After the Brisbane Broncos spectacular win on Sunday night, there are powerful investing lessons you should learn if one day you want to be invested in a stock that rose 26% in one day.

After the Brisbane Broncos spectacular win on Sunday night, there are powerful investing lessons for your kids or yourself that you should learn, if one day you want to be invested in a stock that rose 26% in one day. That’s exactly what happened to the Brisbane Bronco’s (BBL) share price yesterday after they beat the Melbourne Storm 26-22 in the NRL Grand Final.

Apart from the game being a lesson on how great rugby league can be when great coaches mix with great team players (as well as professionally run businesses behind them), there are numerous investing or wealth-building lessons that should be taken on board, if you prefer being richer down the track.

Be clear on this: While I’m not suggesting anyone invests in the Broncos now, they are a powerful teaching tool for anyone who wants to make money out of stocks over time.
While the Broncos have an interesting shareholder base, with fanatical supporters making up the large number of small owners of the footie club, the biggest shareholder is Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp, which also has a lot of small shareholders as well. His son Lachlan has been a ‘tragic’ Broncos fan since the rugby league wars of 1995.

The AFR’s Gus McCubbing tells us that Brisbane-based Phil Murphy of Oxmar Properties holds 22% of the company, while the chair is Karl Morris, CEO of stockbroking firm Ord Minnett.

Yesterday all owners would’ve loved to see the share price spike from $1.40 to $1.68 in one day, with the stock market underpowered because NSW, SA, the ACT and Queensland were on a public holiday! But the big questions have to be: is BBL still a good investment? And has it been a good investment for the loyal supporters of the club?

This long-term view of the share price tells an interesting story.

Brisbane Broncos (BBL)

If you bought in on its inception around 1999 as a listed company, you paid 11 cents. It’s now $1.68. That’s a 1,427% return, which is the reward for being patient and a true believer, as the real big gains have come since 2020, when the share price was 40 cents.

This reflects a better quality of management, a better team roster, good coaches and a club with a good business model. The spike in the share price from $1.40 to $1.68 has a bit of post-grand final exuberance in it, so I’d be careful about investing now.

Bronco supporters who want a piece of the action should think about waiting for a big market sell-off to buy shares, but this would be more an emotional buy, because there are better companies out there to make more money on over time.

APE

An alternative to BBL might be the company that Roosters chairman Nick Polities is a director and biggest shareholder. This company is called Eagers Automotive (APE), which also went for a huge share price spike, rising 23.67% over the past month from $27.25 to $33.70, after going overseas to expand its operation.

This is how the AFR reported the story on October 1: “Fund manager sources said Eagers would pay $1 billion to buy 65 per cent of CanadaOne Auto, which was founded in 1993 and has 42 dealerships across British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario, selling more than 20 brands from Toyota to BMW. It sells both new and used cars.”

While the Broncos is a minnow company with a market cap of $129 million, APE is a gorilla of a company, with $9.54 billion! Interestingly in 1999, when the BBL share price was 11 cents, APE’s share price was 79 cents. So, if you were a Broncos fan, your 1,000 shares at 11 cents cost $110. At their current price of $1.68, those shares are now worth $1,680. But if you were a rev-head who loved cars (and maybe a Roosters fan!) your 79 cent share (or $790 investment) is now worth $33,700!

While both are nice returns, APE is a growth company while the Broncos have limited upside and less potential, unless it diversifies into other entertainment activities.

I think both share prices have surged too much and the analysts in the FNArena survey agree with me on Eagers.

Eagers Automotive (APE)

As BBL is too small for broker assessment, if you want to have a ‘punt’ and you’re a Broncos fan, then you can consider an investment in the pride of Brisbane. However, if you want to invest in a business selling us what we always want i.e. cars, then APE might be a better play. However, I’d wait for a decent market sell-off before I added this company to my portfolio.

By the way, this isn’t advice but an education piece on investing in different kinds of stocks. BBL is a speculative play, while APE could be a core holding in a portfolio of stocks. But as I’ve said, I’d wait for a lower share price before getting into to the car game.