Buy Hold Sell: 5 ASX fallen angels prime for a comeback
Can these 5 beaten-down stocks rebound? Matt Riordan of Paradice and Marcus Burns from Spheria weigh in.
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There’s an almost irresistible pull to hunting through a bargain bin. Suddenly, things you’d never normally consider start looking attractive. You get brave. You convince yourself you can pull off ruffles and pastels.
The same thing happens in the market. We’ve all watched a former market darling shed 40% of its value and thought - how much worse can it get?
When a stock once treated like royalty gets cast out into the cold, the payoff can be massive. Expectations get rinsed, and even the faintest pulse of good news can spark an almighty comeback.
The quandary, of course, is that cheap can always get cheaper. But there’s a world of difference between a quality business suffering through a temporary rough patch and a broken business heading straight for market purgatory.
In this episode of Buy Hold Sell, we’re running the ruler over three former favourites on the path to redemption. To help us separate the genuine resurrections from the value traps Matthew Riordan from Paradice Investment Management and Marcus Burns from Spheria Asset Management joined us and also brought along a beaten-down stock from their own watchlists that they’re backing to bounce back.
This episode was filmed Wednesday 4th November, 2026.
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Edited transcript
Anna Dadic: Welcome to Livewire's Buy Hold Sell. My name is Anna Dadic, and today we're tackling the fallen angels: stocks that have been cast from the heavens due to macro tempests, hubris, and trials in the market cycle. Today, we ask whether those fallen idols can rise from the ashes and reclaim their former glory. Joining me to see which companies are on the road to redemption are Matt Riordan from Paradice - hello - and Marcus Burns from Spheria. Gentlemen, welcome.
Matt, I'm going to start with you.
Matt Riordan: Yes.
Anna Dadic: When a high-profile stock gets heavily beaten down, it often looks cheap on traditional metrics. What is the single biggest filter you use to separate a genuine turnaround from a value trap?
Matt Riordan: It's always problematic, but that's a great question. And at Paradice, it's just that because a stock falls doesn't necessarily make it good value. You really have to understand what the reasons are, whether those reasons are structural, whether they're cyclical, and whether a solution exists. So for us, it's assessing whether that solution's in place and if there's essentially a catalyst to see that stock start to perform again.
Anna Dadic: Marcus, once market sentiment turns negative on a company, it can take a long time to recover. So what is a specific operational sign or inflection point that you need to see to gain confidence that a turnaround is actually underway?
Marcus Burns: Well, that's a million-dollar question - in some cases, more. And look, again, there's no single answer for that. I think we'd do a number of checks at Spheria. We'd be looking for things that have fallen out of bed; they've de-rated. Often it's because debt's very high, or there's been a major miss to earnings, or a combination of those two things.
So before we get involved, we'd like to see some kind of control or backstop to the balance sheet. Often there'll be a capital raising or some kind of backstop to underpin the business at a certain valuation level, plus de-gear and de-risk the business. And then often a new management team comes in with a solution to what the previous issues and problems were. So that's often a turnaround case for us. Absent those factors, it might get cheap enough, but we still need good balance sheets and cash flows for us to be interested in getting involved.
Orora (ASX: ORA)
Anna Dadic: Yeah, need to see the evidence. Okay, let's get into the stocks. Kicking off with packaging group Orora, it was hit hard after funding its big acquisition of French luxury glassmaker Saverglass. Matt?
Matt Riordan: Yes.
Anna Dadic: Are you a buy, hold, or sell?
Matt Riordan: A hold.
Anna Dadic: Okay. Tell us why.
Matt Riordan (HOLD): I'll run you through the reasons. If you think about Orora, there's three businesses in it.
The first is a cans business - a beverage business - and that's a really good business. Cans are benefiting from a move away from plastics, so that's a good growth business.
The second business is Australian glass, so that includes a lot of wine bottles and the like. That's a business that had been in decline; they've managed to stabilise that business.
And the third business is the one you mentioned, which is Saverglass. If you go back, that was an acquisition they did in 2023, at the end of 2023. I guess it's been somewhat controversial, and you touched on it. If you look at it, it's got a dual exposure there: first it's alcohol, and then it's premium. They bought it coming out of COVID; it was a big beneficiary during COVID.
You think about—I don't know about you guys, but during COVID, stuck at home, cocktail nights, you stocked up the liquor cabinet. So I think we've all got a lot of spirits bottles sitting around from that time. But since then, we've run into dual issues. The first is that alcohol consumption is decreasing across the population—we see that through a number of industries. And the second is just that the premium end has proven quite difficult. I mean, just look at the economy over here: you've got issues in terms of inflation, rates going up globally, so it's put pressure on a lot of people.
So for us, what we really want to see—and they've obviously done a lot of work around that business—is we really just want to see that business first stabilise, and then just start to move in an upward trajectory and, I guess, prove their acquisition case. So that's Orora for us.
Anna Dadic: Okay. All right. Marcus, what's your call?
Marcus Burns (BUY): We're a buyer in this case. And I think Matt's made a good point: the Saverglass acquisition was probably poorly timed, and the price, in hindsight, is obviously too high. But I guess the share price of Orora has fallen a lot since then.
And Matt's got a point: the three businesses there. The cans business is actually in structural growth, it seems. There's been a switch towards cans. They're the leading player in can packaging in Australia. It's a good cash flow business, so the cash flow generation is strong across the group.
Given the share price has fallen so much and it is quite cash generative, we think you're probably getting Saverglass for free, basically. If you look at the core business in Australia, you're only paying about 10 times EBIT for the whole group. And so on that basis, we think it's probably a buy.
Ramsay Health Care (ASX: RHC)
Anna Dadic: Onto private hospital giant Ramsay Health Care. It was once the king of defensive compounders. Marcus, I'm going to stay with you. Are the cost pressures too stubborn: buy, hold, or sell?
Marcus Burns (HOLD): Look, we were a buyer of that stock and it's performed really well over the last six months, but now it would probably be a hold. The reason there is it's performed well; a fair bit of recovery's in the share price.
They've got a troubled European operation, which is very indebted, very low margin, and needs some restructuring. They're looking to demerge that and leave the core Australian business separate from that, which would de-gear the business massively if they were successful in doing that. But a fair bit of that recovery is in the share price.
So look, we like it. Structurally, there's growth there with people ageing and the need for hospital care. So we like the business, we'd like the demerger to go ahead, but given valuation and the way it's moved, it's fully a hold.
Anna Dadic: Matt, how about you?
Matt Riordan (BUY): We're actually—we're still a buy. I agree with everything Marcus said. For us, it's an interesting stock. Going back to the early days of our fund, it was one of the mainstays. It moved up into the top 50, and it's since come back to us. And you touched on it, Anna: the difficult times it had. Inflation was rife, then we went through COVID, and then even coming out of COVID, we saw elective surgeries didn't really come back.
And so, fast forward, and the business has really started to change. We've got a new CEO, Natalie Davis, who's been absolutely superb. A couple of things have worked in their favour. First of all, they've managed to get new agreements with the health funds where they get more of the pie. And that was one of the bigger issues that they had, where the health funds actually were getting a disproportionate share.
On top of that, we're seeing Natalie is really pushing efficiency through that business. And for us, we still think there's a lot of efficiency still to come. We think it's only early days in terms of those coming through. So we think there's a lot of scope for margins to improve within Australia.
And then the final thing for us: it's quite a complex structure. Over time, they bought a couple of overseas businesses; the market doesn't like those as much. They're about to spin off Ramsay Santé, and the real benefit of that—that's European-based, but actually it has a value. It's listed in Europe, so you can see it has a value, but it actually loses money. So the act of spinning that off alone is 8% accretive. And then you get left on top of that with an additional holding, which is also worth something. So we see an upside catalyst as well coming from that change.
IDP Education (ASX: IEL)
Anna Dadic: Moving on to international student placement and language testing heavyweight IDP Education. Once the quintessential market compounder, its share price was chopped after student visa caps and migration crackdowns. Matt, I'm going to stay with you: buy, hold, or sell?
Matt Riordan (HOLD): Hold for us. And I think you've summarised it really well: really good business. Unfortunately, they've run into some significant political headwinds recently.
They've got the two businesses: the language testing and student placement. Both of those are subject to what's happening in terms of, I guess, the anti-migration sentiment that we're seeing politically. And a very easy way to cut migration is actually just reducing student numbers.
We think the company's done a really good job to try and manage that. They've cut costs dramatically, and they've got really good price levers that we see coming through each year. But for us, we sort of sit here: that political environment hasn't changed. And I think we'd just like to see things calm down before we look at buying that stock.
Anna Dadic: Yeah, of course. Okay. Marcus, what about you?
Marcus Burns (HOLD): Well, unfortunately, we're the same: we'd be a hold. It's not like we don't like the business. As Matt said, it's got two businesses. One was particularly good: the English language testing was a very good, high-cash business, quite a strong duopoly globally. It's received more competition in the last couple of years, so the margins and growth there are under pressure, as well as the pricing to some extent.
And as Matt said, the political situation hasn't been favourable for student politics and students coming to the country. So it is somewhat in the price. It's de-rated aggressively from a very high-multiple, high-growth, well-loved stock to one that's really debased. Balance sheet's in pretty good shape. It makes good cash flow. Trades on eight, nine times EBIT. So it's not like you're paying a lot for the business, but I guess we are cautious around the medium term because of those threats.
GUEST PICKS
Anna Dadic: Yeah, sure. Too many risks. Okay, now onto our guest picks. I've asked our guests to bring along a fallen angel they're backing on the ASX. Marcus, what's your fallen angel?
Siteminder (ASX: SDR)
Marcus Burns: It's an interesting analogy: fallen angel. Look, I would put forward SiteMinder, which is a technology business that effectively plugs into hotels and, for want of a better term, manages their calendar across different booking channels. It does more than that, but that's the core business.
It floated back in 2021. It has had four or five years of very strong revenue growth. Admittedly, it was losing money when it IPO'd, and it's since reduced losses over time as the revenue's grown. So now it's gone through break-even; it's making money and cash flow this year for the first time since '21.
It's got a fairly sticky customer base, so high retention, and it's grown its business from the core business into transactions. So it is getting a revenue growth of, call it, mid-20%, but they haven't really communicated well their growth targets, and they cut them back from 30 down to 25, which the market saw as a huge downgrade. Although, as you get a bigger revenue base, clearly compounding 30% is hard. So reducing to 25 is sensible, and yet the market saw that as a big negative. So it's been sold off very badly on the back of the sentiment.
I think also it's seen as a stock that could be disrupted by AI. So as AI comes through, maybe hotels can go direct, or AI search can find hotels without using intermediaries. I think both of those are overplayed, and they actually have a partnership with Mews—Meta's Mews—which is an agentic AI. So I think they'll be part of the solution, not the problem, if you like.
It's now trading on very low multiples of revenue. Obviously, it's going through profitability, so multiples of EBIT and EBITDA are still pretty high, but they quickly reduce as the stock continues to grow, assuming you can turn AI into an ally rather than a threat.
Cochlear (ASX: COH)
Anna Dadic: Yeah, of course. Okay. Matt, close this out.
Matt Riordan: For us, it's Cochlear. So really a similar story to Ramsay. It's a stock that we owned, once again, back in the early days of the fund. It moved into the leaders; it's come back. And they are the leader globally in terms of cochlear implants—in fact, the inventor of it.
And last year, they essentially just ran into a perfect storm, especially in the second half. So you had reimbursement issues in the US; in the UK, they had capacity issues; there was industrial action in Europe, which probably happens all the time, right? So it really hit their profit quite hard.
Looking into this year, unlike Ramsay where we're starting to see the earnings growth coming through, I mean, all we're really looking for this year is just a stabilisation because, beyond that, we can see some tailwinds coming through.
The first of those is they've introduced a new implant called Nexa. They've introduced the implant, but not some of the software that goes with it. So over time, we think as that proves itself, they'll be able to get better reimbursement from that.
And then the other one, which is really interesting—and this is more medium term—is that we're starting to see the emergence of fully implantable devices. So that will come out in a few years. But speaking from experience, my mom's actually a cochlear implant recipient, and there's a real stigma for people getting them because it means you have to wear an external device as well as a microphone, and that can be a barrier to people coming on board. So when it finally comes through and, much like a hearing aid, you can't see it, we think that will actually expand the market quite significantly down the track.
So yeah, for us, you don't get many chances to buy quality stocks that have fallen by essentially sort of half. So that's the opportunity.
Anna Dadic: Thank you so much for watching Buy Hold Sell. Thank you to our guests, and make sure to subscribe to our channel for more Buy Hold Sell episodes.
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I'm an Investment Writer and Presenter at Livewire Markets, dedicated to creating content that makes the world of investing more accessible. With a background in story development, I enjoy distilling complex topics into engaging, impactful media that resonates with audiences.
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I'm an Investment Writer and Presenter at Livewire Markets, dedicated to creating content that makes the world of investing more accessible. With a background in story development, I enjoy distilling complex topics into engaging, impactful media...
I'm an Investment Writer and Presenter at Livewire Markets, dedicated to creating content that makes the world of investing more accessible. With a background in story development, I enjoy distilling complex topics into engaging, impactful media...
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