From JASDAQ to the First Section, over six and a half years (2013)

Half of the moves were not the company’s to make

Of a route that passed through five market names in six and a half years, only two steps — August and December 2013 — were decided by the company itself. The April 2010 move to Osaka JASDAQ and the April 2022 move to Prime were both passive relocations that followed the exchanges’ own restructuring. Precisely because the part it could decide was limited, the preparation for those two steps was made deliberately: a one-for-hundred share split, and ¥2.25m in advisory fees to the auditor.

The effect of the upgrade showed up in the shareholder register sooner than in the share price. Financial institutions’ shareholding moving from 0.8% to 8.2% shows that the listing tier defines the investable universe on the investors’ side. And that same stock was used, in 2021, as ¥80.4bn of merger consideration exactly as it stood. The designation to the First Section was not a move to raise money; it worked as preparation for buying, eight years later, a company not much smaller than itself, using shares alone.