QAV Light Weekly Update — 21 September 2026

Hap­py Mon­day, Light Brigade!

And a big wel­come to all of our new mem­bers. Today I’m lis­ten­ing to Shostakovich’s 7th Sym­pho­ny. If you haven’t heard the sto­ry about this one, it’s crazy. He com­posed it in late 1941 dur­ing the Nazi siege of his home­town, Leningrad (aka St Peter­burg). It was com­plete­ly bru­tal. Last­ed 872 days (1941–44), the most destruc­tive siege in his­to­ry and pos­si­bly the most dead­ly, caus­ing an esti­mat­ed 1.5 mil­lion deaths, from a pre­war pop­u­la­tion of 3.2 mil­lion. Rough­ly the size of Bris­bane. Half the peo­ple dead, most­ly from star­va­tion. The sym­pho­ny was an act of defi­ance. When it was first per­formed in Leningrad (they had to round up as many musi­cians as they could, many of whom were death­ly weak and faint­ing from mal­nu­tri­tion), they set up speak­ers and broad­cast the per­for­mance to the Ger­man front lines as psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare. The Sovi­et com­man­der of the area bombed the Ger­man artillery posi­tion just before the con­cert to ensure they were qui­et dur­ing the per­for­mance. One of the Ger­man gen­er­als sup­pos­ed­ly turned to his troops after the con­cert, and said “we’re going to lose this war”.

And speak­ing of a siege… I won­der if any­one in Tehran is com­pos­ing a sym­pho­ny?

Not much to report in the mar­kets beyond the obvi­ous — oil sup­ply and prices are obvi­ous­ly still a prob­lem, bond rates are going up, inter­est rates are going up in the U.S. and prob­a­bly here as well.

Report­ed nation­al petrol aver­ages are 235.6 cents a litre for U91 and 280.0 cents for diesel. 

Diesel is obvi­ous­ly the more con­se­quen­tial price, affect­ing freight, min­ing, agri­cul­ture, con­struc­tion and food dis­tri­b­u­tion before appear­ing in con­sumer infla­tion.

But from our per­spec­tive, it changes noth­ing. The sys­tem keep run­ning as it always does. We buy and sell accord­ing to the rules.

Market This Week (All Ordinaries)

The All Ords closed the week at 8,922.9, essen­tial­ly flat, with the ASX 200 down 0.11% for the week:

All the best,
Cameron

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PORTFOLIO UPDATE

Drill down into the wid­get above to see how we are per­form­ing over dif­fer­ent time­frames, or vis­it our live port­fo­lio page.

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SELLS

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BUYS

SMALL CAP: NobleOak Life Limited (NOL)

Found­ed in 1861 as the Unit­ed Ancient Order of Druids Friend­ly Soci­ety of NSW, NobleOak Life Lim­it­ed sells direct life insur­ance prod­ucts to Aus­tralian con­sumers, hav­ing rebrand­ed under its cur­rent name in 2011. The com­pa­ny man­u­fac­tures and dis­trib­utes a focused suite of per­son­al risk insur­ance prod­ucts: life cov­er, income pro­tec­tion, total and per­ma­nent dis­abil­i­ty, trau­ma, death, busi­ness expens­es, and self man­aged super fund insur­ance. It reach­es cus­tomers through two chan­nels, direct-to-mar­ket and strate­gic part­ner­ships, bypass­ing the tra­di­tion­al advis­er net­work that dom­i­nates much of the incum­bent life insur­ance indus­try. This posi­tions NobleOak as a lean­er, low­er-cost dis­trib­u­tor com­pet­ing on price and acces­si­bil­i­ty against the major bank-owned and insti­tu­tion­al life insur­ers. NobleOak oper­ates as a niche play­er in the Aus­tralian life insur­ance mar­ket, with a mar­ket cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion of $122.3 mil­lion. That scale places it well out­side the top tier of Aus­tralian finan­cial ser­vices com­pa­nies, but the direct dis­tri­b­u­tion mod­el allows the busi­ness to serve a spe­cif­ic seg­ment of cost-con­scious con­sumers who self-select with­out requir­ing advis­er inter­me­di­a­tion.

Framework Overview

NobleOak Life Lim­it­ed was trad­ing at $1.315 at the time of this analy­sis, imply­ing a mar­ket cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion of approx­i­mate­ly $122.3 mil­lion.

The QAV Score weights qual­i­ty met­rics against price, tar­get­ing stocks that are both good and cheap. The score for NobleOak Life Lim­it­ed is 0.441. Our buy thresh­old is 0.10, and this stock is above it, a lev­el we con­sid­er action­able for val­ue investors.

The Qual­i­ty Score is 80.00% against a 75% thresh­old; this com­pa­ny clears it. This lev­el of qual­i­ty is a foun­da­tion for com­pound­ing returns over time.

Valuation

Intrinsic Value

We cal­cu­late two intrin­sic val­ues to account for dif­fer­ent views on sus­tain­able earn­ings growth. At $1.315, the stock is above Intrin­sic Val­ue 1 and below Intrin­sic Val­ue 2.

Book Value

Book val­ue rep­re­sents assets minus lia­bil­i­ties: the account­ing floor of what the busi­ness is worth. The share price is above book val­ue, com­mon for qual­i­ty busi­ness­es where earn­ing pow­er exceeds stat­ed net assets.

The Book Plus 30% test applies a more gen­er­ous thresh­old that allows for the pre­mi­um qual­i­ty busi­ness­es typ­i­cal­ly com­mand. NobleOak Life Lim­it­ed pass­es this test. Investors are not pay­ing an unrea­son­able pre­mi­um to the com­pa­ny’s stat­ed equi­ty.

Cash Generation & Liquidity

Operating Cash Flow

Account­ing earn­ings can be manip­u­lat­ed; oper­at­ing cash flow is hard­er to fake. Price/OCF focus­es on what the busi­ness actu­al­ly pro­duces.

The Price to Oper­at­ing Cash Flow ratio for NobleOak Life Lim­it­ed is 1.82. Our thresh­old is 7x, and this stock clears it, a pay­back peri­od with­in our pre­ferred range. At the cur­rent rate of cash gen­er­a­tion, it would take approx­i­mate­ly 1.8 years for oper­a­tions to pro­duce cash equiv­a­lent to the cur­rent mar­ket price.

Trading Liquidity

Aver­age dai­ly trade sits at $0.053 mil­lion, clas­si­fy­ing this as a Small-Cap stock. This is a thin­ly trad­ed stock. For larg­er investors, attempt­ing to build or exit a mean­ing­ful posi­tion could move the mar­ket against you. A prac­ti­cal guide­line: keep posi­tion size below 20% of aver­age dai­ly vol­ume, rough­ly $10,600 per trade in this case.

Profitability & Earnings

Current Profitability

The com­pa­ny gen­er­at­ed 19.52 cents EPS before abnor­mal items. Cur­rent earn­ings are in the black, which allows for stan­dard earn­ings-based val­u­a­tion met­rics.

Price-to-Earnings Ratio

The P/E ratio is 6.74. Investors are pay­ing 6.7x trail­ing earn­ings. A sub-15 P/E is below the long-run mar­ket aver­age, his­tor­i­cal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with val­ue ter­ri­to­ry.

Earnings Forecast

Ana­lyst con­sen­sus projects EPS of 24.50 cents for the next fis­cal year. That rep­re­sents growth from cur­rent lev­els, a pos­i­tive sig­nal if realised.

Financial Health

Finan­cial health reflects struc­tur­al resilience: the bal­ance sheet, debt oblig­a­tions, and equi­ty tra­jec­to­ry. NobleOak Life Lim­it­ed car­ries a Strong health rat­ing with a Sta­ble trend.

A strong bal­ance sheet on a sta­ble trend is the com­bi­na­tion investors should look for.

Equity Growth

Share­hold­ers’ equi­ty has grown con­sis­tent­ly. A steady rise in equi­ty reflects retained earn­ings and dis­ci­plined cap­i­tal allo­ca­tion.

Management & Ownership

When direc­tors own mean­ing­ful stakes, they share direct­ly in the con­se­quences of their deci­sions.

Direc­tors at NobleOak Life Lim­it­ed hold approx­i­mate­ly $7,454,124 worth of shares, rep­re­sent­ing 6.09% of mar­ket cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion. Our thresh­old is 10%; this com­pa­ny is below it. Below-thresh­old insid­er own­er­ship places more weight on gov­er­nance struc­tures to align man­age­ment with share­hold­ers.

Momentum & Income

Technical Signal

My code did­n’t score it for the new upturn sig­nal, but I think it could get an extra point. By the way, my code dis­agrees with the Bret­ta­la­tor’s red sell line and drew the pur­ple sell line instead. I’m com­fort­able with the pur­ple line as being valid.

Dividend Yield

The div­i­dend yield is below the cur­rent mort­gage rate. Cur­rent yield isn’t suf­fi­cient to attract income-focused investors at this price lev­el.

Summary

At $1.315, the key fac­tors for NobleOak Life Lim­it­ed are:

Strengths

• Price below Intrin­sic Val­ue 2
• Con­sis­tent­ly increas­ing equi­ty
• Strong finan­cial health
• Price to Oper­at­ing Cash Flow ratio of 1.82

Concerns

• Price above Intrin­sic Val­ue 1
• Price above book val­ue
• No recent upturn in sen­ti­ment
• Low direc­tor own­er­ship at 6.09%

Whether the cur­rent price ade­quate­ly com­pen­sates for these risks depends on your port­fo­lio con­text, risk tol­er­ance, and invest­ment time­frame.

Key Metrics

And here’s my TikTok of the week.

CURRENT HOLDINGS & HISTORICAL TRADES

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** Please remem­ber to review our Buy­ing Guide­lines to under­stand which cap bands you should be look­ing at and oth­er impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tions.

DISCLOSURE

Please review our trad­ing and dis­clo­sure pol­i­cy.

FOR NEW MEMBERS

If you’re new to QAV Light, here’s a quick reminder on how it works.

1. We send you an email every Mon­day advis­ing which stocks we are adding to our Light port­fo­lio.
2. You can copy our trades, but please remem­ber to review our Trad­ing Guide­lines. And con­sult a finan­cial plan­ner before mak­ing any deci­sions.
3. We don’t rec­om­mend that you add stocks which are already in our port­fo­lio.
4. If one of the stocks we add breach­es one of our sell con­di­tions, we will sell it from our port­fo­lio and you’ll get an email advis­ing of the trade.
5. If you come across any QAV ter­mi­nol­o­gy that you don’t under­stand, please review our ter­mi­nol­o­gy guide or just email us for clar­i­fi­ca­tion.

That’s it for today!

If we decide to buy or sell some­thing, we’ll let you know.

Got a ques­tion?
[email protected]

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