Buy Hold Sell: 6 global stocks with big potential you’ve likely never heard of

We get it. Staying up to date on global companies is hard work. It is much easier to focus on our own backyard, hence local investors’ intense home bias.

But staying at home can mean you are leaving returns on the table, and the chart below, although crude, proves it.

As much as we all love Aussie equities, the simple fact is that US and global markets offer greater diversification, more opportunities, and historically better returns.

And those opportunities are not just broad brush. Right now, investors can access some of the most powerful structural shifts playing out globally, from the surge in AI power demand and data centre infrastructure, to the digitisation of human behaviour, to manufacturing reshoring, to the steady rise in healthcare procedure volumes, and even the slow-motion overhaul of Japan’s labour market. These are not small-cap curiosities. They are multi-year tailwinds reshaping entire industries.

With that in mind, in this episode of Buy Hold Sell, Nick Markiewicz (Ellerston Capital) and Michael Poulsen (Canopy Investors) share the bull case on six global small and mid-cap stocks that give investors targeted exposure to those very themes. These are businesses you have likely never heard of, but that sit in the slipstream of those global shifts.

That is right, it is wall-to-wall buys for this episode of Buy Hold Sell!

Please note that this episode was filmed 19 November 2025

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Edited Transcript

Chris Conway: Hello and welcome to Livewire’s Buy Hold Sell. My name is Chris Conway. One of the challenges of investing in the global small and mid-cap space is that there is just so many to choose from. Meeting the definition here in Australia, there's about 250 companies. Globally, that number is more towards 8,000. But fear not ladies and gentlemen, we've got you covered. In a special episode today, I've asked my guests to bring along three stocks that they're bullish on. So that's right, it's going to be wall-to-wall buys. We've got a lot to cover. I'm going to get straight into it. Nick, tell us what your first stock is and why you like it.

Warner Music (NASDAQ: WMG)

Nick Markiewicz: So, first stock is Warner Music Group. Warner Music owns the catalogue of your childhood. Basically they own 25% of the world's music, the rights to those songs, and they also manage a lot of artists that you'll see in the charts today. I think it's a really interesting business for a couple of reasons, but the first being that they're actually taking share in the charts, which is good for their revenue share in Spotify. The second reason is they've just recut a new agreement with Spotify. They're going to get more guaranteed price increases each year. And the third reason is that they're through a pretty painful restructure of the business, which has been a bit messy with their accounting and their numbers over the last couple of years. So putting it all together, I think this is going to do mid-teens free cash flow growth in the coming years, and it's at a pretty reasonable valuation.

Chris Conway: Nick opening the account with Warner Music. Michael, what have you got for us, first pick?

Visional Inc (4194 JP)

Michael Poulsen: So our first pick is Visional. Visional is a Japanese HR tech company. I'll give you a bit of background on this. The structure of the labour market in Japan is changing. In many countries, it's common for people to change jobs over the course of their career, as I'm sure we all have. In Japan, that is not as common. It's not that uncommon for you to see people that will stay employed by the same company for a couple of decades. That is changing though, and it's changing because the workforce is shrinking and because the skills that are required by employers are also changing.

Visional is both driving that change and benefiting from it. So it owns a digital platform that's called BizReach. So that enables mid-career employees to upload their CVs to the platform, anonymously, and then companies can reach out to them directly. So it's a bit like an anonymous LinkedIn, or SEEK, or a recruiter, all bundled into one. Visional has grown its revenue and earnings at more than 25% per annum for the past five years, and yet its valuation remains pretty compelling, we think, because some earlier-stage investments are obscuring financials. So people just don't know how good it looks, but we think the valuation's really attractive.

Chris Conway: So Visional, first up for you. Michael, I'll stay with you though. What's pick number two?

Clean Harbors (NYSE: CLH)

Michael Poulsen: So second pick is Clean Harbors. This is a hazardous waste management company. So if you are a manufacturer or you're a chemicals company in the US, you will produce hazardous waste and it's your responsibility to safely dispose of it, and that's what Clean Harbors does for you. So it's by far the leader in this hazardous waste space. It's vertically integrated, so it's got the trucks that come and pick up the stuff. It's got facilities to recycle and dispose of them, including most of the commercial incinerators. Hazardous waste incinerators, in the US is what it owns. It's got the people, and it's got the know-how, and it's got the permits, and these are all scarce assets.

So we think it would be extremely difficult for someone to now replicate the assets that it's built. No one wants a commercial hazardous waste incinerator in their backyard. To give you an example, Clean Harbors built an incinerator in 2017, in Arkansas, and that was the first commercial incinerator to be built in the US in almost 20 years. We think that, provided companies are still making things, and provided that people want their rivers to be clean, that it's got a bright future, with an additional tailwind if we do start to see some manufacturing coming back to the US.

Chris Conway: So Clean Harbors for your second pick. Nick, over to you. What's your second name?

Propetro Holding Corp (NYSE: PUMP)

Nick Markiewicz: So we're bullish on Propetro Holdings. The ticker is PUMP, which I think is pretty apt. The lead here is that US data centres are short of power and Propetro has a short-term solution for that, being these mobile generation sets. What they do is they go on site at a data centre, they set up effectively a behind-the-metre microgrid with gas turbines and other mobile generation fleets, and they're able to offer power to data centres at a reasonably economic rate while data centres are waiting to connect to the grid. These data centres can wait many, many years to connect to the grid. There's a big backlog and Propetro has an ability to service that power near term. What's changed in the business is that the contracts that they're signing with these data centres and data centre groups are long term in nature. They're typically five to 10 years. The returns are very attractive and the number of data centres that are now requiring behind-the-metre solutions is growing as well. So they've signed their first contract. We think they're going to keep signing contracts in the coming years.

Chris Conway: So that's number two for you, Nick, Propetro. Give us your third pick.

Core Scientific (NASDAQ: CORZ)

Nick Markiewicz: I'm going to stay on the AI theme. AI has been dusted up a little bit in the last few weeks, but my third choice would be a company called Core Scientific. Core Scientific used to be a Bitcoin miner, of all things. That's a horrible business, but what the core asset was power. I mentioned the trouble connecting to the grid before. What Core Scientific has is 800 megawatts of grid connection already. They've signed a customer contract. That contract has already gone live and it will ramp up over the next two years. Look, that was a really nice contract, because not only did the customer commit to 12 years with them, but they're also paying for all the CapEx as well. So these guys are effectively a royalty on AI, near-term, but they've also got excess power as well. And so they'll sign that hopefully in the coming months. So we should see earnings growth not only from the current contract they have coming online, but more contracts too. So I think it's trading at a really nice multiple for the effectively guaranteed earnings growth in the coming years.

Chris Conway: So Core Scientific for your third pick, Nick. Michael, bring us home. What's number three on the list for you?

Steris PLC (NYSE: STE)

Michael Poulsen: Third one for us is Steris. This is a US-listed sterilisation company. It's obviously critically important that items used in hospitals and medical devices are sterilised before they're used. If you're getting a hip replacement, you want to make sure that that hip is sterile before it goes in, and Steris helps you do that. So it's got 50% market share in the US. Most of the business is recurring in nature and it's benefiting from steady ongoing growth in healthcare procedure volumes. Steris had been impacted a little bit by some cyclical weakness coming out of COVID, and there was a little bit of policy uncertainty around what Trump was going to do, but this company's got a long-term track record of performance and a pretty reasonable valuation as a result, we think.

Chris Conway: There you have it, ladies and gentlemen, as promised, six buys for your watch list. Some hot names in that list so make sure you add them. Massive thank you to Michael and Nick for this entire series of Buy Hold Sell. If you enjoyed this episode, give it a like and don't forget to follow our YouTube channel. We're adding lots of great content every single week.