Buy Hold Sell: You tipped them, we tested them (plus 2 big buys from the experts)

Other ways to listen

• Podbean
• Spotify 

Edited Transcript

Chris Conway: Hello and welcome to Livewire's Buy, Hold, Sell. My name is Chris Conway. Every year, we conduct a survey of you, our Livewire readers, and we ask you for your most tipped growth stock for 2026. Well, we've got a real treat for you today. My guests are going to be running the ruler over no less than five of those stocks. I've also asked them to bring along a stock that they think should have been on the list.

Joining me is Anna Milne from Wilson Asset Management and Blake Henricks from Firetrail Investments. We've got a lot to cover, so we'll get straight into it. 

#1. BHP Group (ASX: BHP) 

Chris Conway: First up, we'll talk about BHP. It recently surpassed CBA as the Australian company with the biggest market cap as it piggybacks off the commodities price rises. Anna, I'll come to you first. Buy, hold, or sell?

Anna Milne: (HOLD) BHP is a hold for us, and I'll preface that by saying materials is actually our strongest, our most highest conviction, active weight in the fund at the moment. So we do own BHP, but we have a larger position in Rio, and the reason for that is its growth projects over the next five years across lithium, copper, and iron ore. We see a really strong free cashflow profile coming through. I will admit the waters are a little bit muddied by the Glencore announcement in the last week. We're looking for discipline from Rio and we do not want this deal done at anything, any premium whatsoever. So we're watching that very closely.

Chris Conway: So hold for BHP, prefer Rio. Blake, what about you? BHP, up 27% in the last year. You seeing anything exciting there?

Blake Henricks: (BUY) It's a buy for us. It's actually our biggest position. So when you break it down, simply, I think the market still views BHP as a big iron ore miner, and it is the world's largest iron ore miner, but if you actually look at the earnings contribution, now half of the earnings are coming from copper. So it's a great business. They've shown their hand. They clearly love copper. They bought OZ Minerals a few years ago, which I thought was overpaying, probably not in today's money. They've had to go at Anglo. So the market's a bit nervous about what they're doing next, but I actually think they're pretty disciplined. They really like copper, we like copper, and when you compare it to some of the copper pure plays, it's really probably underwhelmed from a performance basis. So it's large, liquid, attractive.

#2. Woodside Energy Group (ASX: WDS) 

Chris Conway: Very good. Next up, we're going to talk about Woodside. They had their fourth quarter production numbers today: 198.8 million barrels of oil. That was a record, and the costs were in the middle of the range. Blake, I'll stay with you. Buy, hold, sell?

Blake Henricks: (SELL) It's a sell. We actually don't mind the energy space, but energy stocks are really hard, because you can only develop what's in your portfolio, and for us, when we look through the Woodside portfolio, they appear to be investing billions of dollars at returns in the sort of mid to low teens. That's just not good enough for this industry, and that's why it's a sell.

Chris Conway: Anna, it hasn't done so much over the last year in terms of share price, only up 2%. New CEO, of course, we know Meg O'Neil left. Buy, hold or sell for you?

Anna Milne: (BUY) Woodside is a buy for us, and it's really premised on our view on energy. So energy is a really anti-consensus, broader market view at the moment. In fact, positioning is so negative, we don't expect will take a lot of positivity to really see an inflexion in the oil price, and we do expect there could actually be a deficit by middle to late this year when it comes to oil. So we like the energy space. It's one of the only uncorrelated asset classes remaining. So that also provides some latent value, and for us, Woodside, it's a simplistic view, but it's the largest, most liquid ASX expression of that theme. So Woodside's a buy.

#3. Pro Medicus (ASX: PME) 

Chris Conway: There you go. Some differing views there. We love that. Next up is Pro Medicus. What's to say about this one? It was $300 in the middle of last year. It's now around $180 down more than 30%. Anna, I'll stay with you. Buy, hold or sell?

Anna Milne: (BUY) Pro Medicus is a buy. It is one of the highest quality stocks on the ASX. It is an absolute category killer when it comes to radiology, and yes, there is maybe some AI concerns, but I would say this has dampened to a degree by how regulated the industry that they operate in is. 95% gross margins, 70% profit margins. Its only concern has always been its valuation, and for the first time in a long time, you can actually get there on a DCF basis. So we're seeing this as an opportunity.

Chris Conway: Seen some insider buying recently. Co-founders in December both bought around a million dollars worth of shares. So do they know something that you don't know, Blake? Buy, hold, or sell?

Blake Henricks: (HOLD) For me, it's a hold. So everything Anna said, this is a great business. It feels like they make a contract announcement every second day. It's very frequent. I'd say it's at least biweekly, but it has come back down. It's sort of at its DCF now, but when we compare it to other opportunities in that sort of software and tech space, we see more upside in other stocks. So it's a hold.

#4. NEXTDC (ASX: NXT) 

Chris Conway: Okay. Another stock that is dividing the market is NEXTDC. Signed an MOU with OpenAI to build a GPU cluster at Eastern Creek in December. Blake, I'll stay with you. Buy, hold or sell?

Blake Henricks: (SELL) For me, it's a sell, and I put that in the context of thinking about investing in real estate, because that's effectively what you're doing. You're a developer and then an owner. For us, we've got a few quality concerns about the industry, and they specifically come from counterparty risk. They come from delays in permitting. We're seeing just recently in California and Australia, people are starting to get a bit nervous about water usage. So the barriers are starting to go up there, and on that basis, share price has come back, but yeah, the return on capital just hasn't been proven to us yet.

Chris Conway: Yep. Anna, it's down around 10% over the last year. Buy, hold or sell for you?

Anna Milne: (BUY) NEXTDC is a buy for us. We believe it's trading at a scorched-earth valuation. So if you scale out a few years and look at the contracted capacity, it's on or around 15 times EBITDA multiple, which is where it should be, and it really implies that the market is not assigning any more contract wins or any more growth to the business, despite the fact they announced close to 100 megawatts in December and have a couple of new assets coming online. So for that reason alone, it's been an absolute market darling for a period. It now is no longer. We see it as a real opportunity and potentially a takeover opportunity too.

#5. Life360 (ASX: 360) 

Chris Conway: Next up, we're going to talk about another volatile stock, Life360. I've got to make sure I get this timeline right. So in October, it was around $55, fell to around $25 recently, surged 25% the other day, down 7% today. So try and make sense of all of that. Anna, buy, hold or sell?

Anna Milne: (SELL) It's a great lead-in, and we might even call that anchoring buyers, such that if you think about where it's got to, there is reason for it to get back there, but I think you can bring that into question, and for us, Life360 is a sell. Almost to Blake's previous point, we just see other opportunities that we see as being more scorched earth in this space at the moment. At the moment, the valuation isn't scorched earth in our view, and it is still baking in quite a lot. When we think about the macro, not 100% sure whether it's conducive. The positioning still feels like it's relatively full. Fundamentals, undeniably great, but for us, it's a sell.

Chris Conway: Blake, Life360, up 17% in the last year. Buy, hold or sell for you?

Blake Henricks: (BUY) Yeah, even from here, it's a buy for us. Yeah, I thought the result the other day put a lot of ... There's a lot of concern going into the result about a slowdown maturity of the business. They've even talked to 20% growth in calendar year '26 in terms of user growth. So when I think about volume growth, really important. When I think about tech stocks, you're growing, you use it as 20%. That's fantastic. Huge global addressable market and multiple growth levers. So it's come back. It's a buy.

Guest picks

Chris Conway: Ladies and gentlemen, that was some of your most tipped growth stocks for 2026. I've asked the guests to bring along a name that they think should have been on the list that you overlooked. Blake, what did our audience miss? What have you got for us?

#1. Cochlear (ASX: COH) 

Blake Henricks: Cochlear. So that's one we really like. Now, if you look at why it's been a laggard is because their market's been soft. So because of cost of living pressures, particularly in the US, people have been delaying getting processor upgrades on their cochlear implants. So that's been a real dampener on the earnings. The company's downgraded three times in the past year, but I think that's pretty well known now and I think people are pretty well ready for that. Where our edge is on the new implant, the Nexer implant, which they've launched. Cochlear's implant market share today sits at around 60, 65%. Talking to audiologists, talking to surgeons, we believe that's going to go beyond 70%, and the market doesn't have that yet in the numbers. So you've got what's been a pretty weak year for Cochlear. It's at a 10-year PE relative low, so 10-year valuation low compared to the market, and it's got upgrades from new product innovation. It's a buy for us.

Chris Conway: Pretty strong, Cochlear. Anna, can you top that? What have you got for us?

#2. CAR Group (ASX: CAR) 

Anna Milne: My pick is CAR Group. And the reason for that is not only is it at the scorched earth level that we believe is a really interesting opportunity, but just trading on the incremental information, we believe that there is going to be pretty strong economic growth this year in the US, and that sets them up really well from a trader interactive perspective, which is their US RV business. They've really suffered from headwinds in the last few years, and despite that, have grown really significantly, so we can only imagine how good it's going to be with the tailwind. It does feel like the incremental buyer and seller of car sales is often on their trade interactive business, and so we see that as a big opportunity too.

Chris Conway: There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. Two pretty compelling stocks to add to the watch list. Secretly, I'll be adding them to my watch list as well. Big thanks to Anna and Blake for this episode of Buy, Hold, Sell. If you enjoyed it, 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.