5 ASX Stocks That Investors Have Given Up On And Whether Or Not They Deserve Another Chance

There are some ASX Stocks That Investors Have Given Up On – literally. Not because they don’t have CEOs trying to spin turnaround narratives because they all are, but because patience has been blown.

The ASX is home to several companies currently living in that uncomfortable state. Five, in particular, stand out as stocks where the market has heard the turnaround pitch so many times that it has essentially stopped assigning it any value.

5 ASX Stocks That Investors Have Given Up On

1. Lendlease (ASX: LLC)

Few companies on the ASX illustrate the credibility-destruction cycle more starkly than Lendlease. Once a genuine blue-chip property darling, the group has spent the better part of a decade attempting to simplify an overcomplicated global business, extracting itself from loss-making international construction projects and returning to the Australian core. The pivot has been announced, re-announced, and re-announced again under successive management teams.

The numbers tell the story. Lendlease shares are down 75% over the past five years, with the stock shedding a further 41.86% year-to-date through 2026. The company was even relegated out of the ASX 100 after a share price fall of nearly 30% in a matter of weeks earlier this year. More recently, Lendlease sold its Milano Santa Giulia North development rights for approximately A$250m, crystallising a A$175m loss below book value — taking the stock to a new intraday low of A$2.50.

That last transaction encapsulates the market’s frustration. Every asset sale management presents as a disciplined capital recycling decision arrives at a discount to the carrying value it previously assured investors was defensible. The Capital Release Unit, by definition, exists to clean up a portfolio that should never have been assembled at those prices.

CEO Tony Lombardo is due to step down after the full-year results in August 2026, and will be succeeded from Nick O’Neil, an alumni of Macquarie as well as AustralianSuper. One media outlet said he had a reputation as a ‘fixer and a builder’, but it’ll take a lot of effort to fix and build something that others have claimed to be fixing and building but have not. Now he does have the CV, not just because he worked for Macquarie but because he cleaned up the US business at a time when it was struggling. But he has his work cut out for him here.

A Moody’s Baa3 investment-grade credit reaffirmation in May 2026 confirmed the company is not insolvent. The equity market’s reaction, however, suggests it views the current trajectory as something other than a recovery.

2. Bapcor (ASX: BAP)

Bapcor was, not so long ago, regarded as one of the ASX’s better consumer staples compounders. As Australia’s largest automotive parts distributor through the Burson, Bursons Trade, Midas, ABS, and Autobarn brands. Investors liked it because it sat in a structurally resilient, fragmented market where scale advantages compounded over time. A A$5.40 per share takeover offer from GPC Asia Pacific in 2024 was rejected by management as undervaluing the business.

That decision now looks difficult to defend. The Bapcor share price sits 89% lower over the past twelve months, having recently touched fresh intraday lows of A$0.38, and Jefferies upgraded the shares to Buy while simultaneously cutting its price target from A$1.05 to A$0.65. In February 2026, the company reported a statutory net loss of A$104.8m, simultaneously launching an A$200m equity raise at a deeply discounted A$0.60 per share — effectively doubling the share count.

The damage runs deep. Underlying profit collapsed 87% to A$5.5m in 1H26, revenue declined 2.3%, and the company lost market share to competitors after pricing errors alienated its trade customer base. Management has since initiated a turnaround programme centred on pricing discipline, inventory availability, and IT modernisation. Encouragingly, between February and April 2026, all four of Bapcor’s segments — Trade, Networks, Retail, and New Zealand — delivered positive sales growth after a period of broad declines. The problem is timing: the company simultaneously cut its FY26 underlying EBITDA guidance in May 2026, blaming a deterioration in conditions from late March onward, driving shares down 18.45% on the day.

It is a pattern investors have seen before: genuine operational green shoots undermined by an external shock at precisely the moment credibility begins to rebuild. Whether the structural improvement is real (and we think it plausibly is) the market has exhausted its capacity to give the benefit of the doubt.

3. Healius (ASX: HLS)

Healius, is Australia’s second-largest pathology provider. It operates a nationwide network of laboratories and collection centres under brands including QML, Laverty, Dorevitch, and Agilex Biolabs. For much of the post-COVID period, management has been attempting to right-size the business after the collapse of pandemic-era testing volumes, while simultaneously reorienting toward core pathology and away from non-essential assets.

The market, however, is not persuaded that the inflection has arrived. Healius shares plunged to an all-time low of A$0.37 in May 2026 (down 22.68% on a single day) after the company slashed its FY26 earnings guidance and warned that inadequate government Medicare funding was forcing network closures. Losses for 2026 year-to-date extended to approximately 59%.

The frustration for shareholders is that the operational trajectory has genuinely improved. Healius’ FY25 net loss narrowed significantly to A$151m from A$643m, and its 1H26 result showed underlying EBITDA rising 13.1% to A$122.2m, with underlying EBIT turning positive at A$7.9m, pathology revenue growing 3.5%, and Agilex EBITDA surging 65.5%. Management reaffirmed guidance at the half-year result, expressed confidence in second-half delivery — and then cut that guidance weeks later.

The T27 transformation programme, targeting high single-digit EBIT margins by FY27 through cost savings and digital initiatives, remains technically in place. The credibility of that target, though, depends on a Medicare indexation environment that has proven structurally unfavourable. Debt levels remain elevated and restructuring initiatives are ongoing, but investors are waiting for evidence that the turnaround translates into sustained earnings rather than periodic flashes of EBITDA improvement sandwiched between further writedowns. Until the dividend returns — suspended since 2024 — the signal that management itself believes the recovery has arrived will remain absent.

4. Myer (ASX: MYR)

The Myer story is somewhat different in character but belongs on this list for a different reason: not a company plagued by writedowns, but one where a promising strategic repositioning keeps being undermined by factors management cannot control, and where investor confidence has been worn down by a decade of false dawns.

Australia’s largest department store chain completed its merger with the Apparel Brands portfolio (Just Jeans, Jay Jays, Portmans, Dotti, and Jacqui E) in January 2025, a transaction CEO Olivia Wirth argued would strengthen margins and diversify the revenue base. On a headline basis, revenue responded: full-year FY25 sales reached A$3,008.7m, up from A$2,644.4m, yet the company simultaneously swung to a statutory net loss of A$211.2m, reversing the prior year’s A$43.5m profit. The shares fell 28% on the result.

The stock currently trades at A$0.37, against an analyst consensus target of A$0.68 — an 84% implied upside that the market has consistently declined to price in. Higher sales revenue that produces lower earnings is exactly the kind of outcome that destroys management credibility, because it suggests the merged entity is more complex and margin-dilutive than the investment case promised. Problems with a new distribution warehouse have compounded operational pressure, and rising cost inflation in rent, labour, and freight has continued to compress what were already thin department store margins.

The structural challenge for Myer is one the market is acutely aware of: it operates in a format, the full-line department store, that has struggled to maintain relevance in most developed markets. Leadership changes and loyalty programme investments are the tools management has available, but they are no substitute for favourable structural trends.

5. Flight Centre (ASX: FLT)

Flight Centre belongs on this list not because the company is broken in any fundamental sense, but because its communication pattern has become one of the more visible examples of guidance credibility erosion on the ASX. The company entered FY25 with underlying profit before tax guidance of A$365–405m. It exited the year having delivered A$289.1m — a 10% year-on-year decline and a miss of more than A$75m relative to the original range. Jarden analysts noted the FY25 result came in broadly in line with the most recently downgraded guidance, but the FY26 outlook was softer again, with the company targeting flat underlying PBT in 1H26 against a market expectation of 6% growth.

The sell-off has wiped more than A$1bn from Flight Centre’s market cap, which now sits precariously near the A$2bn mark. The stock has shed approximately 35% over the past twelve months, with technical indicators broadly negative and short interest elevated. At the November 2025 AGM, nearly 11% of Flight Centre’s shares were held short, making it one of the most shorted names on the ASX 200.

Management’s response has combined genuine strategic logic with language that is starting to feel rehearsed. The corporate travel division has performed well, with total transaction value reaching a record A$6.3bn and divisional profit rising around 20% in 1H26. The argument that AI-augmented consultants can earn A$200,000 in average annual revenue (up from A$165,000 today) is operationally credible. But the leisure travel business, macro sensitivity, and recurring guidance downgrades have made investors reluctant to assign credit for the things going well, when there is a history of the things going badly arriving without adequate warning.

A common thread

What these five companies share is not terminal decline from an operational perspective — most have underlying businesses with genuine operating value. What they share is a credibility deficit that takes considerably longer to rebuild than it does to burn down. Guidance cuts are the mechanism by which trust is destroyed; only sustained earnings delivery, over multiple reporting periods and without qualification, is the mechanism by which it is rebuilt.

In our view, Bapcor’s operational improvement is probably the most real of the five, given the segment-level sales evidence, though the FY26 earnings outcome will test that thesis. Healius is trapped in a Medicare policy environment it cannot control, which makes turnaround timelines structurally unreliable.

Lendlease will likely need its new CEO to prove his worth and at least another full year of asset sales at or above carrying value before the market reassigns a credibility premium. Myer faces structural headwinds that management changes do not resolve. Flight Centre, uniquely, may be the most capable of a rapid re-rating if a single clean guidance delivery materialises — but that is, by definition, what it has failed to produce for the past two years.

For investors willing to underwrite the risk, the gap between current valuations and analyst consensus targets across all five names is analytically striking. The challenge is that a cheap stock and a re-rating catalyst are not the same thing.