WAM Global's Will Liu on tomorrow's big themes and the stocks he's backing to play them

This interview was filmed on Wednesday 27 August 2025.

After an Australian reporting season that dished up big winners and big losers, it's been a similar story in the US, says Will Liu, deputy portfolio manager at Wilson Asset Management.

"You've seen equity prices run up into results season this time around, and so we've been in an environment where beats are kind of expected and misses have been severely punished."

The New York-based Liu is part of the WAM Global team, tasked with finding value in global markets where value has been at a premium.

As Liu admits, the utter dominance of the Mag 7 has made it a challenging environment for active managers looking for that increasingly-elusive value in what remains a hot global equities market.

It's hard to get an edge on companies that are so well-researched and "extremely consensus", as Liu puts it.

In their search for high-quality but undervalued growth, that means looking further down the line at small and mid-cap opportunities.

"We look at companies from an earnings standpoint. We really like companies in structural growth areas of the market where the earnings can accelerate relative to expectations," says Liu.

"And so you find a pocket of companies where you've got really strong earnings growth and upside surprises during results season."

"And maybe the PE from an outside viewpoint they're not optically as cheap, but we think there's a huge runway of growth and that earnings growth will eventually drive share prices."

The key themes

The other string to the bow is finding tomorrow's big themes.

Tech remains the sector it's impossible for investors to look past right now, says Liu. 

Data centre spend has dominated the AI investment conversation, but investors need to look further ahead. 

"While all this compute is amazing and we're clearly doing some really interesting things with generative AI, what are the products and services that are going to be built upon it? Where are the revenue opportunities going to be, where the productivity gains are going to be?"

"Everyone is focused on the infrastructure and data layer of the technology stack... We're focused on what happens next."

SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) is a stock that ticks that box, says Liu. 

The German software giant is the biggest software company by revenue outside of the US. 

"They're vertically integrated, they have the most important data of their customers sitting on their systems, and they're going to be a system of record and we think they're going to be a winner," said Liu.

A broader cyclical recovery is also one of themes WAM is keeping an eye on. 

As interest rates come down, stocks in the pockets of the economy that have seen little recent earnings growth will be ready to bounce back.

Companies on the radar here include TransUnion (NYSE: TRU) and Intercontinental Exchange (NASDAQ: ICE). 

Both are already performing well and should benefit further from any cyclical uplift. 

Liu's final theme for finding undervalued growth is the small and mid-cap market.

"The valuation disconnect is simply too large and we're starting to see capital markets open" said Liu.

"We're seeing new IPOs, we're probably going to see more M&A activity, and that might be a catalyst to drive that smaller-to-medium end of the market."

Allfunds Group (AMS: ALLFG) is a name there that should be a beneficiary of many of the other themes emerging right now - European growth, lowering rates and improved risk appetite. 

"You're in a period where we're seeing a flight of capital into Europe," said Liu. "That's going to be positive for assets under advice for them." 

"We're seeing more of a risk on appetite, which is great for them because they earn more margin on equity products, fixed income products rather than money market products."

It was the target of a hostile takeover back in 2023 that valued the company almost 40% higher than its current value and has actually improved as a business since then.

That makes it a clear candidate for rerating, says Liu.

"The valuation is just extremely cheap. We think this company can grow at high single-digits, low double-digits on a revenue organic growth line at the same time as 65% adjusted EBITDA margins."

Learn more

WAM Global (ASX: WGB) provides investors with exposure to an actively managed diversified portfolio of undervalued international growth companies and exposure to market mispricing opportunities. Find out more here.