10 "sleep at night" stocks to weather any storm in 2025

Lucas Goode: I'm actually going to go with Cuscal, which is a  payments infrastructure business and a very rare recent IPO on the ASX. Cuscal effectively provides the plumbing for non-major banks, neobanks and fintechs to access the Australian payments networks. 

They enable services like Pay ID that we use day to day and really benefit from a fantastic economic moat because their customer base don't have the scale themselves to build this kind of functionality. And so they rely on Cuscal to provide that for them - its just a really beautiful infrastructure like business. 

A lot of structural tailwinds that are behind this. I mean there's clearly the growth in digital payments, we're using cash less and less. We're tapping more and more. We're transferring digitally to each other with real time payments. That's all enabled by Cuscal. So volumes are growing. 

Meanwhile, they're also leveraged to the major banks losing share of payments, which has been going on for over a decade. Or to put it another way, Cuscal's customers are gaining share. They're doing more, therefore paying Cuscal more. So we think this is a digital infrastructure business with great recurring earnings, long-term structural growth story ahead of it and just one that we think is a no-brainer at the IPO price of around 13 times price to earnings.

#2 - Gentrack (ASX: GTK)

Jessica Farr-Jones: One particular small cap software company that we really like, it's called Gentrack. We've owned it for quite a while and it recently printed a really stellar full year result. But we think there's still a lot to like, in particular the tailwinds going forward. 

This company is a mission critical billing and CRM software for utilities and water companies. It also has a mission critical ERP (enterprise resource planning) system that's used by over 150 airports across 25 countries. So two pieces of really great software, but in particular the tailwinds is that globally utility and water companies are going through a once in a multi-decade period software refresh program.

They're moving off legacy incumbents, SAP and Oracle. They're needing to revolutionise because of deregulation in the energy markets because of renewables and electrification. That's forcing them to upgrade their software systems and their billing. And Gentrack is really well placed to continue to win share from these legacy incumbents. And what their CEO keeps saying is there's not that many players on the pitch. They're really just competing against the likes of Kraken Technologies. 

So its a very big pie here, a global opportunity. We think they're really well placed to continue to win. Fantastic management team, massive history of under-promising and over-delivering when it comes to their results. We think that that will continue. We still think as well, despite the re-rate, that it's very attractively priced; they just delivered over 50% underlying revenue growth and over 40% underlying earnings growth.

#3 - Infratil (ASX: IFT)

Nick Guidera: It's a Kiwi stock, would you believe it? But it's dual listed. So it's listed in the ASX as well. It's not as well known as many would think despite all the attention on data centres and AI. The stock's Infratil; it's a global infrastructure investor and where they're spending their money, digital infrastructure, healthcare and renewables. Now if you put those three themes on the list of Livewire readers themes for the next three years, they're up there. Elise Kennedy: The key stock I would pick would be Life360. The reasons for that is it's getting margin growth. It's got an aspirational target of a billion dollars. What's important there is you hit that target and you get over the 25% also aspirational target. Then you've got a $250 million, put it on an even multiple of the market of 12 times, which is very conservative given that it is growing its top line over 30% and is net cash in growing those margins. And then you've got a valuation that's well over $3 billion versus the billion dollars it is today.

#5 - Danaher (NYSE: DHR) 

Sam Ruiz: There's a company that we think is trading at around a trough valuation but has exposure to some of the best end markets in healthcare. It's a company called Danaher. It's very well known, been around for a long time. But basically it's a diversified healthcare company that gives investors exposure to a re-acceleration of the biologics and the biopharma industry. 

During Covid, many of us have been aware that they've actually had their customers slow down orders, they ordered too much and we think that Danaher not just gives you exposure to the biologic and biopharma industry, reaccelerating from a two year drought effectively, but they also have exposure to China through a lot of their testing equipment for these types of drugs that has been really slow as China's recalibrated their economy. 

So they have two key parts of acceleration and they've also got a third business unit, which is diagnostics, which continues to take market share and is durably growing. It's trading at low valuation, but you still get that re-acceleration from China and general biologic drugs going back into an upcycle next year.

#6 - Praemium (ASX: PPS)

Brittany Isakka: They are one of the leading specialty investment platforms in Australia with a focus on high net wealth advisors and we actually met with one of their advisor groups in Melbourne a couple of months ago and he essentially said "there's other platforms that have come and spoken to us about their offering and they can't do what Praemium can do. They can't offer what Praemium can offer."

James Barker: The one stock that's had a good run, but we think there's more to go is Myer and that's predicated on the merger with Premier Group's, apparel brands business. 

Todd Warren: We think Alcoa - it's the US listed aluminium go-to name and it's going through a lot of self-help with their earnings. They're cutting off high cost assets or high cost operations and they've moved upstream in terms they purchased Illumina Limited this year, so that's really added to their portfolio on the upstream side. I touched on the benefits of aluminium earlier, but also alumina now, which is the feed stock. So we really like our Alcoa.

#9 - Supply Networks (ASX: SNL)

Rachel Folder: Supply Networks or SNL is probably my pick for this question just given they've got a really backable management team. They're super aligned with shareholders earning more than 40% of the shares on issue. They've done an incredible job growing the business. Their NPAT has tripled in the last four years and their return on capital metrics are above 40%.

They're an aftermarket provider of automotive parts for the truck industry. They're a distributor. And I think when you look at just the quality of this business and how they've been able to grow and allocate capital in a way that's really sustainable, that would probably be my pick.

#10 - Haleon (LSE: HLN)

Zoe Middleton: One stock that you could hold in almost any environment would be Haleon. It's a consumer healthcare company and I think we can all agree no matter what happens, happens in the world, people are still going to get coughs, colds, headaches, and things like that. 

And in those situations people gravitate towards brands they trust and Haleon has a portfolio of those brands including Advil, Panadol, and Voltaren. And the company was spun out of GSK and it came to market with a lot of debt and it's rapidly paying that down. And as they pay down that debt, they should have capital available to invest in growth and return to shareholders. 

We've met with management a number of times over the years and they're really excited by what they can do as a standalone company in terms of growth and also increasing efficiency.

What's your #1 "sleep at night" stock for 2025?

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