• Upson kept dividends unchanged despite a 16 percent drop in earnings, pushing yield to about 8 percent at current prices.
• The elevated yield reflects the stock’s collapse since its P2.40 IPO, with shares still down nearly 70 percent.
• Upson disclosures showed conflicting figures on store count growth and profitability trends, raising questions over execution of its post-IPO expansion story.
Tech gadgets retailer Upson International Corp. kept its dividends flowing despite weaker earnings, offering investors an eye-catching yield even as conflicting disclosures and slowing expansion cloud the retailer’s long-term growth story.
The operator of Octagon, Micro Valley and Gadget King stores maintained its annual cash dividend at P187.5 million, or P0.06 per share, despite a 16 percent drop in 2025 net income.
Based on the stock’s last closing price of P0.74, the payout translates to a yield of about 8 percent—relatively high, but largely reflecting how sharply the stock has collapsed since its April 2023 initial public offering price of P2.40.
On Tuesday, its shares jumped over 8 percent after the dividend announcement, with stockholders of record as of June 9 set to receive payment on June 24.
Yield or warning sign?
While the payout may attract bargain hunters chasing income, investors are also confronting signs that Upson’s post-IPO expansion story may be losing momentum.
When the company debuted on the stock market in 2023, management pitched aggressive branch expansion as a major growth driver.
Upson then had around 207 stores and raised P1.4 billion in net proceeds partly to fund plans to open 250 new outlets and end 2027 with about 457 branches.
Its latest progress report showed all IPO proceeds had already been fully spent by end-2025, largely for store expansion and store improvement programs.
Conflicting signals
But Upson’s own disclosures painted conflicting pictures of how the network actually performed last year.
In materials prepared for its annual stockholders’ meeting, the company said it ended 2025 with 240 stores after opening 14 branches and closing 19, signaling a shift toward leaner but potentially more productive operations.
Yet in its annual report filed with regulators, Upson said its store network increased from 250 to 255 in 2025, suggesting continued expansion instead.
The discrepancy also extended to profitability trends.
The shareholder presentation highlighted improving store productivity, with gross profit margin supposedly rising to 21.48 percent from 20.97 percent.
But the annual report showed the opposite, with gross profit margin easing to 20.75 percent while net income margin fell to 3.12 percent from 4.21 percent as higher operating costs squeezed profitability.
Upson said 2025 net income dropped 16.4 percent to P402.6 million even as revenues climbed nearly 13 percent to P12.9 billion.
—Edited by Miguel R. Camus
