I personally use SOFI as my bank and I love it. I took a small position in the stock late last year and have been building it up. With appreciation, it’s now a medium size position. Stock is up 70% YTD.
The stock had been suffering due to the long pause on student loan payments. With that issue now resolved, the stock has done great - going from under $5 to over $8 in the last month.
I’m not going to try to summarize the financial results. Brad does a great job at that, so if you are interested check out his summary linked above.
FWIW the CEO has been buying a lot of shares in the last year, and there has been almost no insider selling.
Kid,
I am a long time shareholder and am on the fence with this one. The market clearly reacted to the end of the SL payment moratorium, but is that rational or just emotional? Balancing the positives you mentioned are an astronomical P/tangible BV and increasing delinquencies. They are buying share clearly, but will that strategy work?
I am trying to decide if the investment thesis really changed now that student loans are back in play.
SOFI up another 12% today.
Now up 100% from the low 1 month ago.
Revenue history:
P/S = 4.4.
Cash = $2.4B
I’m not really sure how to value a bank - I know there are things that need to be considered differently thank growth stocks. But I like the CEO from what I have heard so far. West Point graduate and star linebacker. Army Ranger (Communications Officer). Was CFO of the National Football League and CFO at Twitter. Very direct and no-nonsense from the interviews and ER’s I have listened to.
I have also recently been hearing their Head of Investment Strategy on some podcasts. She was on Bloomberg Surveillance today. I don’t recall ever hearing her on there before.
@AnalogKid70 I too hold a small position. While I certainly feel that Sofi is outside my circle of competence, at its core its a story of hypergrowth rapidly scaling towards profitability.
It is attracting customers like a magnet, reaching 5.7M last quarter and growing 46% YoY. Revenue is also growing >40% YoY, and adj-EBTDA has risen from $9M to $76M in a year.
Between (1) the SVB scandal, (2) the potential student loan forgiveness, and (3) questions about the liquidity of its loan book, Sofi was priced as if it was not going to be able to survive as a business. But over the past two months, the narrative has quickly shifted between the resiliency of the banking sector, the end of the student loan moratorium, and its securitazion of $440M of personal loans.
While I admittedly am not as well-versed analyzing some of the complexities involved in the financial sector, it is difficult not see a long runway ahead centered upon growing its customer base and cross-selling into its numerous products.
I have upped my stake in this considerably yesterday and today. I’m now at around 10%. The numbers look great even without the student lending business, and that is its biggest business (where it has a 60% market share!) and is about to come back online as the student loan payments resume following a pause mandated by the Biden Administration.
I also love the aggressive share buying by the CEO. He was buying steadily in the low/mid-teens and he just kept buying more the more the stock fell.
In case anyone is curious, I have added to SOFI by selling down my PGY stake to 13%. For more discussion of PGY, see here.
As a user of their bank product, I can say it has been great. I do not use all their other products, but SOFI is basically a 1-stop-shop for everything financial. I know that’s not a unique concept, but their execution for me has been flawless. Zero friction.
Currently offering 4.3% interest savings account and 1.2% interest checking - with FDIC insurance covering up to $2 million. I also switched my credit card to them and they give a flat 3% cash back for the first year - and they gave a $300 bonus when I first signed up (after meeting certain requirements).
They also offer “BaaS” - Banking as a Service - to other legacy banks. Short article that touches on this side of their business. This was from last year - they already completed this aquisition.
