S&P/ASX All Ords Index (ASX: XAO) shares are up 0.01% to 9,199.6 points on Friday.

With earnings season over, brokers have been updating their ratings and 12-month price targets on hundreds of companies.

The following ASX shares are among those that received upgrades based on their latest financial results.

Telstra Group Ltd (ASX: TLS)

The Telstra share price is $4.80, up 0.8% today.

Over the past month, this ASX telco share has fallen 6%.

Citi upgraded Telstra shares to a buy recommendation with a 12-month price target of $5.25.

This implies a potential 9% upside ahead.

Paladin Energy Ltd (ASX: PDN)

The Paladin Energy share price is $11.62, up 3.2% today.

Over the past month, this ASX uranium share has ripped 21%.

Macquarie upgraded Paladin Energy shares to a buy rating on Wednesday.

The broker raised its 12-month price target from $12.95 to $13.85.

This implies a potential 19% upside ahead.

Magellan Financial Group Ltd (ASX: MFG)

The Magellan share price is $8.62, up 0.7% today.

Over the past month, this ASX financial share has fallen 14%.

JP Morgan upgraded Magellan shares to a hold rating this week.

The broker lifted its 12-month price target from $9 to $9.80.

This suggest a potential 13% upside ahead.

Centuria Capital Group (ASX: CNI)

The Centuria Capital Group share price is $1.26, up 1.6% today.

Over the past month, this ASX real estate investment trust (REIT) has slumped 16%.

MA Financial Group upgraded Centuria Capital Group shares to a buy call on Wednesday.

The broker lowered its 12-month price target from $2.18 to $1.83.

This indicates capital gains of 45% over the next year. 

IGO Ltd (ASX: IGO)

The IGO share price is $8.08, down 4% today.

Over the past month, this ASX lithium share has jumped 14%.

Goldman Sachs upgraded IGO shares to a buy rating yesterday.

The broker lifted its 12-month price target from $8.10 to $9.50.

This suggests potential capital growth of 17% over the next year. 

Smartgroup Corporation Ltd (ASX: SIQ)

The Smartgroup Corporation share price is $11.55, up 0.2% today.

Over the past month, this ASX industrials share has declined 13%.

Morgan Stanley upgraded Smartgroup shares to a buy rating yesterday.

The broker raised its 12-month price target from $11 to $13.

This implies a potential 13% upside ahead.

Centuria Industrial REIT (ASX: CIP)

The Centuria Industrial REIT share price is $2.94, down 0.5% today.

Over the past month, this ASX REIT has fallen 3%.

Morgans upgraded Centuria Industrial REIT shares to a buy call with a $3.25 target.

This suggest a potential 11% upside ahead.

South32 Ltd (ASX: S32)

The South32 share price is $5.22, up 0.1% today.

Over the past month, this ASX mining share has leapt 11%.

RBC Capital upgraded South32 shares to a buy recommendation this week.

The broker increased its 12-month price target from $5.30 to $5.50.

This implies a potential 5% upside ahead.

The post 8 ASX shares upgraded by the professionals post-results this week appeared first on The Motley Fool Australia.

More reading

• How much is needed in superannuation to target a $60,000 annual passive income?
• 5 things to watch on the ASX 200 on Friday
• 40 ASX shares with ex-dividend dates next week
• These 2 ASX energy shares have 18-31% upside according to Bell Potter
• 11 ASX 200 shares with reaffirmed buy ratings post-results

Citigroup is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. JPMorgan Chase is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Motley Fool contributor Bronwyn Allen has positions in Magellan Financial Group. The Motley Fool Australia’s parent company Motley Fool Holdings Inc. has positions in and has recommended Goldman Sachs Group, JPMorgan Chase, Jefferies Financial Group, and Macquarie Group. The Motley Fool Australia has positions in and has recommended Telstra Group. The Motley Fool Australia has recommended Ma Financial Group, Macquarie Group, and Smartgroup. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. This article contains general investment advice only (under AFSL 400691). Authorised by Scott Phillips.

Rio Tinto Ltd (ASX: RIO) has had a pretty impressive 2026 so far.

The shares are up around 20% since the start of the year and more than 50% over the past 12 months.

The shares climbed as high as $195.84 earlier this year before falling back towards $160 in late July. Since then, the stock has worked its way higher again and is trading at $175.65 on Friday, down 0.82%.

So, do Rio Tinto shares still look like good value?

The shares aren’t exactly cheap

I don’t think the shares look especially cheap at current levels, but I also wouldn’t call them expensive.

Consensus forecasts point to earnings per share (EPS) of around $12.07 in FY26 and $12.04 in FY27. At today’s share price, that puts Rio Tinto on roughly 14.5 times forecast earnings.

There isn’t much growth in those numbers, although that is hardly unusual with a miner. Earnings can move around a lot from year to year depending on commodity prices.

The latest half-year result was also pretty strong.

Revenue rose 15% to US$31 billion, while underlying EBITDA increased 28% to US$14.8 billion. Underlying earnings climbed 43% to US$6.85 billion and operating cash flow rose 75% to US$9.8 billion.

That also allowed Rio Tinto to lift its interim dividend by 43% to US$2.11 per share.

There’s more than just iron ore

Iron ore is still the biggest part of Rio Tinto’s business, so earnings will always be sensitive to commodity prices and demand from China.

But the company is gradually becoming less reliant on it.

Copper, aluminium and lithium contributed more than half of underlying EBITDA in the first-half, while copper production from Oyu Tolgoi jumped 31%.

That gives Rio Tinto an interesting growth story, especially with copper demand expected to remain strong over the longer term.

And there is also more production still to come. Oyu Tolgoi continues to ramp up, while the Simandou iron ore project in Guinea is another major development that could add to volumes over the next few years.

What do brokers think?

This is where things get a bit more mixed.

TipRanks shows an average 12-month price target of $174.28 across 10 analysts, which is almost exactly where the shares trade today.

JPMorgan is the most bullish with a $207 target, while Ord Minnett and Jefferies are both at $187. Goldman Sachs has a target of $181.90 and Macquarie is at $180.

At the other end, Morgan Stanley has a ‘sell’ rating and $150 target, while RBC Capital is even more cautious at $143. Citi is at $171 and UBS at $177.

I think Rio Tinto still looks reasonably priced, but I wouldn’t be rushing in after a 20% rise this year. I’d rather wait for another pullback below $150 before buying around these levels.

The post Up 20% this year, are Rio Tinto shares still good value? appeared first on The Motley Fool Australia.

More reading

• What’s driving the ASX 200 higher today?
• Here’s how Fortescue, Rio Tinto and BHP shares stacked up in August
• How much passive income can I earn off a $630,000 superannuation balance
• Is it a great time to buy Rio Tinto shares?
• Buy, hold, sell: Rio Tinto, PLS Group, BHP shares

JPMorgan Chase is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Motley Fool contributor Aaron Teboneras has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool Australia’s parent company Motley Fool Holdings Inc. has positions in and has recommended Goldman Sachs Group and JPMorgan Chase. The Motley Fool Australia has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. This article contains general investment advice only (under AFSL 400691). Authorised by Scott Phillips.

My portfolio got an absolute thumping yesterday.

A shellacking.

I’m pretty sure it was the biggest percentage and dollar drop I’ve ever suffered in a single day.

The reason?

One of my larger shareholdings, Corporate Travel Management Ltd (ASX: CTD), resumed trading… more than a year after the shares were suspended from trade because the company hadn’t lodged its accounts.

The reason for that? CTM had uncovered systemic overcharging in parts of its business, and the more it looked, the more it found. The company spent that year getting to the bottom of the problem and then, crucially, trying to work out if it could repay its customers without going broke.

It thinks it can. It lodged its accounts. And the company’s shares resumed trading.

And then? The shares fell 85%. ‘Ouch’ doesn’t even begin to describe it.

The thing is, yesterday’s news was actually better than many had feared. Some speculated that it would never trade again. Others thought the fall might have been 90% or 95%. Or more.

CTM had sporadically updated shareholders on its progress, too, so we all knew what was happening. The only unknown was when the shares would start trading and how bad the carnage would be.

So, how do I feel?

Well, poorer, obviously.

And angry at the people inside the company who knew, or should have known, what was going on. And especially at those who (I should say ‘allegedly’ here, just to be safe) knowingly did the wrong thing.

Here’s the thing, though: No-one outside the company knew it was happening. Even the company’s previous auditors had signed off on the accounts, having presumably done the work of making sure everything was above board.

So, yes, I’m poorer and angry. But I’m also philosophical.

Life is unpredictable. Sometimes, you just get blindsided. That’s the nature of investing.

No, it’s not welcome. But it’s unavoidable. Stuff, to clean up the phrase a little, happens.

The other thing?

The collapse in CTM’s share price is precisely why good investing habits matter.

I’m diversified. By company, industry, currency and geography.

I have a long term perspective. Yesterday sucked. I suspect I’ll remember it in 5 or 10 years’ time. But I also suspect that, after that decade of compounding, that scar will have faded meaningfully – both financially and emotionally.

I expect bad news sometimes. Not because it’s welcome, but because life is messy. I don’t expect every company in my portfolio to do well. Sometimes, it’ll be because I made a mistake. Sometimes because a competitor, customer or supplier makes life harder for one of my investments. Sometimes there’ll just be ‘unwelcome misadventure’, to put it mildly.

We succeed as investors not by avoiding losing investments. That’s not possible, unless you stay in cash… and have you seen inflation, lately?

No, we succeed by doing the right things, which cushion the blows when the bad news comes, and crucially also letting the good news drive our compounding over long periods of time.

In hindsight, I can tell you precisely which companies I should have bought, and which I should have avoided. I can tell you how many shares I should have bought, and at what prices.

But without that, and without a working crystal ball, my job – and yours – is to think in probabilities and expected returns.

It is to assemble a portfolio of companies that we think are likely to deliver superior performance over the long term, knowing that we’ll be wrong sometimes, but aiming to be right more often – and for the winners to make more than the losers lose.

There is no successful investor in history who hasn’t made losing investments. It’s not how investing works.

They succeed despite those losses.

Could I have foreseen this? I don’t know, but I don’t think so. No-one outside the company knew – and presumably relatively few inside it. Even the auditors didn’t know (or if they did, they didn’t say). So how could we?

Could I avoid the next one? Sure, if I never invested again. But that would be incredibly counterproductive.

So what can I – we – take from the painful experience?

I think a reminder that investing is an imprecise art, full of uncertainty. 

But that it’s also incredibly worthwhile, overall, and these sorts of things, while gut-wrenching, are just the storms we have to sometimes sail through to reach our destination.

Was my CTM investment too large, as a proportion of my portfolio? It’s easy to say yes, but if I couldn’t possibly have predicted the alleged wrongdoing, isn’t that just hindsight speaking?

Yes… and no. The very reality of that uncertainty perhaps should have led me to have less of my portfolio in a single company. It’s something I’ll spend some time dwelling on, and might make some (other) changes in my portfolio in due course.

(There’s a personal wrinkle for me, in that I’m not allowed to recommend a company as a ‘Buy’ for our members and sell down if my position has become too large, so it’s probably moot in my particular case… but the principle still holds.)

But – and here’s the really important thing – as painful as it was, it has not dimmed my optimism for long-term investing one iota.

I share the Vanguard Index chart regularly in this space. It shows the progress of the ASX (and other markets and assets) over a thirty year period. It shows booms and crashes, economic greed and fear.

What it doesn’t show – but is inherent in the results – is that companies were born and died during that time. They were added to and removed from share market indices.

It doesn’t show the companies that lost 30%, 50%, 75% or yes, 85%, during that period. Some recovered. Some never did.

It shows the overall result. That despite those temporary and permanent losses, huge amounts of value were created, overall.

I wish I could avoid every loss, and grab every gain. I also wish for a unicorn and world peace.

In the real world, I know that this is a stumble for the value of one company in my portfolio. And I fully expect more (unfortunately).

I also fully expect that my portfolio will grow meaningfully over the next few decades, despite those stumbles. Ditto for the market as a whole.

Sailing through a storm isn’t fun. But getting to the other side, and to your destination, makes bearing the storms worthwhile.

I’m keeping my eyes firmly on the horizon. I reckon that’s the lesson of history, and the right approach for all investors.

Fool on!

The post Why I’m still smiling after losing 85% appeared first on The Motley Fool Australia.

More reading

• Warning: Corporate Travel shares have crashed 80%. What on earth just happened?
• Corporate Travel Management shares resume trading after FY26 report
• Corporate Travel Management swings to profit as earnings jump in FY26
• Corporate Travel Management reports FY25 and 1HY26 earnings
• Corporate Travel Management secures new funding and updates on FY25 and FY26 earnings

Motley Fool contributor Scott Phillips has positions in Corporate Travel Management. The Motley Fool Australia’s parent company Motley Fool Holdings Inc. has positions in and has recommended Corporate Travel Management. The Motley Fool Australia has positions in and has recommended Corporate Travel Management. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. This article contains general investment advice only (under AFSL 400691). Authorised by Scott Phillips.