Watch Wilson Asset Management Deputy Portfolio Manager Shaun Weick share his key takeaways from the 2025 Macquarie Conference—the largest annual gathering of Australian and New Zealand companies alongside leading domestic and global institutional investors.
With over 800 investors in attendance and more than 120 corporate presentations delivered over three days, Shaun highlights the major themes and sector-specific insights that emerged and explains what drove the optimistic sentiment among investors as they left the conference.
Key takeaways:
- Attendees left the conference with a positive outlook – investors were expecting downgrades or soft updates from presenting companies however the outcome was far more positive. This was observed in the share price movement for some of the most out-of-favour stocks of late, including Maas Group (ASX: MGH), Integral Diagnostics (ASX: IDX), Kelsian (ASX: KLS), Tabcorp (ASX: TAH) and Zip Co (ASX: ZIP), which all rallied significantly post update.
- Travel sector is primed for a re-rate – despite prior downgrades in earnings with companies such as Corporate Travel Management (ASX: CTD) and Flight Centre Travel Group (ASX: FLT), both saw an uplift in share prices, indicating that the market may be primed for rerate.
- Australia is attracting global capital – there was a clear theme of capital moving into Australia from other regions, with positive demographics, low unemployment, and stable government post-election being the key drivers. The strength of the domestic banks has also played a role in this shift.
- Domestic businesses set to thrive – ALP’s housing policies and the expected RBA rate cuts are seen as positive for housing, consumer and yield stocks. The standout presentations at the conference were Stockland (ASX: SGP), Mirvac (ASX: MGR) and Maas Group (ASX: MGH), with Breville (ASX: BRG) and ZIP (ASX: ZIP) also expected to benefit.
- Artificial intelligence back in demand – The data centre and cloud infrastructure space has passed through peak negativity. Nextdc (ASX: NXT) reported their largest quarter of contracted megawatts, whilst globally we observed numerous updates supportive of demand including, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), stating they are concerned about capacity availability beyond July. High-conviction stocks to watch are DigiCo (ASX: DGT) and Megaport (ASX: MP1).
- Uranium piquing investor interest – uranium is back in favour as utilities return to the contract market and strategies used by hedge funds to cause weakness in the market appear to be unwinding. Boss Energy (ASX: BOE) is a high-conviction stock to watch in the uranium space.
Shaun Weick joined Wilson Asset Management in 2020 and is Deputy Portfolio Manager across WAM Capital, WAM Microcap, WAM Research and WAM Active (ASX: WAM, WMI, WAX, WAA).
To stay informed with our regular updates and market insights from the team follow our LinkedIn, X and Facebook accounts.
You can also follow Wilson Asset Management Founder and Chairman Geoff Wilson AO on X and LinkedIn.
If you have any feedback you would like to share or wish to speak to a member of the Wilson Asset Management team, please respond to this email or call Christopher Ball on 02 9247 6755. You can also email us at [email protected].
Join our community of more than 90,000 weekly readers and subscribe to our regular investment insights and market updates: https://wilsonassetmanagement.com.au/subscribe/
