, not shrinking.