The Morningstar Investment Conference 2026 is scheduled for May 20 at ICC Sydney. Based on advance fund-level disclosures from participating managers, multiple Australian fund managers are preparing to present high-conviction equity positions spanning crypto, real estate technology, and artificial intelligence. The most notable call comes from Ziller Funds Management, whose founder Joseph Ziller, a CFA charterholder who spent 11 years as deputy portfolio manager at Maple-Brown Abbott overseeing more than $1 billion in client funds before founding his own firm, has pointed to Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) as a structural winner in the transition to subscription-based financial services. The timing adds context to the thesis: Coinbase is set to report Q1 2026 earnings on May 7, meaning results will be public 13 days before conference delegates convene at ICC Sydney. The stock is trading at roughly $206 as of early May 2026, approximately 54% below its all-time high of $444.65 reached in July 2025. This figure varies slightly across data sources and should be confirmed against a single timestamped source before publication.

The Coinbase Thesis: Infrastructure, Not Speculation

Ziller is direct about what this investment is not. "This isn't a punt on bitcoin prices," he has said. His argument centres on Coinbase's ability to generate consistent, high-margin revenue from services that exist regardless of where token prices trade on any given day. He describes the company as "the Amazon of crypto in terms of the services they provide," pointing to its custody products, developer APIs, and stablecoin infrastructure built around USDC as the core revenue drivers. He also cites Coinbase's regulatory positioning as a competitive moat. "We really liked that pairing of being the tech leader but also being the leader in trust, building in the most regulatory compliant way," Ziller said. Ziller added Coinbase to the portfolio in early 2025, following the wave of US regulatory clarity that reshaped how institutional investors assessed the sector.

The numbers back up the pivot narrative. In Q4 2025, Coinbase's subscription and services segment generated $727 million in revenue, up 13% year over year. Stablecoin revenue alone hit $364 million for the quarter, a 61% jump from the same period in 2024. Consumer transaction revenue, the volatile line item that has historically whipsawed Coinbase's earnings, fell 45% year over year to $734 million in the same quarter. Full-year 2025 revenue came in at $7.2 billion, and the company is sitting on $11.3 billion in cash. Heading into Q1 2026 earnings, analyst consensus has 18 of 24 covering analysts rating the stock a buy, with an average 12-month price target of $256.60, implying roughly 41% upside from current levels.

Ziller's fund, the Ziller Global Fund, listed on the ASX in February 2026 under the ticker ZILR as an active ETF. It has returned 25.1% per annum net of fees since inception in November 2022 and posted approximately 39% in the prior 12 months. Its concentrated portfolio of 15 to 25 positions also includes Nvidia, Tesla, and Palantir, with 37% of the fund allocated to software.

Australia's Crypto Moment

The Coinbase pick lands at a significant moment for the Australian market specifically. In April 2026, Coinbase became the first crypto exchange to receive an Australian Financial Services Licence directly from ASIC, getting ahead of crypto legislation expected to take effect in late 2026 or early 2027. Australia is not a peripheral market here. Roughly 33% of Australians hold some form of crypto exposure, according to Coinbase's own blog, and Self-Managed Super Funds have quadrupled their crypto ETF investments since 2024, according to data from Bitget Academy. Both figures come from organisations with commercial interests in positive crypto sentiment, a point worth bearing in mind when weighing the data. Institutional participation has grown 45% over the past two years, according to the same Bitget Academy research.

Other Conference Picks: AI and Property Tech

Antipodes Partners, which was named the 2026 Morningstar Fund Manager of the Year in Australia in February 2026, is expected to bring a different focus to the May conference. The firm's 2026 stock picks have been disclosed via Livewire Markets and the Antipodes Partners website. Attribution of these picks specifically to a Morningstar conference session is based on the published conference agenda rather than a confirmed transcript, and readers should treat that attribution accordingly. The firm is led by Founder and CIO Jacob Mitchell, who has framed the approach as "identifying businesses the market has undervalued relative to their resilience and growth potential." Core positions include Oracle, which Antipodes views as a steady cash-flow generator with meaningful AI infrastructure partnerships, and Globant, an AI implementation specialist trading at a discount to peers in emerging markets.

Separately, Solaris Investment Management has highlighted REA Group (ASX: REA) and SiteMinder (ASX: SDR), arguing that their proprietary data moats in property and hospitality position them to benefit from AI rather than be disrupted by it. These picks are reported on the basis of publicly available secondary information; the primary source article sat behind a paywall and could not be independently verified prior to publication.

Why This Matters Beyond Australia

The framing of Coinbase as regulated financial infrastructure at a mainstream institutional conference carries implications well beyond the Australian market. Across Sub-Saharan Africa, crypto adoption grew 52% year over year in the period through mid-2025, and on-chain volume surpassed $205 billion in the 12 months ending mid-2025, with stablecoins accounting for over 45% of that total. Platforms including Yellow Card, VALR, and Chipper Cash are building cross-border payment rails on top of USDC, the stablecoin Coinbase co-issues and profits from directly. In South Asia and Southeast Asia, the scale of retail participation is striking: India alone has an estimated 93.5 million crypto users, while Pakistan counts roughly 15.9 million and Vietnam approximately 20.9 million. Analysts suggest that when institutional managers begin treating Coinbase as a blue-chip equity holding, it may signal a broader shift in how the global investment community prices the underlying infrastructure those hundreds of millions of users depend on, though the scope and pace of any such re-rating remains an open question.

With Q1 2026 earnings due May 7, the market will soon have a fresh read on whether Coinbase's subscription revenue is tracking toward the guided range of $550 million to $630 million. Bitcoin is trading at approximately $79,000 as of early May 2026, up roughly 12% over 30 days, with the global crypto market cap near $2.68 trillion. Both figures move continuously and should be confirmed against live data before publication. Whether the Coinbase investment thesis survives contact with its next earnings report is the more immediate question for investors watching from both hemispheres.