Buy Hold Sell: 5 big names reshaping the future - and 2 more offering growth

This episode was filmed Wednesday 11th March, 2026. 

Sometimes, you get tired of the chicken parmy and start looking for a truffle pasta instead - you know that feeling?

While there are plenty of advantages to investing on home turf, and many Australians do exactly that, for investors chasing genuine long-term growth, the local menu can feel increasingly narrow. 

With the ASX still heavily anchored to ex-growth banks and miners, and a tech sector that has been hit hard by the AI shake-up, the case for looking offshore in search of growth opportunities has perhaps never felt stronger. 

In this episode of Buy Hold Sell, we put five global growth stocks in the spotlight, spanning big tech, semiconductors, e-commerce, aerospace and streaming.  Livewire’s Tom Stelzer is joined by Vihari Ross from Antipodes and Casey McLean from Magellan Investment Partners for a look at the big global growth names - some household names, some less familiar - worth watching now.

• Spotify
• Podbean

Edited transcript

Tom Stelzer: Hi, I'm Tom Stelzer and welcome to Livewire’s Buy Hold Sell. With the ASX dominated by ex-growth mining and banking stocks, and its tech sector decimated by AI, investors might need to look globally for genuine growth. To run the rule over five global names offering long-term growth potential, I'm joined by Vihari Ross from Antipodes and Casey McLean from Magellan. Guys, thanks for joining us. 

Spotify (NYSE: SPOT) 

Tom Stelzer: We're going to start with music streaming juggernaut, Spotify. It's up 8% in the last year. Casey, I might come to you first out of buy, hold, or sell.

Casey McLean: (BUY) Spotify's a buy. We think the valuation looks pretty attractive, but with the big proviso that AI hasn't changed their growth outlook. So if you think about their valuation, it's trading on around about 35 times, which was near its lowest levels. And you're getting, for that, the leading music streaming service in a really tightly held oligopoly. Their TAM is still pretty untapped, and they're fairly economically insensitive given that 90% of revenue is subscription based with really low churn. And it pumps out cash flow. They're sitting on about 10 billion in net cash and investments.

But the risk is around AI, and there's probably two big threats. One is that AI enables new disruptive entrants to come into the streaming business. We don't think that's likely to play out because creating a streaming service hasn't really been the barrier to entry in the past. And just having AI coding is not going to change that.

The barriers to entry really are how sticky the customers are, given that you have your music playlists embedded into the platform. You're getting a low price for these multi-user agreements as well. Spotify also has really low costs in terms of customer acquisition and retention because they've gone out of the app ecosystem. They're not paying the Apple tax. A new entrant would have to pay that tax as well. So we don't think that's likely to pass.

And the other one is if their TAM does actually decline because maybe users leave the platform, or they're not willing to pay up because AI music generation sort of erodes that value. Again, we don't think that risk is likely to pass, given that even AI music creators need to monetize their content. And the best way to do that is through premium tiers on a platform like Spotify. And the other way to do that is through advertising models.

Free music with advertising already exists. Spotify have that option. It's on the radio as well. So we don't think that risk is likely to play out either. So given that we think it's a buy.

Tom Stelzer: Fairly comprehensive from Casey. Vihari, what about you?

Vihari Ross: (HOLD) I'm a hold on this one, Tom. I think the AI sort of narrative around it is long duration and a little bit beside the point. My issue with it is more its valuation. I think everyone knows what's good about it. It's got 750 million monthly active users. It's got growth in that. It's able to monetise, et cetera. I think if you think about it, people often say, "Oh, well, it's cheap versus its history." It didn't used to make money before. It's only started making money the last couple of years. So using that historical context to anchor the valuation, I think is misplaced. Essentially, you're paying quite a lot to get access to this decent business, and that makes it very sensitive to bad news. Last year, market was disappointed by their results and the stock ended up down 50%. And I think that's what you're sort of seeing now, where you've got a lot of expectation built into this business.

And so people are paying up for it and therefore you're not going to necessarily get the return out of the business that you might be hoping for.

online polls

 

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN)

Tom Stelzer: Next up we have one of the Mag Seven, Amazon, and Vihari, I'll stay with you. Is that a buy, hold, or sell?

Vihari Ross: (BUY) Amazon's a buy. This is a stock that actually is trading on its lowest multiple relative to its history. It's in the context of where it's at a real profit inflexion point. And for a long time, as the largest cloud player, Amazon was the slowest growing, but it was the biggest. And it was growing at 16, 17% per annum.

Now, because they're completely LLM agnostic, it has had a real step change in AWS growth, getting over 20% growth in AWS with Anthropic and the Claude coworker and everything just going off. But then you've also got an inflexion in the retail side of their business. They've been through a big investment phase. They get same day delivery to a hundred million people in the US now. And as that investment cycle fades, there's a profit inflexion opportunity there, notwithstanding the advertising opportunity that's growing at 20% per annum as fast moving consumer good companies start deploying some of that trade spend into Amazon's grocery channel.

So quite like that one, that's a low multiple and profit inflexion to come.

Tom Stelzer: Like some of the Mag Seven, I think Amazon sold off a bit over the last couple of months. Casey, what about you at Buy Hold Sell?

Casey McLean: (BUY) I think Amazon's a buy for similar reasons. They are a leading player in the whole AI landscape. The cloud is still growing quite strongly and off a very high base as well. I think their Trainium chips are in quite high demand as well. And you can't forget that they also own a big chunk of Anthropic, who added about six billion in ARR revenue in February alone. That's the size of the total revenue pool of some big companies in Australia. And they did that in one month as well. So I think they're quite well placed on the AI and cloud side of things. And then the retail business just continues to tick over, with e-commerce growing mid teens, advertising mid 20s, margins expanding as they complete out and get better at these same day deliveries as well. And the valuation looks reasonable to mildly attractive.

Samsung Electronics (KRX: 005930)

Tom Stelzer: So risk rewards is overall fairly favourable. Another big tech name, this time from Korea, Samsung. Casey, I'll stay with you. Buy, hold, or sell.

Casey McLean: (SELL) Samsung's a sell. Stock's up two and a half times, 250% in the last 12 months. And why is that? That's because memory prices, specifically DRAM, have skyrocketed. They've gone up about 200% in the last six or nine months. That's because there's been a supply crunch. AI demand for a specific type of DRAM, HBM, high bandwidth memory, has crowded out the traditional demand sources in smartphone and PC. And so prices have skyrocketed. And they do because it's a commodity. It's driven purely by supply and demand.

But what's changed is Samsung, along with the other players, SK Hynix and Micron, have announced major CapEx programmes. They're bringing new supply to market. Historically, when they've announced these, it's been a pretty good leading indicator that you'd be at or near the peak of the cycle. And the other thing is those traditional players, the PC and smartphone guys, they're really suffering from this.

DRAM is about 10 or 15% of their total material costs, and they're going to have to pass that on to consumers. And as a result, they're cutting their forecast for shipments as well. So yeah, I think prices still could go higher from here, memory prices, but the stock usually inflects well before the peak in memory prices. So I think risk reward looks really dangerous in Samsung.

Tom Stelzer: Like Casey said there, it's had a pretty good run. I think it's up 250% in the last year. Vihari, what about you?

Vihari Ross: (HOLD) Yeah, I disagree. I'm at a hold on this one. We have held it actually up in our emerging markets portfolio. So if you think about the excitement around GPU CapEx spend, I think obviously what goes hand in glove with that is high-end/high-bandwidth memory. And what you've already seen is that as each of these GPU companies is rolling out higher spec chips, the memory requirement that goes with that is actually also increasing. And it's actually increased in just NVIDIA's last two iterations alone. The memory requirements have gone up two and a half times, and that's going to accelerate again with more.

So there's certainly a cycle in memory. I'm not saying there's no cycle, but there is an elongated cycle that's taking place here in memory because of that volume uplift that they're getting. And so Samsung is very much a part of that as that shift takes place, particularly in the HBM4, where they're sort of getting in now on the act with Hynix and Micron, and Samsung's trading at two times price to book versus Hynix at three times and Micron at five times.

The other thing is, because of this hollowing out of DRAM and the rest of that memory market, it has sort of left a gap for Samsung, who is actually the dominant player there, and they've benefited from that pricing benefit as that demand for HBM continues, there's likely to be that gap that Samsung continues to fill. And historically also this foundry business there, that's been sort of a net negative for the valuation. Now with deploying that foundry in the US, there's an opportunity for that to be sort of valuation neutral to slightly positive as well, particularly as they tap into demand from Apple and Tesla and the like in the US. So we like that one on a hold. And if there's more volatility out of the Korean equity market, particularly negative volatility, it would become a buy.

MercadoLibre (NASDAQ: MELI) 

Tom Stelzer: To look at an emerging market name now. It's Argentinian e-commerce platform, Mercado Libre. Vihari, buy, hold, sell.

Vihari Ross: (HOLD) Look, this one is a hold. It's a business that has incredible growth. It has an e-commerce sort of platform that's building out at a rapid clip. But my issue with it is that you've got a business that has been investing a great deal, and that's important. You saw how Amazon did that to great success in the US, and they've been investing to create a position of dominance, but we don't know how long that investment cycle is going to carry on. And actually, if you look at it objectively, they've got pretty high margins as far as e-commerce retailers go and compared to the rest of the world. And so the question there is, at what point will they hit that profit inflexion in their business and how will that be affected by the competitive landscape, notwithstanding the consumer landscape in Brazil, but it's a business that's well positioned, it's growing fast, you are paying for that at 30 times and that profit inflexion will sort of justify that multiple, but the timing of it is uncertain.

Tom Stelzer: I think it's down 10% or so this year. Casey, what about you? Are you buy or sell on Mercado Libre?

Casey McLean: (HOLD) I'm a hold on Mercado Libre as well. I think it's a really attractive business from a long-term point of view. They're the largest e-commerce retailer in Latin America. GMV is growing at 30% plus. It's a good mix of user base and the frequency of shopping as well. They have big opportunities in advertising as well, which is really under penetrated. And they also have an opportunity in banking, given their advantages in customer acquisition costs and also having all the transaction data.

But in the sort of more short term, I'm worried about competition, which is really heating up massively in Latin America and Brazil in particular from Amazon and Shopee. Amazon has just launched ultra fast delivery, 15 minute free delivery for Prime subscribers and Shopee is moving into higher value categories and also really improving their logistics network as well. And it's forcing Meli to go back into a massive investment programme, lowering the threshold they have for free delivery, doing more 1P, doing more cross border and doing more marketing.

And these are all loss making initiatives. So even though margins have stepped down once, I think the risk is it's a much longer and much deeper margin down cycle than probably the market is expecting. I don't think you're being rewarded to take that risk at 30 times. 

Airbus (EPA: AIR)

Tom Stelzer: Finally, we're going to cross the Atlantic over to Europe. It's aerospace company Airbus. Casey, I'll stay with you buy, hold, or sell.

Casey McLean: (HOLD) I'm also a hold on Airbus. From a long-term perspective, it looks pretty attractive. It's a really cosy duopoly with them and Boeing. There's no questions about sort of long-term demand. I think there's a backlog of about 2,000 aircraft, all from these delivery delays which have accumulated since COVID. They've got a sort of 10 year backlog, sitting on a lot of cash as well.

The problem is execution's been incredibly poor for a long time as well, a whole number of years, and they've got very aggressive plans to ramp up their production rate. On the A320s and wide-body aircraft, they're looking to go to 75 per month. That's above their previous record of 63 way back in 2019. And you've just had issues on fuselage quality and now engine supply issues as well. And then the other one's the A350, the wide-body aircraft, they're doubling their production rate off a much lower rate, but that's going to require really good execution as well and on key components like forging and castings, which they've had a lot of issues with in the past.

And at the same time you have Boeing, it's recovering. It's gaining momentum. They've still got hurdles to overcome Boeing, but it is improving. So until you can see that execution improve, the markets can be very sceptical on the stock.

Tom Stelzer: Plenty happening, as Casey said there. Vihari, what about you or buy as well?

Vihari Ross: (BUY) Airbus is a buy. That's a business that has a big structural growth tailwind behind it around leisure travel, particularly in emerging markets, but you've also got a big replacement cycle in existing aircraft because they do actually get replaced. They get old and they get fuel inefficient and that actually 60% of that order book is actually in replacement of planes.

Where it's really at for Airbus is the execution has been a function of supply chain constraints. They've actually built out the infrastructure base to significantly ramp production. So you might say they're going to produce more, but that's because there's actually significantly more demand and they've already got the expense base locked in for that. That means as that production is unlocked, there's going to be a big profit inflexion for this stock as well. And again, you're paying a discount to its history. It's a business that's actually had a very smooth trajectory over a long period of time prior to the COVID dynamics, which actually has nothing to do with them and their management capability.

And the other thing is that they've used the woes of Boeing to create a genuine competitive advantage in narrow body aircraft, which is actually where all the growth is. Widebody is a small and less relevant part of the dynamic and Boeing simply doesn't have the technology capability that matches Airbus's. And so you're seeing incrementally, I'm sure if anyone's flying around Australia, you're seeing incrementally Airbus taking significant market share.

Tencent Holdings (HKG: 0700)

Tom Stelzer: Fair enough. We've also asked our guests to bring one global growth name. Vihari, I'll come back to you. What's your pick?

Vihari Ross: So my global growth name is Tencent, which is a Chinese essentially utility-like app. And this is a business that's trading at 14 times multiple and is growing at 15% plus per annum. Even going through a Chinese recession and COVID, they grew their business at 13% per annum, but this is a business that can really benefit from the deployment of AI into their own ecosystem. That's through WeChat advertising, it's through their cloud business, it's in their gaming business. All of those AI deployment mechanisms are in train as we speak. And very recently, in fact, just a couple of days ago, they've announced Claude-coworker-esque edge agents as well. And that sort of is going to prove to be a bit of a catalyst for that business as well. Again, you're paying a very undemanding multiple for access to a very nice structural growth stock.

Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG) 

Tom Stelzer: So Tencent from Vihari, Casey, what have you got for us?

Casey McLean: It's a stock on a similar thematic and it's Alphabet or Google. The stock has rerated, but justifiably so because we think they're going to be the biggest winner in the AI era. And that's because they're the only ones with the full stack to compete. If you think about it, they have the largest user base out of any company globally. They have the cloud capabilities. They have their own chips to put into the cloud. They have a leading model. And importantly, they have the cash flow to fund all this investment.

So if you think about it, if you drill down in a couple of those, that user base, it's not just search where they have five billion users. It's things like YouTube, Maps, Android, where they've got two, three billion users. And in fact, there's actually nine products where they have over a billion users. You think about ChatGPT, they've got 900 million in their one and only app.

So the ability to use AI in those properties is just tremendous. Even in YouTube, there's going to be heaps of AI content creation. And when you think about the AI that they're also using to improve that recommendation engine, that's a pretty powerful mix of more content, better recommendations, means more engagement, more time spent, and more advertising revenue as a result.

And then AI chips alone, Google is now in their seventh generation of what they call TPU, Tensor Processing Unit. And they've just announced for the first time that they're going to sell it externally. They've got a target of generating 10% of Nvidia's revenue. That's $30 billion in potential incremental revenue. And you think that looks pretty realistic when you see the benefits that these chips give. Nvidia's GPUs are great, don't get me wrong. They're really good at doing a whole range of tasks. What Google's done is shrink that down and their TPU is really good at just doing AI inferencing.

And as a result, the cost of that inference is half than when you would use a GPU. And you can see that it's fueling part of their cloud growth. Anthropic has come over and specifically said it's a price performance of these chips that has attracted them, and they're even selling them externally to companies like Meta as well. So think this is a company that's just continues to extend their compounding of their earnings and can continue to grow it at really strong rates. 

Tom Stelzer: There you have it. Some pretty big growth names. Thanks to Casey and Vihari and thanks for watching. Make sure to check out our YouTube channel for more buy, hold, sell.