Here's why SoFi's stock racked up a rare bullish call

By Emily Bary

Only four Wall Street analysts rate the stock a buy, with the latest bullish call coming in Wednesday

SoFi Technologies Inc. has a relatively small bull camp among Wall Street analysts, but that gang just got a little bit bigger.

Needham analyst Kyle Peterson initiated coverage of the financial-technology stock with a buy rating and $10 price target on Wednesday, writing that the company offers a nice balance of growth and profits. Eighteen analysts now cover SoFi's stock (SOFI), according to FactSet, with four of them holding buy-equivalent ratings, 10 having neutral ratings, and four carrying sell ratings.

"We view SoFi as a long-term winner in the digital lending/neobank space, largely due to its focus on prime and super-prime consumers and possession of a full banking license, which we believe provides the company superior unit economics compared to other consumer finance platforms that focus on lower income borrowers and/or lack a banking license," Peterson wrote in his report.

See also: Why this SoFi bull spies 'opportunity in others' fear'

He praised the company's high-growth lending business, which includes credit cards, personal loans, mortgages and student-loan refinancing products, among other things. The company's banking charter should enable it to see "efficient and sticky funding" that will make its financials less volatile. That could help SoFi stand out relative to other digital lending players with more "fickle" financing pools.

Peterson said the company's lending business is the key reason SoFi has been able to achieve GAAP profitability, and he projected the company will be "steady" on profits going forward, "which we believe will help [tangible book value] build and support a growing share price over time."

While SoFi's lending business gets most of the attention, Peterson also wrote of a compelling opportunity in the company's technology products. SoFi's Galileo offering, for instance, provides services to other fintech companies while letting SoFi benefit from greater vertical integration in its own business. In general, the company offers services like lending underwriting that's powered by artificial intelligence, as well as card issuance.

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"We view these businesses as the crown jewels within SoFi, given their higher-growth nature (20%+), lack of capital intensity, and opportunities they provide to scale efficiently into new products or geographies," Peterson wrote.

His $10 price target is based on a sum-of-the-parts model that ascribes $8 a share in value to the lending business and $2 a share in value to SoFi's technology and other-fee-income lines, the latter of which includes interchange revenue.

Shares of SoFi are up about 1% in premarket trading Wednesday. The stock is down 28% so far this year but ahead 19% over a 12-month span.

-Emily Bary

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04-03-24 0830ET

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