Buy Hold Sell: 5 ASX tech stocks bouncing back from the SaaS-pocalypse

The great ASX tech unwind has been brutal.

After years of premium valuations, strong growth and near-bulletproof market faith, some of Australia’s best-known software and technology stocks have been dragged back to earth. The trigger? A mix of stretched multiples, slowing growth, investor fatigue and, increasingly, the disruptive threat of artificial intelligence.

The five names in this episode – Life360 (ASX: 360), Pro Medicus (ASX: PME ), Xero (ASX: XRO), TechnologyOne (ASX: TNE) and WiseTech Global (ASX: WTC) – fell an average of around 65% from their highs to their lows. More recently, however, they have recovered an average of around 30%, with one stock now just 26% off its all-time high.

So, is this the beginning of a genuine turnaround? Or just a relief rally in a sector still facing uncomfortable questions?

In this special episode of Buy Hold Sell, Matthew Kidman returns as host for the first time in three years, alongside two familiar faces: Jun Bei Liu from Ten Cap and James Gerrish from Market Partners. Together, they run the ruler over five ASX tech leaders caught in the ‘SaaS-pocalypse’, and each names one beaten-up tech-related stock they believe is down, but not out.

This episode was filmed on Wednesday, 10 June 2026.

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Edited transcript

Matthew Kidman: Hello and welcome to Buy Hold Sell brought to you by Livewire Markets. My name's Matthew Kidman. Don't turn off. Yes, you're seeing the right thing. It's Matthew Kidman. I haven't done the show for three years and we decided to get a bit nostalgic this week, bit of a reset, and it was 2014 when we sat down for the first show and we're just sitting here reminiscing just before the show saying we used to do it in three minutes. Well, we're going to give you a bit more today and we're going to give you two great shows, and we thought, well, who do we get back for a bit of nostalgia? 

We found James Gerrish, welcome, James, from Market Partners, and Jun Bei Liu from Ten Cap, two of our best-performing guests over that period, and no doubt they will perform well for you today.

So let's get started. What are we talking about? We're talking about the SaaSpocalypse. I hope I got that right. SaaSpocalypse. It's the tech companies. The software companies that Australia has and around the world have been sold off dramatically over the last 12 months. On average, the Australian technology companies, the main ones, are down about 65%. Who would've though? The nemesis on this occasion is AI. Yes AI has totally come in and absolutely challenged their business models. More recently, though, in the last couple of months, these stocks have settled down and some of them have actually gone up. Let's go through them. 

Life360 (ASX: 360) 

Matthew Kidman: James, I'll start with you. Life360, tracking company, puts families together, but you know where your dog is, you know where your grandmother is, you'll feel better. Buy, hold or sell? It's down a lot over the last year.

James Gerrish: (BUY) Matthew, it's been smashed over the last 12 months. It's a buy for me at these levels. I think there's a couple of things really highlighting in this business. The actual business has continued to grow really well. It's growing the premium side of their business, the part they charge for. There's also the advent of the advertising component of it. This is really small at the moment, but they've made a good acquisition to expand the advertising capacity of the platform, and that's going to drive earnings in the years to come.

Matthew Kidman: So you believe in advertising? It's a bit like Netflix. They said they never bring it in, and then they brought it in, that changed the model.

James Gerrish: Well, the thing with Netflix is you're paying for it and still getting advertising. You're paying a smaller amount and still getting advertising. They're going to go down the freemium path so you won't pay when the advertising is being targeted at you.

If you think about, with these businesses, you've got to look out for the next few years. If I look out for the next two years in the FY28, you can see earnings growth of 20%, and it can be on a PE of 20 by that time. So reasonable growth, reasonable valuation at the moment. I think the market's a little bit concerned about the growth pathway and the scale of growth, et cetera, and the speed of growth, but I think that's overblown at the moment, and obviously valuations have been crunched. So now's the time to buy these stocks when they're on their knees. No one really wants to talk about them, own them, and that's time to go in and look at them in my view.

Matthew Kidman: Okay. Jun Bei Liu, it was a darling of the mid-cap market. Everyone owned it. It's down about 70% from its top, but down 30-odd percent in that 12-month period. Buy, hold or sell?

Jun Bei Liu: (BUY) Look, it's a buy. I absolutely agree. I think this company's been smashed on the near-term worry and all the AI changes. Look, this one's not going away with AI. The company is still being one of the fastest-growing business here. It is the top-rated social media network. They're in the US, they're monetizing it, and now they're charging advertising dollar, just as James said. It's just quite incredible. This company is going to move from the almost zero advertising dollar to over 100 million dollars just in 12 months. Imagine what they would do next year. And they're just scratching the service. So to me, this is a company just at this tipping point of generating very strong profitability and a very reasonable multiple. In a couple of years' time, this company is going to be far beyond what it is.

Matthew Kidman: And what's your trigger to buy? It's down this far?

Jun Bei Liu: Oh, look, I think the valuation is very cheap. Now the key trigger for us a lot of time is that to work out where the earnings are going to be compared to a consensus expectation. We think analysts is already becoming now very bearish because of last couple of quarters. There's a little bit of disappointment on cost and marketing and the like, and we think that's in the number. So this is your time to buy it.

Pro Medicus (ASX: PME) 

Matthew Kidman: Let's get on to the medical side of things. Pro Medicus, it was a market darling, went to an incredible multiple. We all agree, terrific technology, keeps winning contracts. It seems to come off the bottom. People are starting to buy it again. Buy, hold or sell?

Jun Bei Liu: (BUY) That's a buy for me as well. It's probably one of the, not one of the, it is probably the highest-quality business, growth business here in Australia. Its contracts are locked in and they keep signing 10, 15-year contracts. Literally companies sitting here, they know what they're going to make next year. The hospitals they get into, they are the top hospital in the US, and their revenue's linked to the more MRI images they do and then the company gets a clip of the ticket. So the more their customer use, the more they grow. At the same time, they grow into new hospitals, universities, and even defence contract. It is doing incredibly well. For me, this company is a buy.

Matthew Kidman: James, it's been pretty impressive. The contracts have announced the renewals. They've gone into cardiology expanding. Buy, hold or sell?

James Gerrish: (BUY) Yeah, it's a buy for me, Matthew, as well. In this SaaSpocalypse, as you made mention of, everything's been sold down indiscriminately. We get out of software, sell it down, and PME's been caught up in that downdraft. I think you highlight two really important points, winning new contracts, but also extending the existing contracts out for further and with more scope to each contract. That proves that what they have works. People like it and see value in it. It's also really important to understand how regulated and complex the customers they have and work with are, and that makes it really embedded in what they do, really hard to displace, really hard to go out there and build your own, a hospital going out and building their own type of technology that PME has. So for me, I think this is the most recent stock we've added to our growth strategy.

Matthew Kidman: And not threatened by AI? The company says no, but do you believe in that?

James Gerrish: I think there's some threat from AI. I think it wouldn't be smart to just think AI is not going to change this environment. AI is moving at such a fast pace, so I can't sit here and say it's not going to be a threat, but at the moment they're handling it. I think one of the things that you need to look for in companies is how, I guess, complex the platform they operate is and how ingrained it is in their customers' workflows. I know that there's a terminology that gets thrown around too much these days, but it is really important. Hard to displace happy customers and new customers coming on board, and it's come back to a reasonable... it's probably still expensive, but it's a reasonable multiple relative to the growth profile that it's got.

Xero (ASX: XRO) 

Matthew Kidman: Let's go to accounting software. Xero started as a small company in New Zealand, came to Australia, UK, US, global domination. Hasn't bounced back as much as some of the others. It's still on its knees and it's fallen a long way, 70% from its top. Been a tough 12 months. Buy, hold or sell?

James Gerrish: (BUY) It's a buy here, but not with the same conviction I've got on PME. When I spoke about PME, I suggested that it'd been sold down because of a huge valuation compression across the sector. I think Xero's been sold down for some legitimate reasons. They made a large acquisition in the US with Melio, bought it at the wrong time and paid too much for it. They paid 13-odd times revenue for that business. When you've got this combined group and overlay that with a huge valuation rerate in software, then that's why they've fallen 70-odd percent.

I think that the acquisition still makes sense. Accounting software is a good business, but payments are a better business. The fact they've now got the ability to integrate payments within their platform, it does all sorts of things to improve the customer experience, but importantly, embed the customer in the Xero platform more. Then you've got all these cross-sell opportunities as well, which they haven't really started to scratch the surface of. For me, it's been a really frustrating position. We've owned it. We've bought it too high. I've been surprised by the extent of the selloff, but you've got to look at with fresh eyes now, and I think it's a buy given where the price is at the moment.

Matthew Kidman: Now I keep hearing, Jun Bei, that people can do their own accounting now with AI and they can just present the accountant with the end result and it ticks off and gets signed off and it all costs a lot less. Xero, is it being challenged by that scenario? Buy, hold or sell?

Jun Bei Liu: (HOLD) It's a hold for me. I think its longer-term outlook is being questioned, for sure. I think just before we start this, I was talking about how much time I spent talking to my AI agent, which is alarming. But with accounting and the like, it's still important to have checks and you got your regulatory approval, you got all these tax offers and things, all these complex areas where you require a lot of trust.

So you need software like Xero, which you already tick all the boxes to continue to do that.

What I'm worried about in the longer term, though, they are losing. In the future, we're probably all going to use agent to deal with those softwares. Instead of the user interface, which they pride themself on, like many other software companies, we are now talking to the agent who's then going to use Xero to do whatever the task they need to do. Does that mean they lose their moat with their client? There's a lot of questions there, but I think Xero is doing the right thing, which I love, that they're now signing up with all the agents, well, because the last thing you want is that you're not available in one of those agents that people use.

They have agreement with OpenAI, they have Anthropic, they've got a couple of other ones coming up, which is good in the future. We don't know which ones are going to win. Xero certainly will be a big part of it. I think Xero is doing the right thing, but right now it's a bit harder to work out how they will sit in that supply chain. Are they making too much margin? Is the pricing going to change? There are too many questions. I'll be hold it for now. Share price down a lot, but looking at the, in terms of growth profile, because they bought that business top of the market, the earnings not going to grow relative to other growth names like 360 and everything posting big growth for the next couple of years. So I think it's just stuck in that area until we can be clear that they will emerge as a strong player, then this company will become a buy.

TechnologyOne (ASX: TNE) 

Matthew Kidman: Let's move to enterprise software. TechnologyOne's a bit different than the others. It actually bounced a bit. It's had some decent results. People have bought it, probably not as cheap as the others. Buy, hold or sell?

Jun Bei Liu: (BUY) I will buy this one. I think this is the one that will already become quite clear they're coming through as one of the winners from these AI changes. Look, potentially further down the track, there might be further changes, but you certainly know this company already moved to the forefront of it. They're making money from the AI changes. They're selling all the product with the AI-enabled features and the like and it's doing really, really well. And remember, their contracts were with the councils, the governments take them 10 years to get into those enterprises. So I do think that they have much stronger relationship with their client. Their user interface is much stronger compared to some of other smaller software areas. This is a buy for me.

Matthew Kidman: James, it's embracing AI, as Jun Bei just said. Is that going to be enough or do you just look at it and say, "Well, it's not as cheap as it was a couple of months ago, but it's rallied a fair way"?

James Gerrish: (HOLD) Yeah, I've got it as a hold, Matthew, and probably a little bit like that. I think a couple of months ago, in hindsight, it was a strong buy. I think one of the points that Jun made is really important. Their customers are councils, governments, et cetera. When you're rolling out AI initiatives and features through organisations like that, trust is really important, so if you don't have a huge amount of trust in the ability of AI, you want someone overseeing that, a platform overseeing that to integrate the whole process. I think that's one of the key things in AI moving forward as partners with already ingrained relationships within government, and that's going to be really important and it'll be a competitive moat for a company like TechnologyOne.

You can't buy every stock on the market, so do I allocate funds in the TNE, which has bounced 20, 30% from the lows, or going for something that's more scorched earth? I'm more a bit more on the contrarian side. I like the scorched earth side of things.

Matthew Kidman: You're the scorched earth kind of guy.

James Gerrish: I'm drawn to those things that have really been beaten up and are trading with warts on them that the market thinks they can't recover and they're priced accordingly. So for me, it's probably a hold preferring others at the moment.

WiseTech Global (ASX: WTC) 

Matthew Kidman: That's a nice segue because we go into the old big dog, Australia's biggest technology company, WiseTech Logistics Global. Used to trade on a big multiple. It's been hit in the SaaSpocalypse, as we know, but it's given you a bit more to deal with. There's been compliance and individual issues, as we know, and it's been sold off still down 65% from its top. You like warts and all? Buy, hold or sell?

James Gerrish: (BUY)  There's plenty of warts on WiseTech. For me, it's a buy because I think the market's got one key component wrong with it, obviously not withstanding the big compression in software valuations. We've obviously had Richard Whyte dramas which have been... further compounded the issues on that stock. They've announced the loss of a large freight forwarding business off their platform. But I think the market's getting this a little bit wrong and looking at it a little bit too simplistically. That's one of the largest freight forwarders in the world, so obviously it gets headlines.

They'd made a large acquisition last year that also included the purchase of another platform, another freight forwarding logistics platform like CargoWise called Tango. They're going to move on to that platform, but that's a platform that's been in play for 13 or 14 years. That's been developed over a long period of time. The market's saying, well, that's evidence enough that a lot of other freight forwarders are going to move off the CargoWise platform and the business is cooked on the back of that. I think that's too simplistic in the way the market's viewing that.

I think the growth in the next couple of years will really come through because WiseTech is leaning into AI. 

Matthew Kidman: Big cost-outs.

James Gerrish: Huge cost-out, heaps of staff cuts, heaps of efficiencies through the ability to code quicker to build things quicker to be able to integrate things quicker. For me, I think WiseTech, although the headlines have really been concerning, I think if you dig under the hood in all of those things from the governance issues down to the loss of a major customer, then it won't be as bad if you put your lens on for the next two to three years.

Matthew Kidman: Okay, Jun Bei, it's given you plenty of reasons not to want to buy it in the last 12 or 18 months, but it is a big company and a leader in its field around the globe. Buy, hold or sell?

Jun Bei Liu: (BUY) It's a buy for me. I absolutely agree. I think market's pricing a lot of pessimism about what's going to happen. I do think that Richard started this business almost from scratch and then built it into one of the biggest freight forwarding software business, and now they were the first one to pivot 12 months ago when they want to change their pricing model because they saw the writing on the wall. They saw this is coming in terms of AI changes and how your interface become less relevant. What they thought is that, okay, we want to make sure our revenue is linked to the transaction, not linked per seat, because in the future that will be different. So they changed, they managed to transition big part of the business model. The contracts into those ones, of course, the biggest freight forwarder, there's a couple of clients doesn't want to move, and the big guys, of course, but the majority of it, they actually managed to move to all the new revenue.

Then what they're also trying to do is that now they pivot. In the freight forwarding, they're looking into the actually transportation, the trucking in these areas, and then there's potentially a few other verticals that they're looking at, which is quite incredible. It opens up the addressable market enormously, but of course, very early days, but this is what they actually pivot into. At the same time, they're cutting costs. They're taking out the costs they don't need, which is design development, which normally people say, "Oh, don't touch this," but they say, "Look, we don't need as many people. We use AI now. We don't need that many hours to do all these new programme, new modules." They're very quick in product development now.

I actually think this company is actually really trying to work out how do they stay in front of it and then they're trying to anchor their clients. and then to create that, what is it, the strong relationship with the new client and providing more services and keep them within the ecosystem. I think they're already showing early signs of all this stabilisation. Of course, there's still period of transition, but I think they will be one of the winners.

GUEST PICKS 

Matthew Kidman: Let's go out on a high. Guest pick. What's a tech or tech-related company that's had a terrible period that's been sold off you think could be a good buy at the moment?

Cochlear (ASX: COH) 

Jun Bei Liu: Look, I'm going to pivot into more med tech space using tech. Cochlear is a name I'll put out there. Now, the disclaimer is that potentially there's still one tiny downgrade to come.

Matthew Kidman: They've had a few.

Jun Bei Liu: They had a few, but then there's one tiny one. Essentially the company management, by this four-year result, they're going to be a little bit more conservative given how much they've missed. They're going to be given a conservative outlook for next year, which is fair enough.

I think this company has demonstrated their ability to grow their market for decades. In the last few years, it's been tough because US funding cards are making cost of living or making all these out-of-pocket much more significant, so there's been a bit of pressure on end market. At the same time, in the last six months, this company was rolling a new processor, which happens every seven, eight years. Now for this company, or previously, if we look at the new processor when it gets launched, people always stop installing the old one and they wait for the new one, and when the new one comes, people instal, because why wouldn't you wait for the new one? These installation lasts forever.

This has been the air pocket for the earnings for this company combined with bit of funding costs and then pressure for a consumer front. I think all of these will pass. Based on a previous example, whenever they launch new processor, the growth to follow that is phenomenal. We just need market to return to a bit more normalisation and also analysts need to bring the expectations to more down to earth. I think it's getting very, very close, and this is once in a, I don't know, five, 10 years opportunity to get it cheap like this.

Siteminder (ASX: SDR) 

Matthew Kidman: James, you got something that can match that, a guest pick, something that's a buy that's been sold-off technology?

James Gerrish: This could be a once-in-a-20-year-opportunity. I'll one up. Siteminder is my pick, SDR. It's been absolutely smashed, and rightly so. It's not yet profitable. It's operating in the hospitality space, still growing strongly, but this is probably an area that could really be interrupted by AI.

I think one of the more recent or interesting announcements they've made in recent years was last month. They've launched SiteMinder Powered, which is their ability to use a SiteMinder distribution capability within other hospitality technology platforms. If you think about companies operating within the new world of AI, they need to pivot and they need to really think about where their true competitive advantage is, and distribution is SiteMinder's key competitive advantage aside from the platform and all of those things.

That's not going to be a near-term revenue driver, but I think it shows how the management are looking at what comes next. I think that's a really, given where the stock price is trading, I was speaking before about buying scorched earth, if I look a few years out, valuation looks reasonable to me at this current point in time. Some challenges to overcome, but buying that weakness I think will make sense given what management is, how they're thinking about the business and the competitive advantage they've got.

Matthew Kidman: Well, I think the share price tells you most investors kind of given up on it for the moment, but that's always a good sign.

Matthew Kidman: So there you have it. Forget the SaaSpocalypse. We're looking at the SaaS nirvana over the next 12 months. And we were right. The two guests that we invited in today, well, they were stars, just like they were all those other times they've appeared. If you liked that show like I did, give us a thumbs up, and don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel, which gives you a lot of good content, including today, which is probably as good as I've seen.