Tachibana Eletech, the Osaka-based industrial equipment and electronics trading house listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange's Prime market, said its board decided on September 7, 2026 to abandon its long-standing stable-dividend policy in favor of progressive dividends. The first step: an annual dividend of ¥120 for the year ending March 2027, up ¥20 from the flat ¥100 a share paid over the prior three years.
The company's own numbers explain the timing. Its price-to-book ratio, still below the 1x level, improved to 0.81x at the end of August 2026 from 0.60x at the end of March, while its price-to-earnings ratio rose from 8.67x to 12.72x over the same stretch.
| Date | Price-to-book | Price-to-earnings |
|---|---|---|
| End-March 2026 | 0.60x | 8.67x |
| End-August 2026 | 0.81x | 12.72x |
Tachibana attributes the persistent discount to three factors: profit that has not fully recovered from its peak in the year to March 2024, thin trading liquidity, and low brand recognition in a business-to-business market.
Liquidity is the second lever. Average daily trading value ran to just ¥97mn in the year to March 2026 and ¥141mn between April and August 2026, and the company says it will gradually sell down its cross-held shares in other companies to lift trading volume. It has already bought back 3,000,000 of its own shares over the three years through March 2026.
The dividend shift sits inside a five-year plan the company calls GIC30, covering the years from the one ending March 2027 through the one ending March 2031. By the final year it targets consolidated revenue above ¥300bn, operating profit above ¥12bn and an operating margin above 4%, with overseas sales reaching 30% of the total. Tachibana says it will review the plan's progress in its third year and revisit strategic investment and capital policy if conditions change.
The company noted that its shares had already risen from ¥2,403 at the end of March 2025 to ¥4,050 at the end of August 2026, a climb it attributes to improving earnings and an August profit upgrade. Even so, management argues the stock remains undervalued given those PBR and PER readings, which is precisely why the dividend and liquidity changes matter more than the share-price gain itself.