Buy Hold Sell: 8 ASX stocks for attack and defence

Finding the right balance between attack and defence can be the difference between winning and losing. That will be the case when the Dockers meet the Lions at the MCG tomorrow, and it's also the case for ASX investors looking to build a winning portfolio. 

In this edition of Buy Hold Sell, I'm joined by Sean Roger from Perpetual Asset Management and Joseph Koh from Blackwattle Investment Partners. 

Please note this episode was filmed on 23 September 2026.

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As you've probably noticed, we've recently been trialling a new approach to our Buy Hold Sell write-ups where we share a summary of the stock calls and commentary in place of the full episode transcript. Now we're keen to get your feedback on which approach you prefer. Please let us know by voting below. 

Edited transcript

Tom Stelzer: Hello and welcome to Livewire's Buy Hold Sell, I'm Tom Stelzer. The AFL grand final is on tomorrow, and as always, it'll be a battle between attack and defence. And it's the same story in the ASX where getting the balance right between the two can be the difference between winning and losing. 

So to help pick out the star lineup, I'm joined by Sean Roger from Perpetual and Joseph Koh from Blackwattle to give their takes on three growth stocks on the attack and three reliable stocks offering solid defence right now. Guys, thanks for joining us. 

ATTACKERS

1 - REA Group (ASX: REA)

Tom Stelzer: Sean, I might come to you. We're going to start with the attackers. First up, we have REA Group. Revenue is up 7% in FY26, but obviously you've got AI, you've got the flailing property markets - maybe some of the headwinds there. What's your take on REA - buy, hold or sell?

Sean Roger (BUY): Yeah, I'm going to say REA is a buyer. I think you touched on the two key headwinds at the moment being AI and the property market. I think the new management team, Cam McIntyre and Andrew Cramer, we've been really impressed with, I think the decision to sell the loss-making Indian business and also the focus on the cost base. I think both of those will help assist the earnings growth moving forward. Look, listings are clearly challenged at the moment given everything that's happening with the sentiment in the property market and that may continue for some time. But I think history suggests that as sentiment does stabilise at some point that those listings numbers will rebound and we think the business is in great shape from a pricing perspective. 

In terms of the AI risk, obviously been very topical over the last 12 months. I think one sort of observation more recently from the results season was that 12 months ago there was a lot of focus on the risk that the large language models would take a lot of the funnel share and they'd be the click-through source. And what we've seen is that really hasn't transpired. It's still less than 1% of traffic and if anything, it's started to decline. So I think some of the AI risk narrative has started to fade and the company themselves are doing a lot of smart things in terms of AI with product development and cost out. So given the multiple derated to mid-20s, yes, there's some short terms earning risk, but for a business that can deliver double digit earnings growth through the cycle, we think that it's the right price.

Joseph Koh (SELL): We're more of a sell for REA Group - a well-run company and we like it, but it's still on 27 times PE, give or take, even with the share price decline. I think you're right in pointing out those two main factors as headwinds for REA, both the housing market downturn that we've seen post-budget and also a longer term issue around AI. We think for AI, the longer term risk, and I think it's relevant for a company when you're trading on something like 27 times PE, that you do need to take consideration in the longer term. Our concern is that AI might reduce the attractiveness of paying up for depth products. So at the moment people pay up to be ranked highly to show up first on the search lists. That's less important if you have AI actually searching it for you and actually prioritising which ones actually suit you most based on your particular preferences.

So if I'm highlighting the particular suburb rather than next door suburb or number of bedrooms or the price or number of car spaces, that prioritisation by AI will actually undercut the proposition of REA being charging more for better depth products. And that is a key plank for its longer term growth. When you look at other alternatives globally, Rightmove trades on like 14 times PE. They've got their own issues and not maybe as well run as REA, but when you're paying half the PE multiple, I think there's a challenge to justify REA. 

2 - ResMed (ASX: RMD)

Tom Stelzer: I’ll stay with you for our next attacker. It's ResMed. I think revenue is up 10% in FY26, but you were buy, hold or sell there? 

Joseph Koh (BUY): We're a buy on ResMed. That has come down materially. And I think the death of ResMed has been greatly exaggerated by GLP-1s. We've seen continued growth, as you've said. They continue to get market share and growth in volumes despite the fact that there are GLP-1 drugs available. If anything, that helps them potentially because people are going to sleep clinics trying to get prescriptions and people are saying you need to be tested for sleep apnea if you're overweight and that actually increases the funnel for potential ResMed customers. At the same time, you've got Philips who are still out of the US. It'll take a while for them to rebuild trust post their recall issues. A lot of distributors were hurt in that product recall. And so it'll be a while for them to regain the trust of distributors and to reset all of the distribution team in the US.

Tom Stelzer: Sean, the demise has been greatly exaggerated, Joseph says. What's your call on ResMed, buy, hold or sell?

Sean Roger (BUY): Yeah, I'm going to agree with Joseph there. I think ResMed's a buy and a lot of the same points. I think the evidence is in the financials of ResMed over the last 12 or 18 months. There's been a lot of noise around the impact that GLP-1s will have on sleep apnea and ultimate demand for CPAP machines. But if you look at the results, device sales and mass sales in the US, which is where I guess you would see the evidence that it's having an impact first, it just hasn't transpired. So at the same time, whereas some of the other sectors that are impacted by GLP-1s, you are seeing that in the data, some of the fast food restaurants and those sorts of things, it is starting to hit them. So I think there still is a real uncertainty if there's going to be any impact on ResMed's demand at all.

And given the multiple of the stock sort of sub-20 times for double digit growth, net cash balance sheet looks attractive.

3 - Life360 (ASX: 360)

Tom Stelzer: I'll stay with you for our final attacker, it's Life360. I think it's down, what, 65% from its 2025 high? Are you a buy, hold or sell there? 

Sean Roger (HOLD): I'm going to say hold. Look, I think Life360's got a very large user base that they've developed over a long period of time. And I think there is a growth runway there as they look to monetise that through both converting the unpaid users to paid, but also some of the new products that they're rolling through, whether it be pet or advertising. The things that I guess hold me back from being more positive is you've seen over the last couple of quarters there's been some volatility in some of the KPIs around the MAU growth. And I think part of that's to do with the fact that the company is reliant on some third party platforms in terms of customer flow and onboarding. And I think with that does mean that there can be volatility as those companies sort of change around some of their platforms.

The second thing would be, if you look at customer acquisition costs, that's actually trended up over time and look, the company's investing to grow the user base, but I think that does bring into question just what that mature margin for the company may be. And the third thing in my back of my mind always is just competition. I think we haven't seen it yet, but there's always that sort of question mark. If Apple ever does sort of come and play, it looks unlikely, but it's always something that's there. So I think valuation is looking more attractive post the share price fall, but given those concerns for us, it's still one that we're sitting on the sidelines.

Tom Stelzer: Joe, I think it was probably one of the big losers from August reporting season. I think it was down 20% or so on the day of results, but are you a buy, hold or sell on Life360?

Joseph Koh (BUY): We're more constructive and we're a buy on Life360. To give you some broad metrics, Sean mentioned the large user base for 360. They've got about a hundred million monthly active users globally, 50 million in the US. To give you an idea of that scale, Uber has got 200 million monthly active users globally. The market cap for Uber is about 140 billion US dollars, 360, less than five billion Aussie. That's the difference in scale. We think that the advertising revenue is a huge opportunity for Life360 because of that large user base. And that's only really just starting out now. So Uber get about $10 per annum per MAU. If 360 got $10, that would be a billion dollars on the entire global base. Even if it's just the US, it's $500 million in revenue. That's about the size of the current business last year. And so the opportunity for advertising to drive a long-term growth runway for 360 is huge.

And I think for $5 billion or less in market cap, if someone like Apple wanted to buy 360, that's far more doable than trying to expand themselves. $5 billion is a drop in the bucket for anyone, whether it's Meta/Facebook or Uber or Apple. And we are seeing Uber do partnerships with 360, for example, for the transport of kids. If they did think that was a good business model, they would likely just buy them rather than build their own.

DEFENDERS

1 - Brambles (ASX: BXB)

Tom Stelzer: We're going to move to the defenders now. I'll start with you, Joe. First up, we have logistics company Brambles. Are you a buy hold or sell there?

Joseph Koh (BUY): We are a buy for Brambles. We think that the recent share price fall based on the impacts of the pallet shortage in the last few months has been exaggerated. So the company has said that they expect the total cost of the issue to be about 230 million US, all up in terms of both the P&L impact and CapEx costs. The market cap has fallen by about four and a half billion dollars since the last few months when it announced those pallet shortage issues. So the impact is a short term issue. We should be over that by first half in FY27. It's a one-off. 

Meanwhile, they're growing the business at somewhere between 2 to 6%. And I think if you are worried about a slowdown in the economy, Brambles as a supplier to FMCG companies is actually quite defensive. So it's actually trading at something like a 17-18 times PE. So a very modest valuation for a high growth company, which is producing a lot of good cashflow with a short term hiccup.

Tom Stelzer: Sean, it's had a pretty good run over the last couple of years. I think it's up 250% over five years, something like that. Has cooled off a bit in the last probably year or so. Are you a buy, hold or sell on Brambles?

Sean Roger (HOLD): Yeah, I'm a hold on Brambles. I think Joe touched on a lot of the key points around what's caused the share price volatility over the last few months. I think if you step back in terms of the root cause of what drove the pallet shortage and the challenges they've had with the third party service centres, I think clearly the company's been very tight on the cost base through the supply chain and squeezing that lemon to the point where obviously there was some stress on the network. There is some costs that are going into the business to sort of rectify that. And I think there will be elements of that that are going to be structural as they look to build resiliency in the supply chain. I think for them to recover that cost, they're going to look to pass that on in price through to consumers, which is what they've done over the last few years.

It just we think may be challenging for them to do that in an environment where you do have a tough consumer. Volumes are down in the US and their customers are stressed in terms of the consumer environment. So I think the combination of a soft environment for volumes plus them needing to push on price just means that there may be for them to achieve that second half skew in earnings, there's just some uncertainty there. So I think it's a hold, but given the valuation's come back, I think if there's any further weakness, it could look interesting.

2 - The Lottery Corporation (ASX: TLC)

Tom Stelzer: I'll stay with you for our next defender, which is Lottery Corp. I think management there have actually said it's actually been not a great year in terms of outcomes on the jackpots, but are you a buy, hold or sell on Lottery Corp?

Sean Roger (BUY): I think Lottery Corp's a buy. We think lottery is a great business. It's got infrastructure-like characteristics and there is some volatility year to year depending on the jackpot cycle, but I think over time it's proven to be a very resilient earning stream. I think the big sort of positive for us over the last 12 months has been the extension of that Victorian lottery licence for 40 years. What that's done has meant the average concession duration is now 25 years across the board, which is a long amount of time. And what it means is that the company doesn't need to spend a big ticket capital item on extending a concession again for a long period of time. And I think that has implications for what the right debt to equity mix is within the capital stack. So we think that's really important.

It did cause some short-term earnings headwinds as the obviously had some extra interest and amortisation of that concession, but ultimately I think it greatly improves the quality of the Lottery Corp. It's been weak recently - the share price - on that run of bad jackpots. Our view wouldn't be that that is cyclical. You see it goes in time. It's been a very unlucky period and I think that offers a really good opportunity, I guess to get into what we consider to be a highly defensive business at a reasonable valuation. So we see it as a buy.

Tom Stelzer: Even lottery companies can get their fair share of bad luck from time to time. Joe, I'll come to you. What's your take on Lottery Corp - buy, hold or sell?

Joseph Koh (BUY): It's a buy for us. Similar to Sean, we think that lotteries is a very defensive, safe business to have, but more than that, we're optimistic on the game change that they're looking to do with Oz Lotto. So if you go back to end of FY2018, they made a game change for Powerball. They made it a lot harder to win the division one prize. It went from about one in 77 million to one in 135 million. And that meant that because the jackpot wasn't going off, it was actually increasing. We got larger jackpots, 50 million, 100 million dollar jackpots, and that drew a lot more interest into the product. We saw FY2019 grow to good sales by 20% off the back of that game change. If you look at Oz Lotto, there's a lot of scope to change the odds. The current odds of winning the division one prize pool is one in 63 million.

You could change that to one in 90 or one in 100 million. It's still differentiated from Powerball, but there will be a material lift in the jackpot prize pool because it'd be much harder to get that division one prize and you'll see much better jackpot sequencing. So over and above this normalisation of bad luck in a sense, we think that the game changes will be a positive, especially for Oz Lotto.

3 - Transurban Group (ASX: TCL)

Tom Stelzer: I'll stay with you for our last defender, which is Transurban Group, are you a buy, hold or sell there, Joe?

Joseph Koh (SELL): We're a sell for Transurban and mostly because I compare it to Lottery Corp. They're both quite defensive. There is some nuance around the jackpot sequencing for Lottery Corp, but by the by, whether it's a toll road or lottery sales, they're very defensive even in a recession. The issue I have is twofold. If you look at the average concession life for Lottery Corp, it's more like 35 years on an average weighted basis. For TCL, it's about 27 years. So they've got a shorter concession life and the EBIT/EBITDA is materially higher than Lottery Corp. So you're paying more for a short concession life for Transurban.

Tom Stelzer: Sean, it could be at potential risk from rising rates. There's some challenges there maybe around financing, things like that, but what's your call on Transurban - buy, hold or sell?

Sean Roger (SELL): I'm a sell on Transurban as well. I think the key view there is that from an outlook perspective for the next 12 months, I think there's some downward pressure on the dividend growth. They're obviously guided to their FY27 dividend of 72 cents, which they've said is not going to be covered by free cash flow. It's actually going to be slightly outside the range of coverage they normally talk to. There's some short term factors that drive that. But I think what that means is there's less buffer in that dividend payout for any further sort of traffic weakness. And I think with what we've seen over the last couple of months since the result in terms of what's happening with petrol prices and overall activity on the roads, that if that continues, it's going to put further pressure on that free cash flow coverage of that dividend.

The second aspect I think around that, which is more of a two to three year story is the companies, as Joe mentioned, got a lot of debt, sort of eight times leverage. What it has done very well, the management team is term out that debt such that they've been immune to a degree from the rising interest rates where their current weighted average cost of debt's well below what the spot rate is. And they've got a fair chunk of debt maturing over the next two to three years. And as that matures, it's a headwind ultimately to their financing costs and their free cash flow. So I think the combination of those two, I guess headwinds to free cash flow and the dividend, the dividend yield has at 5.4% looks relatively attractive to where it has been historically, but I think just given those risks and the leverage for us, it's a sell.

GUEST PICKS

Tom Stelzer: We've also asked our guests to bring their pick for the best and fairest ASX stock over the next 12 months. Sean, I'll come back to you. What's your pick?

1 - Soul Patts (ASX: SOL) - Sean's pick

Sean Roger (BUY): I'm going to go with Soul Patts. Look, I think for me, if we're talking about the AFL grand final, that's going to be number one defender at the moment. I think Todd Barlow and the management team have done a great job over the last few years reshaping that portfolio and unlocking a lot of value through the merger with Brickworks. The other thing I think is really interesting at the moment is they've got a lot of liquidity after selling the Brickworks Oakdale assets to Goodman and also sold on some of their TPGs. Anywhere between one and a half and two and a half billion dollars of cash on the balance sheet. And I think in the environment we're in at the moment where there's obviously a lot of volatility, having that liquidity we think is a massive asset. They do have part of their business exposed to private credit, not the property exposures where obviously there's a fair bit of noise at the moment.

We think having that expertise and also the liquidity on balance sheet, they're going to be very well placed to deploy some of that capital at really attractive returns moving forward. So from a valuation perspective, it is trading slightly above its NAV, but I think given the growth historically they've been able to demonstrate with that NAV and also the way they're positioned at the moment, I think in this environment it's a good defender to have in the turn.

2 - Ampol Ltd (ASX: ALD) - Joseph's pick

Joseph Koh (BUY): We like Ampol. They're currently trading on eight times PE. To give you a rough breakdown, about a third of the business comes from refining business, a third from retail and a third from the wholesale and New Zealand businesses. So at the moment, because of the refining margins being so strong because of the Middle East conflict, people are expecting that to normalise. And so it's on eight times PE, but maybe 15 times 2027. We think that the normalisation of refining margins will take longer than what people expect. The damage to infrastructure and refinery capacity has been in near of 10% globally. About two thirds of that is in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and about one third Middle East. It typically takes two years or more to fix those damages to refining facilities and there's no guarantee that things won't worsen from here because both conflicts are ongoing.

So we think that the time to normalise those refining margins will be longer than what market expects. That's the first thing that will be supportive. The other thing is also negotiations with the government around support for refining margins longer term. Typically, refining margins are very volatile and they've made losses in the past. And so governments realise that they are strategically really important and it's required to really support the private owners because they're really just two owners at the moment of refining capacity in Australia is Viva and Ampol. We import the other 80% of refined products. So we really need as a country security over refined product and availability of that. And so governments can currently negotiations with both Ample and Viva about a solution to better support them because while they're making great returns now in three, four, five years time, it might be that they will be back to much lower margins and not economic.

And so the government's looking to give better support. They've given some improvements into 2030, but the discussions are for beyond 2030. The more they can get certainty around that, the more valuable the refining business will be. And at the moment people value it sort of five, six times EBIT/EBITDA because it is so volatile. With more government support, it becomes more of an infrastructure asset and we see infrastructure as trade at more at 10, 12, 15 times EBITDA multiple. So we think that there'll be a lot more valuation support as we have clarity on the government and their relationship with the refiners.

Tom Stelzer: That's all we have time for. As always, thanks to our guests and thanks for watching. For more Buy Hold Sell, make sure to check out our YouTube channel.