19 Japanese companies have listed on Nasdaq and still trade at a price we can measure against their offer. 1 is above it. The median name is down 79%, the average 62%. This is not a rough patch in a market that otherwise works. It is the market.
The losses concentrate at the bottom: Linkage Global (LGCB) at -95%, TEN Holdings (XHLD) at -88%, Medirom (MRM) at -94%, Warrantee (WRNT) at -89%. Above them sits a thick band of names down 50 to 90 percent. Nothing in the shape looks like a few unlucky outliers dragging down a healthy cohort; the whole distribution has moved lower.
Listing was never the hard part
Clearing the SEC and the exchange is one problem. Holding a price afterward is another, and these issuers separated the two cleanly — most got public and then found almost no one on the other side of the trade.
The deals are built the same way: offerings of roughly $4 to $10 million, priced on a thin float through a small rotation of retail-facing bookrunners. A thin float is an illiquid one, and in an illiquid stock a few sellers set the price for everyone.
The float that takes a company public is the same float that sinks it.
The reverse-split tell
The split record gives the game away. Linkage Global ran a 1-for-10, TEN Holdings a 1-for-15, and Perpetuals.com — formerly Earlyworks, now PDC — a 1-for-5, each the standard defense against Nasdaq's $1 minimum bid. Companies do not reverse-split from strength; they do it with delisting in view. Three names in this small group have already been there.
The one exception, and why it doesn't scale
PicoCELA (PCLA), at 66%, is the lone name above its offer, and it does not generalize. It brought a specific technology — wireless mesh backhaul — a real operating business, and an offering sized to the company rather than to the fee. Below it the field drops off fast: past the single name above water, the next survivors are still deep underwater. The lesson is not 'pick better.' It is that a large loss is the base case here, and anyone underwriting, buying, or selling into these deals should start from that.
A median down 79% is the most useful number a Japanese issuer can see before committing to a US listing. Most do not see it until they are already inside one.