Buy Hold Sell: 5 ASX growth stocks kicking goals right now

Growth stocks by definition are going to run hot from time to time, but as the old saying goes: form is temporary, class is permanent.

In a year that's seen a surprisingly resilient stock market, some names have taken the ball and run with it. But it's where they go next that matters.

In this episode of Buy Hold Sell, Livewire's Tom Stelzer is joined by Tim Riordan from Blackwattle and Brenton Saunders from Pendal to analyse some of the ASX's current star performers and see whether they can maintain that form going forward.

They also throw up the ASX growth stock they think can continue to kick goals over the next 12 months.

Please note this episode was filmed on 24 September 2025.

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Edited Transcript  

Tom Stelzer: Hello, and welcome to Livewire's Buy Hold Sell. I'm Tom Stelzer. It's AFL Grand Final Week, so we're taking a look at the growth stocks that are making their mark and kicking goals right now — whether that's on revenue, market share, or margin. To analyse the key players, I'm joined by Tim Riordan from Blackwattle and Brenton Saunders from Pendal. Guys, thanks for joining me.

Orica Ltd (ASX: ORI)

Tom Stelzer: We're going to start with a bit of a bang — explosives company Orica. Tim, I'll go to you first. Is that a buy, hold, or sell?

Tim Riordan: (SELL) Look, it's one we keep a pretty close eye on in terms of the basket of industrial cyclical businesses out there. It's one that we’ve tended to struggle with from a quality perspective, which is the way we think about things at Blackwattle. It tends to miss the mark just in terms of relative earnings, returns, and cash generation. So there are a few other businesses in the mix that just tend to come out on top when we compare the basket.

What’s behind that, and why we struggle with it, is really around a couple of factors. On one level, the concentration from a customer perspective puts a lot of pressure on Orica in terms of its pricing power. They don’t have a lot in terms of product differentiation to really push. And then on the cost side, there’s not a lot they can do with some concentration in terms of inputs, particularly gas.

If you look at the last several years since COVID, they’ve done quite well to recover, but they’re really only back to a peak in terms of EPS where they were six or eight years ago. And all that time, the business hasn’t really gone anywhere in terms of price performance. It’s lagged the market a little bit. It has been doing better in the last six months, so again, keep an eye on it — but for us, it’s a sell.

Tom Stelzer: Brenton, same question to you. Buy, hold, or sell?

Brenton Saunders: (HOLD) We are a hold, but we have been a buyer for a while now. It's done well recently. The things we like about this company are that it has a much-improved management team that has been put together over the last three or four years. It’s just had a big step up and improvement in the board. Vik Bansal from SGH and Cleanaway joins the board as the new chairman. We think that’s a very handy addition to the business.

I’d have to differ with Tim a little on some of the product differentiation. There’s been a big push for them both to diversify the company and to differentiate some of their core products over the last three or four years. And that’s really starting to show up now tangibly in earnings for the first time.

The other thing we really like about it is the alignment and incentive structure for management. It’s very simple, very transparent, and very aligned with shareholders. That combination, along with the new CEO, we think, is a very useful addition.

Life360 (ASX: 360) 

Tom Stelzer: Next name on the team sheet is location tracking and safety app Life360. Brenton, I’ll come back to you. Buy, hold, or sell?

Brenton Saunders: (BUY) Yeah, I’m a buy on this one. I use it personally, and I have done for a very long time. The thing we like about this one — and with growth stocks like this — is it has a very big market to tap into. They’ve reached a point now where they’re pretty much self-funding, and that’s a really important inflection for growth stocks, I feel. And they have multiple revenue sources.

It’s not just subscriptions from the app — they have advertising revenue now as well. A very capable management team, and we like it when growth companies just have a big market and all we have to focus on is their ability to execute and benchmark management against their own milestones. It makes our jobs easier.

Tom Stelzer: Tim, it’s been one of the big growth stories on the ASX, but are you a buy, hold, or sell?

Tim Riordan: (BUY) Yeah, we’re a buy as well. I echo quite a few of Brenton’s points there. The things that we looked for from a business model perspective, through the quality lens, are really trying to understand where these types of businesses have their special sauce.

What stands out, building on what Brenton was talking about in terms of scale, is that the business is approaching 100 million users globally. Half of those are in the US, but from a penetration perspective, it’s still only 15% penetrated in the US.

There are multiple different structures they’ve got in terms of pricing. One of the key pillars from a business model perspective that we’ve really found attractive with Life360 is its enormous free user base. Free users don’t contribute to the bottom line, but what they do — because of the virality of the business model — is draw in families through referrals and networks.

When it comes time to actually convert those users to paid users, which a small subset of the free users do at some life stage — often when kids start driving or have a mobile phone — what happens is the business can convert those users to paid at a very, very low cost, often just by email or mobile contact.

That’s distinctly different to many technology businesses. And the advantage Life360 has, now showing up in margins, is that the benefit to profitability is immediate. That’s hugely attractive and quite unusual compared to listed software peers.

From a scale perspective, the opportunity the business has to continue to grow is really enduring. From a quality perspective, it’s come out of that small and early mid-cap stage and is just arriving on the scene as a really high-quality, top-quartile, enduring business. From that perspective, we think it’s a buy, and it could go a long way.

HUB24 (ASX: HUB) 

Tom Stelzer: Another big growth story has been investment management platform HUB24. Tim, I’ll stay with you. Is that a buy, hold, or sell?

Tim Riordan: (HOLD) HUB24 is a hold for us. A very high-quality business, and one which, together with Netwealth, is winning the vast bulk of flows in platform land. It has benefited from a really innovative approach to product development, and it has also compounded those gains by having a real will to win. They’ve been willing to scrap and fight to win flow, and they’ve done incredibly well off the back of that.

We’re enamoured by the position the business is in. I think it can continue to grow, and it’s one that compounds really nicely. The challenge we’ve got at 70-plus PE and a PEG of around three is that we struggle to differentiate up here. Comparing it to a few other businesses in a similar space, we feel like we’ve got a few alternatives. So we’ll stick with a hold.

Tom Stelzer: Brenton, same to you. HUB24, buy, hold, or sell?

Brenton Saunders: (BUY) Yeah, I like this one. We’re a buy. For me, the proof is really in the eating. A lot of my clients use this platform and, by and large, they’re enamoured with it. It is a disruptor. It is an enabler. It is positioned in a thematic that is not only the growth of defined contributions in Superannuation Australia — which is probably the biggest gift to the market that the Australian market has — but it’s definitely a way better product than all of the incumbents. Most incumbents still find themselves in a position where they’re pretty disorganised.

Poor incentive structures and management structures have left the door wide open for the likes of HUB24. They continue to take share in a market that’s grown not just through market growth, but through ongoing super contributions. Valuation is always the main question around this one, but it’s hard to fault the dynamic. A very big addressable market, low levels of penetration so far, good execution, and by all accounts a very good product.

Guest picks

Tom Stelzer: And for this part of the show, we’ve asked our guests to bring a growth stock of their own that they think can continue to kick goals over the next 12 months. Brenton, I’ll come back to you. What have you got for us?

Zip Co (ASX: ZIP) 

Brenton Saunders: We’ve got Zip. We really like this one. It’s a buy now, pay later business, principally located in Australia and the US. Some of the reasons we like it are that it ticks a bunch of boxes for growth stocks.

But one of the reasons it really appealed to me was that there was so much baggage with the stock. It started out in life in a very different frame, grew very quickly, outgrew itself, had to shrink the business, get recapitalised, and almost went under - a complete clean-out of management and a very different strategy to the one they had.

The new strategy is a stable or modestly growing Australian business and a very fast-growing US business. The US business is very capital-light. They turn their capital over really quickly, and it’s very profitable for them now. Buy-now-pay-later as a construct in the US is still heavily underpenetrated relative to other OECD markets.

Within buy-now-pay-later in the US, Zip has quite a niche in terms of the subgroup of the population it banks and appeals to. There isn’t a lot of overlap with some of the bulge-bracket big players. And it’s not that discretionary in terms of spend — a lot of it is non-discretionary spend where people who can’t get credit cards are using this as a route to pay car insurance, buy groceries, and do normal day-to-day things, as opposed to buying highly discretionary items.

The credit risk is also being managed in a much tighter band, and it’s self-funding now. That’s another big box ticked for us for growth stocks.

Seek Ltd (ASX: SEK) 

Tom Stelzer: Fair enough. So that’s it from Brenton. Tim, what have you got for us?

Tim Riordan: We’ve got Seek. It’s one that we’ve warmed back to over the last 12 months, particularly the last six. The backstory with Seek is that it’s easily the most cyclical of the Aussie classifieds businesses. It’s gone through a really tricky two to three years, partly investment-related and partly cycle-related.

They’ve put up with a really large headwind from classified volumes, but what’s been interesting is that they’ve been able to continue to demonstrate really solid pricing power. I mentioned that investment program — what’s come out the back of it is a structure from a technological perspective that enables the business to roll out their tech here in Australia and across Asia far more quickly. Something like CarSales did many years ago, and Seek is now just catching up.

What’s attracted us to the business is that the valuation had got back to a far more reasonable level. A couple of years of hard times and large investment had seen investors pretty skittish. Quite a few downgrades came through up until mid-to-late last year. It’s not a loved business, and we don’t think that’s the case even now, after some better performance over the last six months.

It still trades on a really favourable mid-teens EBITDA multiple if we take out the valuation of the Seek Growth Fund. That’s another layer we find interesting. They own about 80% of roughly $2 billion worth of investments. There’s an opportunity for them to realise some value from that over the next 12 to 24 months.

We think that will likely layer on top of Seek starting to demonstrate a better cadence in top-line growth, margin expansion, and solid cash generation. From that perspective, we’re really excited about Seek’s prospects over the next few years.

Tom Stelzer: That’s all we have time for today. Thanks for tuning in. Make sure to check out our YouTube channel for more Buy Hold Sell.