6037 Rakumachi

Rakumachi runs Japan's main website where real estate brokers list income properties for investors. 5,459 brokers pay to list — about 4% of all licensed brokers — but growth is slowing.

▲ 96% of brokers still do not pay, so room to grow remains. Its YouTube channel reached 1.45 million subscribers, pulling in investors cheaply.  ▼ Every number the company discloses — members, page views, partner stores — is growing more slowly, while big portals SUUMO and LIFULL enter the niche.

The site dominates its niche and keeps over half of sales as operating profit. But the company corrected its page-view figures three times in 2026, each correction bigger than the last.

▲ Brokers pay per listing, not per page view, so no revenue was misstated and no customer got a price cut.  ▼ The error grew from 0.6% to 5.6% to 8.5% across three announcements. If the company cannot count page views, why trust its other numbers?

Founder Sakaguchi owns 68%. In twenty months the company bought back about ¥2.7bn of stock in six rounds, cancelled the shares, and raised the dividend a fifth straight year.

▲ The share count already fell from 21.15 million to 19.75 million. The founder gains alongside everyone else, and bond income can fund more buybacks.  ▼ About two-thirds of company assets sit in securities unrelated to the business, the payout target stays at 20%, and no multi-year return plan exists.

The business sells for 10.5 years of operating profit. Its capital earns 29.1%. Net cash is 3.7% of the market cap; 19.5% of profit goes out as dividends. Today's dividend yield is 1.3%. If the company paid out all of its profit, the yield at today's price would be 6.7% — past the 6% level where Japanese small caps tend to find buyers. Raising the payout 10 points a year would reach 6% in about 7.0 years. At the current payout, the cash pile alone equals today's market cap in about 17.9 years. How this valuation floor works →