Company: AAOI
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form Type: PRE 14A
Source: 0001104659-25-019126
Chunk: 39

Company: APPLIED OPTOELECTRONICS, INC.
Filing Date: 2025-02-28
Form: PRE 14A
Chunk 39
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” below.

#### Other Compensation Policies and Practices
Policies on Hedging and Pledging

Our insider trading policy prohibits hedging and pledging of our equity securities by our employees, including our executive officers, and the non-employee members of the Board, including specifically as follows:

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Short-sales of our equity securities, as well as transactions in puts, calls, or other derivative securities involving our common stock, on an exchange or in any other organized market, by our employees, including our executive officers, and the non-employee members of the Board are prohibited;

•

Hedging or monetization transactions involving our equity securities, such as zero-cost collars and forward sale contracts, by our employees, including our executive officers, and the non-employee members of the Board are prohibited; and

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Holding our equity securities in a margin account or pledging our securities as collateral for a loan by our employees, including our executive officers, and the non-employee members of the Board are prohibited.

These policies are reasonably designed to promote compliance with insider trading laws, rules and regulations.

Clawback Policy

In 2023, our Board adopted an Incentive Compensation Recovery Policy for executive officers in compliance with Section 10D of the Exchange Act, Rule 10D-1 promulgated under the Exchange Act and Nasdaq Listing Rule 5608, which requires us to recoup incentive compensation from our executive officers in the event we restate our financial statements. A copy of our Incentive Compensation Recovery Policy was filed as an exhibit to our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2023.

Stock Ownership Guidelines

To further align the interests of senior management and stockholders, we adopted stock ownership and retention guidelines in 2018 that provide for our executive officers and non-employee directors to own minimum amounts of the Company’s common stock. The guidelines’ minimum levels of stock ownership for our executive officers are as follows:

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

| ​ | ​ | Officer Level           | ​ | ​ | ​ | Ownership Guideline   | ​ | ​ |
| ​ | ​ | Chief Executive Officer | ​ | ​ | ​ | 5x annual base salary | ​ | ​ |
| ​ | ​ | Chief Financial Officer | ​ | ​ | ​ | 2x annual base salary | ​ | ​ |
| ​ | ​ | Senior Vice President   | ​ | ​ | ​ | 2x annual base salary