In This Article:
SoFi Technologies (NASDAQ: SOFI) stock tumbled 12.5% through 9:45 a.m. ET Tuesday despite beating on top and bottom lines in its earnings report this morning.
Heading into earnings, analysts forecast the online bank would earn $0.04 per share on $632.3 million. In fact, SoFi reported a profit of $0.05 per share, and its revenue exceeded expectations, at $697.1 million.
Start Your Mornings Smarter! Wake up with Breakfast news in your inbox every market day. Sign Up For Free ?
SoFi by the numbers
SoFi continued to post impressive growth in the third quarter, with members rising 35% year over year to 9.4 million, although revenue grew slower at 30%. CEO Anthony Noto called the company's growth trends "durable," and noted that Q3 "was the strongest quarter in our history."
SoFi also noted increases in credit quality. Personal loan charge-offs declined 32 basis points to 3.52%, and delinquencies on personal loans fell 7 basis points to 0.57%. Both metrics should tend to boost profits at the company. Indeed, net interest income grew 25%.
Growth was fastest in the company's financial services and tech platform segment, where sales rose 64% year over year. This segment now makes up nearly half -- 49% -- of SoFi's business. And it's apparently a very high-margin business for SoFi. Instead of losing $0.29 per share, as it did in Q3 a year ago, SoFi posted a $0.05-per-share profit this time around, its fourth straight quarterly net profit.
Is SoFi stock a buy?
Four quarters of positive profits, however, still leaves SoFi stock looking kind of pricey. In total, the company has racked up $0.12 per share over the past year. But relative to a stock price of almost exactly $10 per share, that works out to a P/E ratio of 83.
Is that a fair price?
Management says 2024 revenue will grow 22% or 23%, with membership rising 30%. Earnings will mimic the trailing-12-month number of $0.12 per share -- but analysts see profits more than doubling to $0.25 per share next year. As strange as it sounds, paying 83 times earnings for a 100%-plus growth rate may actually make SoFi a cheap stock.
Should you invest $1,000 in SoFi Technologies right now?
Before you buy stock in SoFi Technologies, consider this:
The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and SoFi Technologies wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.
Consider when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $861,121!*
Stock Advisor provides investors with an easy-to-follow blueprint for success, including guidance on building a portfolio, regular updates from analysts, and two new stock picks each month. The Stock Advisor service has more than quadrupled the return of S&P 500 since 2002*.