Buy Hold Sell: 5 of your most-tipped ASX income stocks (and 2 from the experts)

Strong dividends have always been one of the ASX's big calling cards, so it might surprise you to learn that Australian dividends actually shrank 6.7% to $63.5 billion in 2025, according to the Capital Group Global Equity Study.

Now reporting season has thrown up some solid dividend results from Telstra, Woolworths, BHP and Evolution Mining to name a few, and our biggest income stocks - namely the banks and miners - are delivering strong returns.

So will 2026 be a return to form for Aussie income stocks, and which are the companies that should be top of your radar?

In this episode of Buy Hold Sell, Peter Gardner from Plato Asset Management and Sean Roger from Perpetual join Livewire's Chris Conway to give their ratings on some of the most-tipped income stocks for 2026 from our readers and share a pick of their own.

This episode was filmed on Wednesday, 25 February 2026.

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Edited transcript

Chris Conway: Hello and welcome to LiveWire Markets. My name is Chris Conway. Every year as part of our Outlook series, we survey you for your favourite income stocks, and today you're in for a real treat. 

My guests are going to be running the ruler over five of the most-tipped income stocks, and they're also going to be sharing a name each that they think should have made the list. Joining me to do that are Sean Roger from Perpetual and Peter Gardner from Plato. 

Commonwealth Bank (ASX: CBA)

We're going to dive straight into CBA, still seen as an income stock by many, despite a one-year forward yield of just 2.8%. Sean, I'll come to you first by hold or sell.

Sean Roger (SELL): Yeah, I'm going to go sell. It doesn't feel like I'm alone in that view in the Australian fund management world at the moment, but look, CBA's got a great retail franchise and has been very well run for a long period of time. 

But to your point, sub-3% yield, well below the risk-free rate. I really struggle to get there on fundamental valuation. The earnings have been strong. The first half result has shown an acceleration in growth. I do think though it's important to realise that it is capitalising on what are really attractive conditions at the moment. You've got strong credit growth, bad debts are almost at cyclical low levels. And history shows that those conditions don't last forever. 

So that's something that's front of mind. And the second thing is the competitive environment. You've got what has been always known as the Big Four, looks like it may be heading to the Big Five with Macquarie continuing to execute very well and taking share.

They've got a really good digital platform and a modern tech stack, which makes them quite efficient. And I think you're seeing that play through in just how competitive they're being on both the asset, sorry, on the deposit side and on the actual, on the mortgage side as well. So they are taking share. I think they're up to about 15% of that broker-originated channel. 

I think they'll continue to compete aggressively moving forward. And that ultimately means that there may be some downward pressure on NIM at some stage. So given those two things and that starting valuation, it's a sell.

Chris Conway: Pete, the stock is up 20% over the past month, but 17% over the last 12 months. So puts into perspective the post-results reaction, buy, hold or sell for you?

Peter Gardner (SELL): Yeah, it's a sell for me as well. I don't have too much to add on to what Sean has said. Its yield got down to slightly above market before its results. But with that 20% rally, it's now well below market again in terms of its yield. So given the growth options out there for it, we're a sell.

BHP Group (ASX: BHP)

Chris Conway: Let's go to the other major stock, the big boy in the market, BHP Group, one-year forward yield around 3.9%. So better than what the market will give you. Pete, I'll stay with you - buy, hold or sell?

Peter Gardner (BUY): BHP's a buy for us. It delivered a really good result. I think one of the things that's causing its share price to go up so much is that they announced in their result that over 50% of their earnings is now coming from copper. And so I think the market is starting to rerate it a little bit. 

It had been viewed as the big iron ore miner in Australia and I know stock prices have generally been on a lower multiple, whereas copper is seen as the growth commodity that we're going to use to electrify everything, so everyone's seen demand for copper going up. 

BHP's pivoted its portfolio, took over OZ Minerals a couple of years ago, and it's now increased its copper earnings and so the market is starting to reprice it. But even despite saying that, it's yield's still looking pretty good. We're still seeing pretty good growth for the next 12 months out of its business. So buy for us.

Chris Conway: Sean, up 15% in the last month, 38% over the last year. Buy, hold or sell for you?

Sean Roger (BUY): It has had a good run, but I'm going to agree with Pete and say Buy as well. I think all the points around the increasing mix of copper within the portfolio make a lot of sense. And there is still some upside there if you do get that multiple rerate towards the copper pure plays and where they trade globally. 

I think the other interesting thing that we saw in the result was they're doing some things around releasing some capital from the portfolio. So they did an infrastructure deal last year and then, at the result, announced the sale of the silver stream for US$4 billion, which ultimately should follow through to help the underlying dividend and top that yield up. So we expect that we may see more of that moving ahead and given a favourable outlook on the commodities, it's a buy for us.

GQG Partners (GQG Partners)

Chris Conway: Next up, we'll talk about GQG Partners. Now we're getting into the juicy yield. So it has a one year forward yield based on the numbers that I was looking at, around 11.6%. Expected to stay around that 11% mark in years two and three. Sean, I'll stay with you buy, hold or sell?

Sean Roger (HOLD): I'm going to say hold. Obviously a very attractive near-term yield. It really comes down to a question of just how sustainable earnings and that dividend are moving forward. And I think the key to that is flows, which ultimately will be driven by performance. 

Performance has been tough for them for the last 12 months. And I think you're starting to see that flow through into the flows number. They've been quite public in terms of the positioning at the moment relative to the the tech sector. If performance improves from here, I think that you could see flow stabilise and ultimately that yield would be sustainable and then it looks quite interesting. But for us, it's hard to have a really strong view on that at the moment. So it's a hold.

Chris Conway: Perfect example of why you don't pay absolute attention to the yield. So the GQG share price has fallen 26% over the last 12 months, if you're getting 11% minus 26%, it's still a negative total return. Pete, in that context, buy, hold or sell for you?

Peter Gardner (SELL): It's still a sell for us. Similar to what Sean said - they made a call just over 12 months ago that the market was overpriced. In particular, big tech was overpriced. And during 2025, they underperformed the market by about 20% on their main global fund during that period. 

And so a lot of their clients have already started leaving them. Their flows have been quite negative for the last six months. And given these flows, there tends to be momentum. If your performance has been good, if your flows have been good, your flows keep on going and vice versa on the downside. 

And so we're still expecting those flow numbers to continue to flow out over the next 6-12 months. And so generally with an asset management play, you tend to be leveraged. And so your costs are fairly fixed. And as your revenue goes up or down, you get bigger increases in profits or bigger decreases in profits in this case.

So it's a sell for us given that.

Telstra Group (ASX: TLS)

Chris Conway: Next up, we're going to talk about Telstra. It had a good result: one-year forward yield of 4.06%, two-year at 4.28% and three-year at 4.5%. Of course, those are respective numbers. Pete, stay with you, buy, hold of sell for Telstra?

Peter Gardner (BUY): Telstra's a buy for us. It had a really good result. Its earnings were up 8%, but its cash profit was up even higher up 17% and that's what underpinned the increase in dividends by 10.5%. And so what's actually happening there is that their accounting profits are a lot lower at the moment than their cash profits. 

And that's because they're depreciating their assets at a higher rate than they're spending on new CapEx. And they've identified efficiencies in their business which allow their CapEx to go down. And so we just think they're controlling the controllables really well in their business. They're cutting down on costs. Their mobile subscribers were up 5% last period, so they're still having growth in that area of the business. And so their business is humming at the moment and we're expecting more dividend growth from them going forward.

Chris Conway: Sean, it's up 8% in the last month, 23% in the last year. You normally don't get that sort of excitement out of Telstra. Buy, hold or sell for you?

Sean Roger (HOLD): I'm going to go hold. To your point, the business has been performing well from an earnings perspective. And that mobile division is the core and has been delivering healthy mid-single digit growth now for a couple of years. And I think that's been driven by a combination of - obviously they've pulled the pricing lever - it's been quite a high inflationary period, but they've also had decent subs growth. They've obviously had some competitors that have had some issues with outages and so forth, which has helped a little bit there. 

I think one thing we're paying attention to is just the cost of living pressures in Australia. And as those prices have continued to push up, paying close attention as to whether you start to see a bit of spin down from the subscriber base onto the lower value plan. So that's something we're paying attention to. 

To Pete's point, it is a very shareholder friendly capital management framework with the progressive dividend policy and buybacks helping that. For us though, I just think there's a few question marks there around the sustainability of that earnings growth in the mobile division. So that's why it's a hold.

Wesfarmers (ASX: WES)

Chris Conway: Next up, we'll talk about Wesfarmers, one-year forward yield of 2.8%. Is that enough? Sean, I'll stay with you, buy, hold or sell?

Sean Roger (SELL): I'm going to go with a sell, but probably somewhere in between and sell and hold. Bunnings and Kmart are two of Australia's great retail businesses - killers in their categories. 

And they've both shown an ability to continue to grow earnings through expanding into adjacent categories over time. Some of the other businesses aren't as high quality. I think the health assets have still got a bit of a question mark there around whether they'll get up to an appropriate return over time. But Wesfarmers seems to have this way of always having enough divisions working at a time that the earnings growth overall is in a pretty healthy place. It is just that valuation though - over 30 times - and the dividend yield, which just makes it fundamentally hard to stack up.

Chris Conway: Share price doesn't move around a lot, Pete. Flat year to date, I think it's up 8% over the past year. Again, doesn't move around a lot, but that might be the point for some people. Buy, hold or sell for you?

Peter Gardner (SELL): So it's probably a good replacement for maybe a term deposit or something like that.

But yeah, we agree with Sean that it just looks pretty expensive for what it's offering. We also love the Bunnings franchise. It's doing great. We think there'll be continual growth in that business, but the PE of 30 or more - it's pretty tough to buy.

Chris Conway: Ladies and gentlemen, my favourite part of any Buy  Hold Sell episode. I've asked the gents to bring along a stock that they think should have made the list. Pete, I'll stay with you. What's one that maybe our readers overlooked?

Medibank Private (ASX: MPL)

Peter Gardner (BUY): We've got Medibank Private on our side. It's got a yield of 5.9% gross when you include franking, which is above all the ones that we've been talking about today apart from GQG. 

It's a really solid business. We think it's really well run. It's in a stable industry. The big risk for it is that there'll be more government regulation in that industry, but we've just seen the government approve increases of 5.1% to their premiums for next year, which isn't so good for those people with Medibank, but I think it underpins the profits for the coming year. They're doing some nice innovative stuff around reducing costs in their business, so trying to get more people post-surgery to go home and get their treatment from home rather than in the hospital. And so it's been tough for people like Ramsey, but it's a good way of reducing costs for both the customer as well as the health provider.

Chris Conway: So Medibank Private for you, Pete, Sean, bring us home. What's one that you think our readers might have missed?

Soul Patts (ASX: SOL)

Sean Roger (BUY): Could I argue one of Australia's greatest ever dividend paying companies? I think it's paid a dividend every year in the 120 odd years it's been listed and increased the dividend every year for the last 27 years. It's Soul Patts.

We rate the team there really highly, they've proven to be great capital allocators over time. And I think the model they've got and the ability to take a long-term view on investments is increasingly valuable in today's world where there is a lot of short-term focus. I also think the platform enables them to invest up and down the capital stack, which again, when they're going into some of these deals, helps them to underwrite value where other more specialist asset writers may not be able to play across that spectrum. The deal with Brickworks last year, I think is very value accretive for shareholders and ultimately just gives the team there a huge amount of flexibility with the wider asset base to move things around and reshape the portfolio should opportunities emerge.

The yield itself is not super high, it's 3% fully franked, but I think there is really good scope there for growth over time, especially given the strength of the balance sheet.

Chris Conway: There you have it, ladies and gentlemen, we ran the ruler over some of your favourite income stocks, as well as two that might be worth adding to your watch list. 

Massive thanks to Pete and Sean for taking us through that. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to give it a like and don't forget to follow our YouTube channel. We're adding lots of great content every single week.