Right now, I own Pro Medicus Ltd (ASX: PME) shares, Resmed CDI(ASX: RMD) shares and Telix Pharmaceuticals Ltd (ASX: TLX) shares, and previously owner Xero Ltd (ASX: XRO) shares. This article explains why I own PME, RMD and TLX, and some of the lessons learned – with a twist…
Hello world!
My name is Beckie. I have just started working at Rask as Owen’s assistant.
As an avid listener of The Australian Investors Podcast, and someone who is up-and-coming in their career, I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to work with Owen and Rask. As part of my initiation into Rask, Owen has challenged me to write a short article about some of my investments, and the lessons learned along the way. I hope you enjoy my brief ramble, and maybe can relate to the experiences I have had as a baby investor who is just dipping her toes into the market; enjoy!
Resmed CDI and Pro Medicus shares
As many young investors in Australia and New Zealand find themselves in today, the Rask Australian Investors Podcast was my gateway into the investor world. In full disclosure though, my father did (lovingly, but albeit unsuccessfully) attempt to get me interested in the stock market when I was in my late teens.
However, there was nothing like taking the advice of strangers to finally see the wisdom in my father’s attempts. To me, that stranger was Rask.
Pro Medicus and Resmed were some of the two higher value stocks that I took the leap into buying after listening to the podcast.
Honestly, very little thought process went into the purchase of these two companies/stocks; everywhere I read said that the future projections of these companies was great, their steady growth was apparent in the previous years’ charts (yes I know the past is not indicative of the future, but baby investor me was yet to weather anything otherwise) and with my background being in health care, it just made sense.
Both Resmed and Pro Medicus are fairly big names in the healthcare world, offering different types of services.
Resmed is primarily a medical equipment company, specialising in helping treat and manage the symptoms of people with sleep apnoea, COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) and other respiratory diseases. You may be familiar with CPAP machines to help treat sleep apnea, Resmed is actually one of the largest manufacturers of these devices worldwide.
Pro Medicus, conversely, is a leading provider in medical imaging software and services, both in the US (11 of the top 20 ranked hospital networks in the US use Pro Medicus software) and here in Australia. Unlike Resmed, you may never have heard of Pro Medicus in your everyday passing, but this is not a company to ignore.
As of late 2024, Pro Medicus was valued at close to $27 billion, making it larger than Coles Group (ASX: COL) and twice the size of Qantas Airways Ltd (ASX: QAN), all while having a comparatively small employee count of 121…
With these massive numbers, Pro Medicus is looking at diversifying into cardiology and dipping their toes in the field of AI within the next few years, so I doubt the train that is Pro Medicus will be stopping anytime soon (in my very financially uninformed opinion – full disclosure this is the first time I am learning a lot of these things about these companies as well.).
All in all, Resmed and Pro Medicus have both lived up to their investor expectations. They have been mostly stable investments for me and give me a little serotonin boost everyday as I watch their steady increase in price. As you will read later on, as someone who is fairly new to the investor world, my armour to the rollercoaster that is the stock market is yet to be built, and these two stocks have yet to lead me astray.
Telix Pharmaceuticals shares
Telix Pharmaceuticals was one of the first shares that I picked for myself. Again though, mostly basic guesswork and uneducated assumptions about the future of the stock/company.
In simple terms, I filtered all the stocks on the ASX by those classed as bullish, undervalued and having an outperform rating – according to my Selfwealth account. From there I sorted the stocks by those which were undervalued by the highest percentage, but weren’t ‘penny dreadfuls’ (i.e. stocks whose value was in the cents, not dollars). Luck would have it, I stumbled upon Telix Pharmaceuticals, and after a general millennial vibe check (my uninformed financial decision-making process) I decided to take the leap and invest a small amount into the stock.
Telix Pharmaceuticals is a global biopharmaceutical company that specialises in the development and commercialisation of radio-pharmaceuticals. Without getting into the nitty-gritty of pharmaceuticals, Telix’s products are designed to give precise doses of radiation to cancer, with a specific focus on urologic, neuro and musculoskeletal oncology. In 2025, Telix is set to launch three new cancer diagnosis products after pending FDA approval, with – I suspect – lots of positive updates for the company to come.
I bought the stock in late 2023, and then again in late 2024, and to date it has been my most successful investment. From when I first bought it back in 2023, it has gone up 200% – which makes me feel like I know what I am doing when picking stocks, but in all honestly this pick was pure luck. It easily could have gone the other way. Investing in this company gave me a little more confidence in taking a risk in the stock market – but if I was to do it again, I would definitely look into the businesses I am investing in, because as you will soon read, mistakes were made along the way…
[Owen’s note: see my comments on the investor humility curve.]
Xero shares
I bought Xero shares in late 2023 after hearing many different platforms recommending this stock. At the time it seemed that no one could say enough about it.
After my recent success with Telix I thought nothing could go wrong and I had the golden touch, so I jumped in and bought the stock for about $113 a piece with no research done, no nothing. Well, as baby investor me was about to find out, things do go wrong.
Xero’s share price dipped shortly after I bought it. Admittedly it was a very small decrease comparatively, but it was a dip that continued over a number of days – in other words it was volatile, and didn’t show the crazy and instant returns that Telix, or some of my other stocks, did. So I got scared, and cashed out when I broke even in late February 2024 without taking into consideration the company that Xero is, and its place in the accounting market. If I had really looked into the company, maybe I would’ve been more committed to holding it.
I, as many people, had heard of Xero before, but I didn’t really understand who they were. Xero is one of the largest providers of cloud accounting software for small businesses globally. Its strongest growth has been in Australia and New Zealand, and it has 2.47 million subscribers across these two countries alone. I think Xero is a fierce competitor in its field, demonstrated by its 150% stock price growth over the last 5 years and it continues to go from strength to strength. If I had looked deeper into Xero itself, instead of being scared about the rises and falls of the stock, I may have realised that the company had the potential to weather the volatility of the stock market better than I did. As of writing this article (24/2/25) Xero currently trades for around $179… like I said before, mistakes were made and lessons were learned.
Lessons learned from PME, RMD, TLX & XRO
I still currently own Pro Medicus, Resmed and Telix Pharmaceuticals shares, but am too proud to go back and buy Xero shares again.
However, the lessons learned with Xero have helped me stay more committed to my future investments, as well as placing a greater emphasis on better understanding a company and its potential to weather the rises and falls of the market.
While Telix Pharmaceuticals did well for me in the long term, I have not invested in the same way again. Xero (and admittedly a few others around the same time) gave me a more realistic proverbial slap in the face to investing and perhaps tempered my growing complex on how easy it is to ‘pick stocks’. If there is anything to take from this rambling, it is to listen to the experts when they say to not be scared of the volatility of the stock market. Because if it was as easy as what every new investor believes it to be, we would all be millionaires, which sadly, I am not.
[Owen’s final note: well done Beckie! Maybe you should take the Value Investor Program?]
