Buy Hold Sell: 4 overlooked ASX small cap winners and 3 that are overcooked

Sometimes, the best opportunities aren’t in the headlines. While the market chases momentum, savvy investors know that real alpha often comes from spotting quality before the crowd does, and knowing when to step aside when things get a little too hot.

In this episode of Buy Hold Sell, host Anna Dadic is joined by small-cap specialists Matt Griffin from Maple Brown-Abbott and Luke Laretive from Seneca to unpack some of the market’s lesser-known winners and a couple of names they think are best avoided for now.

From the small-cap success stories flying under the radar to red flags flashing on overhyped names, our guests share where they’re finding value, what signals they look for when identifying early opportunities, and how they avoid the common traps that trip up investors.

Please note this episode was filmed on 8 October 2025. 

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Edited Transcript  

Anna Dadic: Hello and welcome to Buy Hold Sell, my name is Anna Dadic. Great performance often comes from looking in parts of the market where others aren't. Today I'm joined by small-cap specialists, Matt Griffin from Maple-Brown Abbott, and Luke Laretive from Seneca. 

They will run us through three overlooked winners, share a stock they've spotted before the market did, and flag one name that they think is overcooked. Let's get stuck in.

IDP Education (ASX: IEL)

So first up, IDP Education, a global leader in student placement and English language testing with steady earnings and international exposure. Matt, I'm going to start with you. Is it a buy, hold or sell?

Matt Griffin: (SELL) Yeah, thanks Anna. I've put a sell on IDP. The stock's up 80% from the lows. It benefited from having a better reporting season and a better outlook than people thought. It was quite heavily shorted into results. I think from here though, the outlook's still quite cloudy. 

There's still a lot of anti-immigration rhetoric in most of their main destination markets, so it's hard for me to see the governments really turn the taps back on in terms of student migration and to hit the 2-3 year numbers out there in the market, you're playing the politics game, which is very dangerous because governments don't always act rationally or make sane decisions.

Luke Laretive: Ever.

Matt Griffin: Ever. Yeah. The other thing is the balance sheet's in fairly poor shape, so they can't really afford too many things to go wrong. So I think it's a sell.

Anna Dadic: Luke, what's your take?

Luke Laretive: (SELL) Yeah, I think it's a pretty easy sell. I understand why people are getting excited about it and thinking that this last result is the first of many kind of upgrade results. Like Matt, I don't want to play the politics game. I'm sure there are other people who are tuned into those kind of markets and are going to make a lot of money out of IDP if they're right. 

I think there's enough other ways to make money in the smaller end of the market at the moment. I don't have to dance with the political favours of politicians from around the world.

Ora Banda Mining Ltd (ASX: OBM)

Anna Dadic: Okay, so next up, Ora Banda Mining, a gold explorer and producer in WA with some exciting near-term growth potential. Luke, I will stay with you. Is it a buy, hold or sell?

Luke Laretive: (BUY) Yeah, buy for us, we own it. Really good management team, first and foremost, good assets, good growth optionality and the market got a bit sanguine on it when they had some production issues in the short term. 

I think any business - my business, a mining business, the Livewire business - goes through its ups and downs and you have short-term hiccups and issues and you don't grow up and to the right all the time. I think that's just what happened with OBM and it was really good opportunity to enter the stock for us because it's been a pretty highly priced, highly rated management team and gold business for a long time. That's kind of kept us on the sidelines. So yep, I think it's a buy from these levels - doing well - a record cash flow out today, no complaints from me.

Anna Dadic: Okay. Matt, buy, hold or sell for you?

Matt Griffin: (HOLD) It's a hold for me. It is a very exciting story. Very good management team. The issue I have is that the growth profile really depends on exploration results coming in. Relative to other producers and growth gold stocks is a very small reserve and resource base and while there's been some exploration hits, they've got a lot of ground spending, a lot of money on exploration. 

That does feel like a bit of a binary bet to me, despite the fact it's probably looking more positive than negative. So I just think there's no shortage of gold stocks out there to play with good resources in the ground and growth plans the market hasn't baked in. I just feel like Ora Banda is maybe the other way around. So a little bit cautious, but I do think it's a good management team that's worth backing.

Qoria (ASX: QOR)

Anna Dadic: Moving on now to Qoria. It's a tech company focused on cyber safety, particularly for children. Matt, what's your call? Is it a buy, hold or sell?

Matt Griffin: (BUY) Yeah, it's a buy for us. The stock is going through the free cash flow inflexion point now. If you look at other stocks in the tech sector that have been through that, that's been a key rerating period, which I think is what we're seeing at the moment. 

I think top line sales numbers look conservative to me. There's a good pipeline there. There's some larger opportunities we know the stock's working on, which, if one of those drops, there's potential upgrades to come. They're controlling the cost base very well. They're a potential AI beneficiary trying to automate some of their software upgrades and hold the cost base flat to get that operating leverage come through, which is key. 

So I think that's just captured the market's attention and it still has been under the radar in terms of the bigger investors in the tech space. The guys who own the Life360s and the Pro Medicuses, I think they will start to look for what's next and Qoria stands out to us as one of those stocks.

Anna Dadic: Okay. Luke, what about you?

Luke Laretive: (BUY) Yep, this is next. This is the one. So buy from me. Still screens a little bit expensive. I think it's on about eight times EV to sales at the moment. So if you're playing the spreadsheet game, you might miss it, but this is a massively under-baked guidance and analyst community at the moment.

I think this stock's going to be rule of 40, 10-12 times EV to sales pretty quickly. It's still growing. It's still on that positive side of where a business like Life360 is at the moment and plenty of index-inclusion momentum-type vibes for this thing as well. 

So yeah, one of our highest conviction positions in the portfolio at the moment been a really good stock for us so far from about 50 cents. And I think that last trading update or report they did - that conference call was one of the most bullish conference calls I've done in my career. So yeah, definitely buy from us.

Anna Dadic: Okay, love the conviction. Okay, now let's talk about spotting winners early. Can each of you show a company you invested in way before the market was paying attention and what made it stand out? Luke, I'll start with you.

Eroad Ltd (ASX: ERD)

Luke Laretive: We try and make a habit of this, Anna, if we can. That's why I've still got a job. So there's a few we could have got on the soapbox about today and given it a nice ramp, but no, we'll go with Eroad, ERD. They do fleet telematics, essentially smart software that tracks what's happening inside in fleet vehicles and, in this case, trucks. It was a market darling got to five bucks a share, was trading on a huge multiple. And then between a failed foray into the US market and a bit of a CapEx event with upgrading their network from 2G and 3G to 4G, they've really been thrown out and the stock was like 50 cents.

So management have now gone through that right sizing of the cost base. But again, like a lot of the other opportunities in our portfolio, the underlying growth in this business is still pretty solid. They've got some regulatory tailwinds now starting to work for them. We think this business can continue to grow. It's not expensive at the moment. That's something that you couldn't say for a lot of decent quality tech businesses on the ASX. Yeah, we think that's a standout buy at the moment. And again, one of our top handful of weights.

Anna Dadic: Matt, what's your example?

Codan (ASX: CDA)

Matt Griffin: Ours is Codan. So we bought the stock two and a half years ago at sub-$7. It's trading at over $30 today. So it's been a very good contributor for the fund. Like Luke says, we try to make a habit of finding some of these, they don't all go quite this well, but they're nice when they do. 

Look, Codan's a funny old business, so half the business is selling metal detectors. They're actually the world leader in metal detection technology. Back a few years ago they'd been through a downgrade cycle, they had some political unrest in key African markets given that's where most of their metal detecting sales go. 

So we saw earnings based in that sector and that actually was buying opportunity for us because we really liked the other half of the business, which is communications technology. So they had a number of businesses there which sold communication devices into defence and law enforcement type agencies. Niche products, high margin, low competition, good structural growth tailwinds, and we can see the platform being put in place. 

They've seen good operating leverage come through over time and the metal detection business has actually come back quite strongly as well. So there's been a number of earnings upgrades that we've ridden those over the past couple of years.

Anna Dadic: So finally, let's talk about caution. Great performance also means knowing which stocks are overcooked and overhyped. I've asked each of you to bring one you'd be avoiding right now. Matt, what's your pick?

Lovisa (ASX: LOV)

Matt Griffin: I've gone for Lovisa. It has been a bit of a small cap favourite among the retail sector. There's just a couple of areas of caution for me over the medium term. So look, they've proved out it's a great store format. It's got global appeal, very high returns, very easy rollout. 

Three things that worry me - first is you've had very good CEO leave. He drove a lot of the growth over the last few years. So there's a new management team that's come in, probably a little bit unproven at this point. 

Secondly, there's good competition emerging in a lot of their markets, particularly Australia and Asia. And we have seen that store rollout programme slow maybe because of that competition a little bit. 

And thirdly, at the start of the year they launched a new format called Jewels, which is a slightly higher end version of Lovisa. I just question if you've got such a good format and so many growth opportunities, why distract management teams and put capital elsewhere? 

So it's maybe a bit of a warning sign that potentially there isn't as much growth runway in the core business than people think. So a little bit cautious on that. Over 40 times earnings - that's two or three times what most retailers are trading on. I just think there's better ways to play retail.

Anna Dadic: Okay, and Luke, what's your pick?

DroneShield (ASX: DRO)

Luke Laretive: It's not going to win me any friends, Anna, it's not going to win me any friends, but DroneShield, DRO. It's on 112 times PE or something ridiculous, three digit PE. It's an Australian manufacturing story essentially. And I don't know how many of investors have made money out of Australian manufacturing over the journey, but I'd argue there's not many. 

Typically it's operating in the industry with the very, very large US-listed mega caps and is typically winner take all. So I understand there's lots of conflict in the world, understand the thematic around defence and defence investing at the moment, and that only makes me more certain that this thing's not going to be where it's trading at today. Sell from me and I'd just be taking my money and running with DRO.

Anna Dadic: There you have a few overlooked winners, some early bird picks and some cautionary tales. If you enjoyed that episode of Buy Hold Sell, give it a like, and don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel. We release new content every week.