Key Points

• There's a lot to like about SoFi right now, including its loan platform business and the return of crypto trading.

• Home lending is not a big part of SoFi's business, but it's growing quickly and could be a massive long-term opportunity.

• Not only could mortgage volume soar, but refinancing and home equity loans could also be a massive market as rates fall.

• 10 stocks we like better than SoFi Technologies ›

SoFi (NASDAQ: SOFI) has roughly tripled over the past year, and to be sure, there is a lot to like about the banking disruptor. For example, in the most recent quarter, SoFi added 800,000 new members -- its highest single-quarter total ever.

In addition, SoFi's loan platform, where it originates loans on behalf of third-party partners, is turning into an impressive generator of capital-light fee income. SoFi could also be a big beneficiary of the student loan limitations contained in the recent tax and spending bill. And SoFi recently announced that cryptocurrency trading will return to its platform by the end of the year. I could go on, but you get the idea. This company has a lot going for it.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Learn More »

However, SoFi has yet another opportunity that isn't getting much attention -- at least not yet. But this could possibly be SoFi's largest market opportunity of all, and it's a product that the company already offers.

A $35 trillion market opportunity

A few years ago, millions of Americans were tapping into their home equity. In fact, I'm not sure I could name a homeowner friend who didn't refinance or get some sort of home equity loan during the 2020-2021 period.

However, once inflation hit hard in 2022 and interest rates began to rise quickly, this dried up. Many homeowners put big projects on hold that they otherwise would refinance their mortgage to fund. Sure, there are some people using their home equity right now. However, activity is significantly lower compared to the low-rate period.

Not only has refinancing and home equity lending volume plummeted, but home values have also risen dramatically over the past five years. As a result, homeowners in the United States have an all-time high of $35 trillion in equity in their homes.

SoFi's home loan growth is impressive

In the first quarter, SoFi's home loan originations totaled $518 million. This is less than one-tenth of its personal loan originations and about half of its student loan volume. So, it's a small part of the business today.

However, consider the progress SoFi has made. After a solid year in 2021, when 3% mortgage rates were common, SoFi's home loan volume fell off a cliff. In the first quarter of 2023, the company originated just $90 million in home loans. So, the volume from the first quarter of 2025 represents a 476% increase in volume in just two years.

What to watch

One thing that makes the home loan growth over the past two years especially impressive is that SoFi managed to do it in a terrible environment for home loans. Relatively few people are currently tapping into their home equity, and the existing home sales market remains very low.

The key factor that could trigger an inflection point is mortgage rates. As I'm writing this, the average 30-year mortgage rate in the United States is about 6.75%. If this falls to 6%, 5.5%, 5%, or even lower over the next few years, it could not only help thaw the sluggish real estate market but also trigger a wave of mortgage refinancing.

SoFi currently offers refinancing loans (including cash-out refinancing), a variety of purchase mortgages, and home equity loans and home equity lines of credit (HELOCs). In fact, SoFi's HELOCs have some competitive advantages, such as no application fees and the ability to borrow up to 90% of your home equity (many lenders limit this to 80%). As mentioned, Americans are sitting on $35 trillion in home equity, so the surge in volume could be massive.

The bottom line is that SoFi's home loan business isn't a major component of its ecosystem yet, but it's heading in that direction. And if rates fall significantly, it could become one of the bank's most exciting opportunities.

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 Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $652,133!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,056,790!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,048% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 180% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of July 15, 2025

Matt Frankel has positions in SoFi Technologies. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

In this podcast, Motley Fool host Anand Chokkavelu and contributors Jason Hall and Matt Frankel discuss:

• AI stocks in the data center space (including CoreWeave).
• Winners and losers in energy and solar from Trump's "big, beautiful bill."
• Ranking the intellectual property of Warner Bros. Discovery, Comcast, Disney, and Netflix.
• Prime Day and other made-up holidays.
• Stocks to watch.

And Dave Schaeffer, founder and CEO of Cogent Communications, talks with Motley Fool analysts Asit Sharma and Sanmeet Deo about how Cogent's deals with customers like Netflix and Meta Platforms work and what keeps him awake at night.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Learn More »

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. When you're ready to invest, check out this top 10 list of stocks to buy.

A full transcript is below.

Where to invest $1,000 right now

When our analyst team has a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,053%* — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 180% for the S&P 500.

They just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy right now, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of July 14, 2025

This podcast was recorded on July 11, 2025.

Anand Chokkavelu: Yes, we're talking all kinds of stocks. This week's Motley Fool Money Radio Show starts now. It's the Motley Fool Money Radio Show. I'm Anand Chokkavelu. Joining me are two of my favorite fools, Jason Hall and Matt Frankel. Today, we'll talk about stock market winners and losers from the Big Beautiful Bill. We'll pit Superman versus the Hulk, and we'll of course debate stocks on our radar. But first, we'll discuss whether there's an AI opportunity in investing in data centers. Upstart data center company, CoreWeave, again made news this week this time for announcing the purchase of Core Scientific for $9 billion. This allows it to add infrastructure to consolidate vertically as it seeks to gain market share among AI and high performance computing customers. CoreWeave is just the tip of the data center iceberg. Matt, what categories of data center opportunities are out there?

Matt Frankel: First, you have hyper scalers. These are companies like AWS, Microsoft, Desha. They are companies that operate the large scale data centers. They offer computing and storage infrastructures to customers. As Anand put it, there's CoreWeave, which is one of the least understood recent IPOs that I know. [laughs] They rent out GPU data center infrastructures to customers. It's not always practical for companies to invest in all of NVIDIA's latest chips on their own, for example. That's really what they do. There's the REITs still, Digital Realty and Equinix are the two big ones. They own the data centers. CoreWeave is actually a big Digital Realty tenant. Then there's power generation. I know Jason's going to talk about this a little bit later in the show, but data centers consume a lot of power, and it's growing at an exponential pace. These chips that NVIDIA produces, they are power drains. Nuclear, especially, could be a big part of the solution, but solar and other renewables are also in there.

Jason Hall: We're definitely in the land grab phase of the infrastructure buildout for accelerated computing. I think accelerated computing is maybe a better description than just AI. We talk about the Cloud REIT large. As we see more of the companies involved start to monetize things like AI agents at scale. I think that's where these investments are going to pay off.

Anand Chokkavelu: Big question. Do any of these categories interest you all for investing?

Matt Frankel: Well, I'm well known as being the real estate guy at the Motley Fool, so it shouldn't be a big surprise, but Digital Realty is my second largest and my second longest running REIT investment in my portfolio. I'm an Amazon shareholder, and I know that's not their only business, but AWS is the primary reason I own it. I don't own CoreWeave yet, and I think the stock is a little bit pricey, to say the least. But the more I read about it, the more I'm intrigued by the company. As I mentioned, they're a big tenant of Digital Realty, so I have some exposure already.

Jason Hall: The things about CoreWeave that concern me is the stock is definitely expensive. But if the opportunity is even close to as large as we think, it could still work out, but they're going to need a lot of money to pay for what they're trying to do and depending on how much of that is from raising debt versus secondary offerings of shares, there's still a lot of questions there. But, Anand, you've given me a chance to talk about Brookfield here. [laughs] How do I not take that opportunity? But I do think that there's a couple of Brookfield entities that are positioned really well here. I want to talk about the providing the energy part of it. Brookfield Renewable is really in the driver seat here as a global provider of renewable energy on multi decade contracts. It is not just accelerated computing, it's the energy transition REIT large. We've already seen it strike big deals with Microsoft and others to provide renewable power on those multi decade contracts. The dividend is really attractive, too. BEP, that's the partnership, yields over 5%. The corporate shares BEPC, it yields about 4.5%. Since mid 2020, that's when Brookfield Renewable rolled the corporation part out and restructured its dividend. The payouts been increased almost 30%. There's a lot to like here. Beyond the yield, I think it's primed to be a total return dynamo over the next decade. If you don't want to own a company that's in the energy part, you want to own the infrastructure, just take a look at sister company Brookfield Infrastructure. The tickers there are BIP and BIPC.

Anand Chokkavelu: Of course, these aren't the only AI stocks out there. Hi, NVIDIA. Do any other areas of AI interest you guys?

Matt Frankel: I love that. You can't talk about AI and data centers without talking about the chipmakers. NVIDIA just hit $4 trillion today as the day we're recording this. NVIDIA is an amazing business, and it has more room to grow than people think just in the data center accelerator space, which is why they're getting so much attention for good reason. The market size is expected to roughly double over the next five years. That's not even to mention the opportunities they have in chips for autonomous vehicles, chips for gaming and more but I prefer AMD, which is often referred to as NVIDIA junior, but I don't think it should be. It's an incredibly well run company that's been a mistake to bet against in the past. As Intel found out the hard way, just having a dominant market share in an area of chip making is not always enough.

Jason Hall: An area of the market that I think could do really well some of the legacy enterprise software giants. I think there may be underappreciated winners from AI. I'll use Salesforce, ticker CRM as an example. It's really starting to get traction with things like it's data cloud and with AI agents. It's starting to sell. We're seeing really rapid uptake of those things and monetization. It has a benefit, an advantage over a lot of these AI start-ups that are just pure AI businesses. It's already a trusted integrated partner with hundreds of thousands of enterprises. It knows their business, it knows their challenges, regulations, opportunities and that credibility, I think, is an edge that we don't give enough credit to. We shouldn't underestimate switching costs, I guess, is what I'm really getting at. You look at Salesforce rates for about 21 times free cash flow and less than seven times sales. That's a really good opportunity. I think it equates to double digit returns if it can just grow revenue around 8-12% a year over the long term, which I think it can.

Anand Chokkavelu: We started to talk a bit about energy and the need for it with all this AI. Let's talk about the energy industry implications of the Big Beautiful Bill, which was signed into law last week. Jason, can you give us the summary of the energy portions?

Jason Hall: Summarizing anything's hard for me, but I'll try. I think the short version is the incentives for renewables, they're getting gutted, really. There's a 30% investment tax credit or ITC for short. The residential solar and battery systems portion of that had been in place to run through 2032 before gradually declining for a few years after that. That now expires. The systems have to be fully installed and commissioned by the end of this year. The commercial ITC for solar and wind projects was on a similar track, but now it expires at the end of 2027, but those projects must begin construction by July 4th of 2026 to qualify for that 30% tax credit. It also terminates the tax credit for new and used EVs, $7,500 for a new EV and up to 4,000 for a used EV. The purchase has to happen before September 30th of this year, so a couple of months. Lastly, it ends the US regulatory credits around vehicle emissions that automakers buy largely from Tesla. This is a significant and profitable revenue stream for EV makers that essentially is going away.

Matt Frankel: Jason, when you say renewables are being gutted, you're essentially referring to solar and wind, if I'm not mistaken. It's not gutting anything for nuclear power, correct?

Jason Hall: That's correct. These things you get are the pure renewables as we think of them.

Anand Chokkavelu: Let's put a fine point on this with specifics. Who are the relative winners and losers, Jason?

Jason Hall: This could be an hour long show, but I'll try to summarize it here. Thinking about the companies that are most directly affected, I think Canadian Solar, which is a large manufacturer of solar panels and energy storage, and they really largely target the utility market, but also residential is definitely a loser here. In the near term Sunrun, its business model is tied to these tax credits as an installer and to some degree, First Solar is also going to be affected. I don't think there's really any winners out of this when it comes to solar. But I think Enphase is probably still in a better position in the market may believe. Maybe First Solar as well. It's been through these battles before, and it has been a winner over the long term. If you look at wind, GE Vernova has been on a huge run. I love that business, but I don't love the stock right now. Tesla, I think maybe one of the bigger losers that investors haven't really considered. Last fiscal year, it earned 2.76 billion in revenue from regulatory credits. That's largely pure profit. Then there's also the loss of those EV tax credits for buyers. That might be offset from some incentives for US made autos that are part of the bill now that were part of the law, but I think this puts Tesla in a tougher spot. The tailwinds are not favorable for fossil fuels before this. This doesn't really change any of that. There's opportunities there, but not because of the law.

Matt Frankel: The reason I asked about nuclear a minute ago is because that's really what I see as the big winner here. I like some of the nuclear focused utility providers. Constellation Energy is one that comes to mind. One of their stated goals is to have the largest carbon free nuclear power fleet in the US by 2040. Jacob Solutions, they provide consulting and design services to the industry. Ticker symbol is J, so it's really easy to remember. They recently had some really big nuclear contract wins. I'm going to push back on Jason's Tesla as a big loser. One, they're American made cars. They qualify for that new auto loan interest deduction, so that could help offset what they're losing from the EV tax credits. They have a big energy storage business, and AI has not only giant power demands, but very variable power demands, and it's going to create a lot of need for large scale energy storage, and Tesla does that. I think they're worth watching.

Jason Hall: That's the one part of Tesla's business that's done extraordinarily well. Over the past few years, as the EV business has weakened, is that the battery business.

Anand Chokkavelu: Now quickly the big question, is solar still investable, Jason?

Jason Hall: I think so. We have a very US centric view, obviously, and the US is a massive important market for solar. But you look around the world and the regulatory environment is still largely favorable. I think if you're willing to write out plenty of volatility, that global opportunity is still really good. Businesses like Enphase, businesses like First Solar that have been through these battles before, and even a Canadian Solar, where it has a ton of projects that it's been funding to build on its books that the math just got changed for them in some big ways. The valuation is so cheap that I think that there's some opportunity there.

Matt Frankel: Taking a step back, the reason you have incentives for solar energy, for EVs, for all this, is because without them, they're not price competitive with the existing technologies. The gap has narrowed significantly, especially in solar over the past say 10 years as to the efficiency of the products themselves and just how much they cost. Eventually, solar is going to be able to stand on its own without incentives. But like Jason said, you have to be able to write out some volatility because that could be five years, that could be 10 years, that could be 20 years so eventually, it won't matter.

Anand Chokkavelu: After the break, we'll move from solar to something else that gets its power from the yellow sun. Stay right here. This is Motley Fool Money.

Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Anand Chokkavelu, here with Jason Hall and Matt Frankel. One of our Brothers Discovery's much anticipated latest reboot of Superman hits theaters on Friday. Hoping the Justice League can one day catch Disney's Marvel cinematic universe and hot on the heels of last week's Jurassic World Rebirth from Comcast. In honor of Summer movies, we're going to rank those three companies based on the value of their intellectual property. We'll throw in Netflix for good measure. Its headline this week was stating that half of its global audience now watches anime. Chokkavelu household certainly does with one piece. My kids have gotten me into it. For those unfamiliar, they have more episodes than the Simpsons. Matt, once again, your four choices are Warner Brothers Discovery. That includes the DC Universe, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Harry Potter, the Matrix, Looney Tunes, all our favorite HBO shows. You got Comcast with Shrek, Minions, Kung Fu Panda. You got Disney with Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar and Mickey Mouse. Finally, you got Netflix with things like Stranger Things, Bridgerton, Squid Game, newer Adam Sandler movies, and tons of niche content. Mentioned anime, you could argue whether that's niche content or not at this point. Whose intellectual property do you most value, Matt?

Matt Frankel: See, I said Disney. All four of these have excellent intellectual property, and I'll give you a more elaborate description there. In my household, you mentioned your household, how you have all these streaming things. We have a streaming service from all four of these. We have the Peacock service, which is a comcast product. We have HBO Max, which is a Warner Brothers discovery product. We have Disney Plus, and we have Netflix. Disney Plus also has Hulu attached to it. I ask myself, which is the least dispensable? I could cancel all the other ones before I'd be allowed to cancel Disney Plus for the other members of my household. Their film franchises are beyond compare. They have a much longer history of building intellectual property than all of these, especially in terms of valuables. Mickey Mouse is so old, it's not even intellectual property anymore. It's over 100-years-old, so I think it's actually in the public domain now. I have to say Disney, although it's a lot closer than I would have thought a few years ago.

Jason Hall: Yeah, if you had have asked me a few years ago, I absolutely would have said Disney, but I'm going to give the advantage to Netflix here. Let me contextualize that. I think the total value of Disney's IP is probably higher, but Netflix's ability to monetize it more effectively all over the world, I think, is even better than Disney's. I don't think any of these businesses in their studios have done a better job of making content that's relevant in more markets around the world than Netflix does. Let's be honest, I was able to watch Happy Gilmore with my eight year old son this weekend and I watched that on Netflix, that's bridging generations right there.

Anand Chokkavelu: Three things. One, Chokkavelu household is very excited for Happy Gilmore, too. Even my wife is in on it. Two, the Steamboat Willie era, Mickey Mouse is free to the world. The other ones aren't. I'm glad I'm not the only one with way too many streaming services, Matt. Let's talk about Last Place. Who are you cutting first, Matt?

Matt Frankel: Well, all those streaming services are still less than I was paying for direct TV a few years ago, so I think I'm doing all right. For me, the last place, it was between Comcast and Warner Brothers Discovery, both of which have amazing intellectual property, just to show you what a tight race this is. Comcast has universal. I was just in Orlando, and the universal theme parks are massive down there. But I have to put Comcast in last place. Just because Warner Brothers, I think the HBO Max acquisition was such a big advantage for them. They have some of the most valuable television assets of all time. More people watch the sopranos now than they did when it was originally on TV. It's a very valuable valuable asset, Game of Thrones. All these HBO shows that are among the highest rated shows of all time are part of their library. In addition to their film studio and all the other assets that we can't name because it's not that long of a show. I'd have to give Comcast last place, although, like I said, there's a good argument to be made for most of these to be in the top one or two.

Jason Hall: Yeah, I think that's fair. I agree with Matt that Comcast is the Number 4 here. But I don't think that's a flaw. It's just the nature of its business. About two thirds of its business comes from its cable subscriptions and high speed Internet. It's built differently than these other companies. I think it's fine that it's a little bit smaller.

Anand Chokkavelu: I will say, just to defend Comcast a little. I was thinking about my parents live in Florida, and it's high time we bring my two boys to Disney World or something like that. Honestly, the Universal theme park, the new one with Nintendo, Mario and the Harry Potter realm, it's close. We might we might prefer that one, but just to give a little love to Comcast and Universal. Jason Hall and Matt Frankel, we'll see you a little bit later in the show, but up next, we'll talk to the founder of one of the top five networks in the world, so stick around. This is Motley Fool Money. [MUSIC].

Welcome back to Motley Fool Money. I'm Anand Chokkavelu. Dave Schaeffer is the founder and CEO of Internet Service Provider Cogent Communications. Believe it or not, Cogent's the seventh successful company Dave Schaeffer has founded. Shaffer joined Fool analysts Asit Sharma and Sanmeet Deo to discuss how it deals with customers like Netflix and Meta platforms work and what keeps him up at night.

Asit Sharma: Well, hello, fools. I am Asit Sharma and I'm joined by fellow analyst Sanmeet Deo today, and our guest is Dave Schaeffer. Dave is CEO of Cogent Communications. He's also the founder of this company founded in 1999. Dave has grown Cogent Communications into a global tier one Internet service provider. It's ranked as one of the top five networks in the world. Dave is also a serial entrepreneur. He's founded six successful businesses prior to Cogent, and foolishly, he's also one of the longest serving founder CEOs in the public markets. We're delighted to have him with us today. Dave Schaeffer, welcome.

Dave Schaeffer: Hey, well, thanks for that great introduction.

Asit Sharma: To get started, let's jump in. Dave, for our members who might be unfamiliar with the ISP or Internet service provider industry, can you just explain what Cogent does and how it makes money?

Dave Schaeffer: Yeah, sure. Cogent provides Internet access to customers and to other service providers. I think virtually everyone uses the Internet, but rarely understands how it operates. Cogent has a network of approximately 99,000 route miles of intercity fiber that circumnavigates the globe and serves six continents. We then have an additional 34,000 route miles of fiber in 292 markets in 57 countries around the world. That network is solely built for the purpose of delivering Internet connectivity. When a customer buys Internet access, what they are really buying are interfaced routed bit miles connected to other networks. If you tried to sell a customer that they would have no idea what you're talking about. The average bit on the public Internet travels about 2,800 miles. It goes through eight and a half unique routers and 2.4 networks between origin and destination. Coaching carries approximately 25% of the world's Internet traffic on its network and has more other networks connected directly to it than any other network.

Asit Sharma: Yours is a primary network. Oftentimes, we hear of middlemen carriers in between ourselves sending that bit. Let's say I'm chatting with Sanmeet over Slack, sending him some bits as we have been exchanging through the day and him receiving that. But you are, I think we can think of Cogent as being the primary fiber that is the backbone of this information communication network, is that correct?

Dave Schaeffer: That is correct. We operate two very different customer segments, roughly 95% of our traffic, but only 37% of our revenue comes from selling to other service providers. We provide Internet connectivity to 8,200 access networks around the world and about 7,000 content generating businesses. Whether it be Bell Canada, British Telecom, China Telecom, Comcast or Cox. They could be customers of Cogent on the access side, where they aggregate literally billions of end users. Then on the other side, we sell connectivity to large content generating companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta, where they use us as their Internet provider. The second portion of Cogent's business is selling directly to end users. That represents about 63% of our revenues, but only approximately 5% of our total traffic. Cogent is an ISP, primarily in North America, where we connect to a billion square feet of office space, where we sell directly to end users. Then globally, we sell to multinational companies, oftentimes using last mile connections from third parties.

Asit Sharma: I always like to understand how exactly the companies I'm looking at make money. For example, for Netflix or Meta, or you pick a content provider, whoever it might be, when they work with you, explain that to me how they buy? Do they buy bandwidth in a package? Do they have a contract? How does that work? When they look to you to say, hey, we want to buy some bandwidth?

Dave Schaeffer: Yeah, so typically, we will provide them connections in multiple markets around the world. They will then have a minimum commitment level, and then above that, they pay on a metered basis. The way in which we bill is megabits per second at peak load over the course of the month. We bill at the 95th percentile, which means if you have a very spiky event that lasts less than 18 hours in a month, you don't pay for that incremental bandwidth but everything below that peak utilization, you pay a bill on a per megabit basis.

Dave Schaeffer: That is the way in which any service provider, whether it be an access network like Telkom South Africa, or a cable company like Rogers in Canada would buy from us. But for our corporate customers, the billing model is very different. For corporate customers, they typically buy in end user locations, not in data centers, and they are paying us a flat monthly fee for a fixed connection that is unmetered. I think of it as an all you can eat model.

Sanmeet Deo: There is a monthly recurring revenue that you get. It's just that with your network or your content customers, it could vary based on their usage. They could dial it up, dial it down, based on, like, this week, actually, they're dropping Squid Game, so they can anticipate they're going to need a lot of bandwidth versus maybe next month, their content late is a little lower, so they won't use up as much versus the corporate customers are paying more of a recurring, not based on volume. Is that accurate?

Dave Schaeffer: Is correct, Sanmeet. Virtually all of our revenue is predictable, even for those variable usage customers, there is oftentimes a very consistent pattern to their usage, and their bills do not vary by more than a couple percent month over month.

Sanmeet Deo: Dave, let's go on to looking at a review of recent performance. 2024 was a great year for Cogent. It crossed $1 billion in annual revenue. Can you just walk us through the highlights of your key business segments, wholesale, enterprise, net-centric? What drove the performance? Also did anything about the year surprise you as you went through it?

Dave Schaeffer: Two things. First of all our Internet based business represents 88% of our revenues across all three segments. We do derive about 12% of revenues from selling some adjacent services. Those being co location in our data center footprint. Optical transport or wavelength services and the leasing out of IPV4 addresses. We did generate about $1 billion in revenue in 2024 and 2024 was a year of significant transition for Cogent. Cogent had organically grown between 2005 and 2020 as a public company with no M&A at a compounded growth rate of 10.2% per year average over that period. We also were able to experience significant margin expansion during that period, where our EBITDA margins expanded at roughly 220 basis points per year over that same 15 year measurement period. When COVID hit, our corporate segment slowed materially because people were not going to offices, and as a result, Cogent's total growth rate had decreased to about 5% and our rate of margin expansion slowed to about 100 basis points. In May of '23, we acquired the former Sprint Long Distance Network, a Sprint Global Markets Group business from T-Mobile. That business was actually in decline and burning cash. In 2024, we significantly reduced that cash burn, and we were able to begin to repurpose some of the flow Sprint assets. In order to facilitate this transaction, T-Mobile paid us in cash over a 54 month period beginning in May of '23, $700 million. In 2024, a significant milestone for Cogent was our ability to take out much of that burn from that business and to actually accelerate the decline in that acquired business, as many of the products that were being sold or gross margin negative services.

Anand Chokkavelu: As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against. Don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows Motley Fool editorial standards is not approved by advertisers. Advertisements are sponsored content and provided for informational purposes only. See our full advertising disclosure. Please check out our show notes. Up next, we've got stocks on our radar. Stay right here. You're listening to Motley Fool Money.

I'm Anand Chokkavelu, joined again by Jason Hall and Matt Frankel. This week's been Prime Day week invented out of thin air in 2015 to boost sales. It's almost literally become Christmas in July for Amazon, and to a lesser extent, all the imitating retailers. Got me wondering. Is this the greatest feat of something from nothing marketing we've seen? If not, what's competing with it, Jason?

Jason Hall: I think it's not even something from nothing. I think they stole this idea. Christmas in July has been around literally since the 1900. I think they're getting maybe a little bit too much credit for just being a really big retailer, smart enough to say, hey, we're doing a sale when there was nothing else going on, and people were like, oh, it's a big sale. Well, people kept coming, so it just gets bigger every single year.

Matt Frankel: Before e-commerce, Jason's right, remember the Sunday paper that had all the flyers from all the stores. They'd have their semi annual sales. The President's Day weekend sales were the ones I remember that were the biggest deals ever that really were just meant to invigorate sales in a historically slow time of year. But really, this concept has been applied over and over. Think of how many tourist destinations create random festivals in the worst months to go, like, weather wise. I used to live in Key West, Florida, and the biggest party of the year is called Fantasy Fest. It was created to invigorate tourism during hurricane season. It's a concept that's worked over and over, and this is a big one.

Anand Chokkavelu: Dan.

Dan Boyd: I just wanted to jump in here and mention Father's Day and Mother's Day. Surprised that you guys didn't mention those. We're all fathers here on the podcast, so I know that we enjoy Father's Day, but, like, come on. They're nothing. They were just created to sell stuff.

Anand Chokkavelu: You're not going to mention Valentine's Day, Mr. Grinch.

Dan Boyd: Valentine's Day has somewhat historical significance with all the St. Valentine's stuff. I didn't want to go too far into it in my grumpiness Anand, but I guess we can throw that one on the fire.

Anand Chokkavelu: Speaking of Singles Day in China. The Alibaba took that cemented in the '90s. I think less commercy, but then it became more commercy. Two other things, Sears' catalog. Let's not forget. A lot of times Sears really is the Amazon before Amazon we forget about it because we see it at its late phases. It wasn't the first catalog, Tiffany, Montgomery Ward, they beat it to the punch. But when it was going, it was called the Consumer Bible. Then on a smaller scale, I'll give one more. Just shout out to Spotify rapped. They do a wonderful job inventing a thing to get us more engaged. Let's get to the stocks on our radar. Our man behind the glass, who we just recently, Dan Boyd, is going to hit you with a question. We're more likely, historically, an amusing comment. Jason, you're up first. What are you looking at this week?

Jason Hall: How about Church and Dwight? Ticker C-H-D. I don't know if we give some of these legacy consumer brands companies enough talk. What's Church and Dwight? You've probably heard of Arm & Hammer baking soda. But they also own a lot of other retail brands. You might be familiar with Orajel, if you've ever had a sore tooth or you have a baby that kind of thing comes up. They own Trojan, which is another brand that people might be familiar with. But here's my personal. Right now, I have a cold. I'm living and functioning off of Zicam. That's a Church and Dwight product that's really getting me through. Over the long term, it's been a great investment. Over the past 10 years, the stocks returned about 10.5% in total returns. That's underperformed the market, but it's better than the market's long term average. I think there might be something there.

Anand Chokkavelu: Dan, a question about Church and Dwight?

Dan Boyd: Not really a question, Anand, but more of a comment. Jason, you forgot to mention OxiClean in the Church and Dwight product catalog here as a parent of a three-year-old and a nine month old laundry is a very important thing on our house, and I don't think we could survive without that OxiClean.

Jason Hall: I will raise your three-year-old and nine month old with an eight and a half year old who plays soccer. My house runs on that stuff. I'm with you there.

Anand Chokkavelu: Matt, what's on your radar?

Matt Frankel: Well, now what's on my radar is the OxiClean that I have in the closet right there. But as far as the stock, I'd have to say SoFi. Ticker symbol S-O-F-I. Fantastic momentum. They've done a great job of creating capital white revenue streams in recent years. The growth is actually accelerating. They recently announced they're bringing crypto back to their platform now that the banks are allowed to do so. That's going to be a big driver. Not only crypto, they're going a step further. They're going to start bringing blockchain facilitated money transfers across border for free. They have lots of big plans. They recently started doing private equity investing for everybody. Guys like you and me can invest in companies like SpaceX and OpenAI that are pre IPO through SoFi's platform through venture funds. There's a lot going on in this business, and it's still a relatively small bank, and they aim to be a Top 10 bank within the next decade.

Anand Chokkavelu: Dan, question about SoFi.

Dan Boyd: Well, absolute F to name. SoFi, just terrible. I feel like smart people like them could have come up with something better, but private equity investing is very interesting, Matt, though a little scared to me without the reporting regulations that public companies have to do.

Matt Frankel: I do think it was a natural thing, though, now that all these companies are waiting longer than ever to go public. SpaceX is a massive business. OpenAI has a, $100 billion plus valuation. There's a lot to like there and a lot of potential.

Anand Chokkavelu: Dan, which company you're putting on your watch list, OxiClean or private equity stuff.

Dan Boyd: I'm going to go with Church and Dwight for some of that beautiful OxiClean.

Anand Chokkavelu: That's all for this week. See you next time.

John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Anand Chokkavelu, CFA has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, First Solar, Microsoft, Netflix, Salesforce, SoFi Technologies, Walt Disney, and Warner Bros. Discovery. Asit Sharma has positions in Amazon, Digital Realty Trust, Microsoft, Nvidia, Salesforce, Upstart, and Walt Disney. Dan Boyd has positions in Amazon and Walt Disney. Jason Hall has positions in Brookfield Asset Management, Brookfield Infrastructure, Brookfield Renewable, Enphase Energy, First Solar, Nvidia, SoFi Technologies, Upstart, and Walt Disney and has the following options: short January 2026 $27 calls on SoFi Technologies, short January 2027 $32.50 puts on Upstart, and short January 2027 $40 puts on Enphase Energy. Matt Frankel has positions in Amazon, Brookfield Asset Management, Digital Realty Trust, SoFi Technologies, Upstart, and Walt Disney and has the following options: short December 2025 $95 calls on Upstart. Sanmeet Deo has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, Netflix, and Tesla. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Brookfield Asset Management, Constellation Energy, Digital Realty Trust, Equinix, First Solar, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Netflix, Nvidia, Salesforce, Tesla, Upstart, Walt Disney, and Warner Bros. Discovery. The Motley Fool recommends Alibaba Group, Brookfield Renewable, Comcast, Enphase Energy, Ge Vernova, and T-Mobile US and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Key Points

• SoFi is rapidly adding users to its banking platform.

• The company's monetization products are helping it finally generate a profit.

• It still has plenty of room to grow its profits in the years ahead.

Smartphones and the internet are enabling a rapid change in the consumer banking sector. Out are the stodgy bank branches and long waiting times. In are digital-only financial services operated solely through smartphone applications.

One of the leading online bank disrupters is SoFi Technologies (NASDAQ: SOFI), which now has close to 11 million users of its consumer finance tools and is quickly growing its earnings power.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Learn More »

Shares of SoFi have rocketed 181% higher in the last 12 months. Does that make it a millionaire-maker stock you need to add to your portfolio today?

Rapid customer adoption with high-yield savings

Many readers will know of SoFi for its high-yield savings accounts. As of this writing on July 2, savers can earn 3.8% annual interest when depositing money with the company, which blows the rates offered by the legacy banks out of the water.

This has led to major deposit inflows to the platform. Just last quarter, the company added $2.2 billion in banking deposits, which now fund the majority of its loan portfolio.

It's able to offer such high interest rates because it is an online-only bank built with modern digital tools. It does not have major overhead costs with bank branches, leading to tons of annual cost savings.

Plus, legacy banks take advantage of customers' lethargy by understanding most will not take their deposits elsewhere even if their bank account is earning a measly interest rate. With the rise of digital banking and easy money-transfer services like Zelle, it is now much more convenient to move your money from one bank account to another.

This is why so many customers are banking with SoFi. It now has 10.9 million members using one if its financial services products, up from under 1 million in 2019.

A comprehensive consumer finance platform

After attracting customers to SoFi Bank with high interest rates paid on deposits, the company's next step is to sell them on new financial services to generate revenue and loan income. SoFi aims to become a one-stop shop for an individual's personal finance needs. Its products include credit cards, personal loans, an investing brokerage, insurance, and more.

Now, it is building a membership program called SoFi Plus, where users either sign up for direct deposit or pay a $10 monthly subscription fee. In return, members can qualify for cash back on credit card purchases, have SoFi provide a match on some deposits to investment accounts, and get to use SoFi's wealth management tools. The company wants to be the backbone of someone's personal financial needs and has finally built out the full suite of products needed to do so.

Revenue and net earnings have zoomed higher because of all these new products that its members are adopting. Adjusted net revenue grew 33% year over year last quarter to $771 million, driven by 101% growth in financial services and 25% growth in lending. SoFi's credit metrics on loans are performing well, too, which was a big concern for a fast-growing lender getting into personal loans.

Lastly, we cannot forget SoFi's platform that outsources financial technology services to third parties, such as issuing credit cards. The technology platform generated over $100 million in revenue last quarter with strong profit margins.

SOFI Net Income (TTM) data by YCharts; TTM = trailing 12 months.

Is SoFi a millionaire-maker stock?

Due to its increasing scale in lending, payments, and other services like investing, SoFi is gaining a ton of operating leverage and generating a profit. Net income was $71 million last quarter and $482 million over the last 12 months after many years of negative earnings.

The digital banking model is working now that SoFi has sufficient scale, even as it invests heavily in product and growth. Last quarter, it spent $156 million on product development and $238 million on marketing.

I expect even more leverage on these expenses in the years ahead as SoFi gets larger, leading to improved profit margins. It is hard to pinpoint exactly what earnings can grow to, but we can make some rough estimates.

If revenue doubles or triples -- which could happen somewhat quickly due to how fast SoFi is currently growing -- then earnings may go up fourfold or fivefold because of the leverage over its fixed cost base. That could lead to annual net income of $2 billion to $3 billion a year.

Today, SoFi has a market cap of $20 billion. That would give the stock a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 10 if the company generates $2 billion in annual net income, which is cheap for a fast-growing company, despite the fact that banks typically get a below-average earnings multiple. For this reason, SoFi still looks like a millionaire-maker stock after rising close to 200% in the last 12 months.

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 Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $699,558!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $976,677!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,060% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 180% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of June 30, 2025

Brett Schafer has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Key Points

• SoFi is a young and agile finance company that focuses on the young professional market.

• It recently announced that it's going to bring back cryptocurrency trading and other tools on its platform.

• It's having success expanding its platform beyond its core lending segment.

As a young tech-focused growth enterprise, SoFi Technologies (NASDAQ: SOFI) stock usually reacts to news about company operations with big moves -- both positive and negative. The company just made an announcement that sent its stock soaring, and now looks like a good time to buy shares.

Let's see what's happening and why the future looks a bit brighter for SoFi.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »

Another way SoFi is standing out

SoFi is a fast-growing digital bank. It's attracting new members at a rapid pace, drawing them in with its low fees, easy-to-use interface, and financial innovation. Since it's small and digital, it's more agile than the standard U.S. bank, and it has a greater ability to try and implement new programs. It's also targeting a young and mobile population that's looking for a bit of a different financial experience, and SoFi's new products play into that market.

SoFi started out as a loan provider for university students, and the student and young professional market is still its target. These are people just starting out on their financial journeys, but they're educated and upwardly mobile, and catching them at this stage should be an excellent long-term growth driver. The company often points out that 90% of deposits come from direct deposit, leading to a strong and increasing cash stream.

SoFi frequently raises its own bar in terms of services and rolls out new and useful products for this population. For instance, it has offered account holders access to several initial public offerings (IPOs) that are usually restricted to institutional investors. It also offers investment access to a private fund that invests in SpaceX. It also has a robo-advisor for investors in partnership with BlackRock.

SoFi's latest development is that it plans to launch new cryptocurrency tools on its platform. This isn't the company's first foray into cryptocurrency. It previously offered trading on its platform, but it closed that service down and migrated customer accounts to other platforms while it focused on its banking products. It had to meet regulatory guidelines to get its bank charter, which prohibited cryptocurrency trading.

Now it's bringing cryptocurrency trading back, as per new guidelines initiated by the Trump administration, and it's also planning several other crypto-related services. Management wants to harness the power of digital currency to offer cheaper and more functional services for its members, eventually offering a full platform for payments, investing, and transferring money.

SoFi management said the bank will start out with global remittances, a type of international wire transfer alternative. Members will be able to automate payments in the SoFi app for quick and easy transfers sent over a blockchain network, which SoFi says is lower-cost and faster than traditional methods. It boasts its varied assortment of money-moving services, which already includes Zelle, peer-to-peer payments, ACH, and self-service wires, and will soon include self-service international money transfer and stablecoins.

Can SoFi become a major player in banking?

SoFi wants to be a real player in U.S. banking and thinks it can become a top-10 financial institution. That starts with its standard banking services, like savings accounts and loans. Investors are excited about its loan business as it continues to grow at a healthy pace and demonstrate improved credit metrics. Lower interest rates are helping.

SoFi is monetizing its core clientele by expanding into other financial services, which are fee-based and low-cost. The financial services segment is growing much faster than the whole, and it's catching up to the lending segment. Here's what it looked like in the 2025 first quarter.

Metric	FY 2025 Q1 Total	Growth (YOY)
Adjusted net revenue	$771 million	33%
Lending segment revenue	$414 million	25%
Financial services segment revenue	$303 million	101%

Data source: SoFi quarterly reports. YOY = year over year.

I suspect that cryptocurrency services alone won't add substantially to SoFi's revenue, but having these added services makes the overall platform more attractive to more customers and better positions the company to grab market share as the nature of the industry changes.

As its price continues to rise, SoFi stock is becoming more expensive. It trades at a forward P/E ratio of 40. However, it warrants this premium for its high growth rate and incredible potential. If you plan to hold SoFi stock for a few years, it could be a great addition to your portfolio. However, considering its elevated valuation, you might want to employ a dollar-cost averaging strategy to potentially benefit from a better buy-in price.

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 Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $699,558!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $976,677!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,060% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 180% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of June 30, 2025

Jennifer Saibil has positions in SoFi Technologies. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

In this video, I will talk about the recent updates regarding SoFi Technologies (NASDAQ: SOFI). Watch the short video to learn more, consider subscribing, and click the special offer link below.

*Stock prices used were from the trading day of June 30, 2025. The video was published on June 30, 2025.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »

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 Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $692,914!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $963,866!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,050% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 179% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of June 30, 2025

Neil Rozenbaum has positions in SoFi Technologies. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Neil is an affiliate of The Motley Fool and may be compensated for promoting its services. If you choose to subscribe through his link, he will earn some extra money that supports his channel. His opinions remain his own and are unaffected by The Motley Fool.

After a nearly two-year hiatus from the cryptocurrency industry, banking and finance app SoFi (NASDAQ: SOFI) recently announced that it will be getting back into the crypto market, and in an even bigger way than before.

SoFi made two specific announcements. First, it reported the return of crypto trading to its app -- a service it had offered until late 2023. Second, the bank announced that it would leverage the capabilities of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology to facilitate rapid international money transfers. And perhaps most importantly, SoFi called this the "first of many planned crypto and blockchain innovations across [their] products and services." Both of these newly announced capabilities are expected to launch later in 2025.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Learn More »

When it comes to cross-border money transfers, the goal is to create a more seamless and low-cost experience than currently exists in the market. And with the return of crypto trading, SoFi's goal is to gradually expand the platform, including offering stablecoins, allowing members to borrow against cryptocurrencies, and introducing staking features.

The goal is to equip the SoFi app with more financial service capabilities than any other app. But will crypto and its related capabilities become a major revenue driver that will move the stock?

This isn't SoFi's first crypto venture

To clarify, SoFi used to offer cryptocurrency trading in its app but closed it down a few years ago, mainly due to potential regulatory issues involving chartered banks providing cryptocurrency services to customers. This is also why you generally haven't seen any major banks roll out cryptocurrency trading platforms of their own.

Specifically, SoFi became a bank in January 2022, and as part of the approval process, it was forced to refrain from engaging in any cryptocurrency-related activities without specific approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).

However, SoFi says that clarification provided by the OCC recently makes it practical for nationally chartered banks to "provide crypto custody and execution services on behalf of customers, hold dollar deposits serving as reserves backing stablecoins in certain circumstances, engage in certain stablecoin activities to facilitate payment transactions, and more."

Will it be a needle-mover for SoFi stock?

On the one hand, it's important to point out that back in 2023, when it shut down crypto trading, SoFi specifically said that it wasn't a material part of its business. On the other hand, it's fair to say that interest in cryptocurrency trading has once again surged in popularity since SoFi shut down its original cryptocurrency platform in late 2023.

It's unclear how SoFi's crypto trading pricing will be structured, but it will likely make money through either a percentage-based transaction fee or a spread between the buy and sell prices of each digital asset.

To be clear, I don't see crypto trading becoming one of the company's major revenue streams anytime soon. But adding this feature to its ecosystem could make SoFi's platform more attractive to potential customers interested in crypto, who may also become banking customers, loan customers, and so forth.

The bigger news is likely the ability to send money internationally in a fully automated and low-cost manner directly through the SoFi app. While this is technically a crypto-enabled feature, it will likely appeal to a broader group than just cryptocurrency fans, as the transactions will be initiated in U.S. dollars. And this would be a unique feature among finance apps. With over $90 billion in international transfers sent annually from the U.S., a better way to do it could be a major draw.

SoFi's customer base is growing quickly. It added more than 800,000 members during the first quarter alone, an all-time high for the company. If adding cryptocurrency trading and related services can help keep this growth going -- or even accelerate it -- it could be a big win for investors.

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 Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $713,547!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $966,931!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,062% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 177% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of June 23, 2025

Matt Frankel has positions in SoFi Technologies. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

SoFi Technologies (NASDAQ: SOFI) hasn't been an easy stock to own, with the price bouncing up and down. Case in point: Its 52-week high is 206% above its 52-week low. However, shares have soared 154% in the past 12 months (as of June 26). The market is warming up to this digital banking leader.

This fintech stock is extremely volatile, which might continue to be the case. But shares still trade well below $20. Should investors add SoFi to their portfolios at these levels?

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »

SoFi continues to innovate

SoFi has found tremendous success by focusing on providing a superior user experience to its customer base. This means leveraging data, technology, and the internet to make it extremely easy to manage one's finances. It helps that the business isn't bogged down by outdated infrastructure or physical bank branches. This makes it easy to put the customer first.

With that in mind, SoFi has prioritized constantly innovating. For instance, in March 2023, the company introduced FDIC insurance on up to $2 million in deposits by partnering with other financial institutions. This is eight times the standard $250,000 that's typically insured. SoFi's deposit base soared from $1.2 billion at the end of the first quarter of 2022 to $27.3 billion now, a phenomenal growth rate.

Recently, SoFi announced plans to tap the global remittance market. Later this year, customers will be able to use Zelle, ACH, stablecoins, or other methods to send money across borders. The business says that funds will be transferred via blockchain networks, and that the process will be cheaper and faster than the traditional systems widely used today.

After shutting down the service in December 2023 to comply with regulations, SoFi is reintroducing cryptocurrency trading on its platform. And there are plans to seriously expand the offerings down the road.

"Over time, SoFi intends to offer stablecoins and a wide range of other services, such as providing members the ability to borrow against their crypto assets, expanding payment options, and introducing new staking features, as well as blockchain and digital asset infrastructure capabilities for other companies offered by Galileo, SoFi's technology platform," the press release reads.

These planned initiatives should keep the growth engine rumbling. SoFi has a history of strong customer and revenue gains. I see no reason why that won't continue in the years ahead.

SoFi is poised to be a huge winner

This stock has crushed the market in the past year, as momentum remains hot for SoFi among investors. But for those who have been on the sidelines, don't let that outperformance discourage you. I don't believe investors have missed the boat.

Executives think the bottom line is on an impressive upward trajectory. SoFi reported a $0.10 adjusted earnings per share (EPS) loss in 2023, a major improvement from the year before. But by 2026, the leadership team predicts positive $0.68 (at the midpoint). In the years after that, the forecast is for annualized growth of between 20% and 25%. The combination of rapid revenue gains and a scalable business model makes it easy to be bullish.

SoFi has exceeded Wall Street's EPS expectations in the last 11 straight quarters. Clearly, management has a history of under-promising and over-delivering. This gives me confidence that the company will hit its long-term profit targets, and maybe even surprise to the upside.

As of June 26, the stock trades at a P/E ratio of 39.8. On the surface, this obviously doesn't look like a bargain deal. After all, the S&P 500 index is about 40% cheaper. However, if you believe, like I do, that profits will increase substantially in the years ahead, then SoFi looks like a no-brainer buy below $20 per share.

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 Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $713,547!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $966,931!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,062% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 177% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of June 23, 2025

Neil Patel has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Although it may be counterintuitive, it makes sense to buy stocks when they're down. Getting a great deal can lead to huge gains that you might not see if a stock is overpriced.

There are several caveats to that, though. Most importantly, it only works if you can find amazing stocks that you can be confident about. Stocks that are falling because there's trouble on the horizon could be value traps.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »

If you're looking for top stocks that are down right now but could soar soon, Shopify (NASDAQ: SHOP), SoFi Technologies (NASDAQ: SOFI), Revolve Group (NYSE: RVLV), Nu Holdings (NYSE: NU), and RH (NYSE: RH) are excellent choices.

1. Shopify: 37% off highs

Shopify is a leader in e-commerce, but it doesn't sell products; it sells e-commerce services like websites and payment processing. It has moved from a model catering to small businesses to a full-service commerce model with components and packages to meet demand at every stage and size.

It's growing rapidly as well as becoming highly profitable. In the 2025 first quarter, revenue increased 27% year over year, and operating income was up 136%. It's benefiting from the organic tailwinds of increasing e-commerce sales, and it has other growth drivers in launching new features and expanding internationally.

Shopify stock fell when pandemic-fueled growth began to decelerate and it built out too quickly before demand dropped. It's gotten itself into great shape, though, and it's likely to surpass its previous highs and climb higher.

2. SoFi: 40% off highs

SoFi is an online bank that's growing quickly, attracting new members at high rates and becoming profitable. Adjusted net revenue increased 33% year over year in the first quarter, and it added 800,000 new members. The low-cost, fee-based financial services segment increased 101% over last year, and that's boosting profits. Adjusted earnings per share (EPS) were up from $0.02 last year to $0.06 this year in the quarter.

The company has expanded from its roots as a loan business, and that's helping protect it while interest rates have been high. But the loan business is improving, too, with lower default and delinquency rates in the first quarter.

SoFi stock soared to astronomical valuations when it went public in a strong bull market, and it couldn't sustain its unreasonable levels when inflation hit and interest rates were raised. But it's rallying now, and it has incredible long-term opportunities.

3. Revolve: 76% off highs

Revolve sells clothing, shoes, and accessories on its fashion websites, and it uses artificial intelligence (AI) to drive sales and savings. It works with celebrities and social media influencers to reach its target audience of young, stylish shoppers, and it has developed a robust digital presence and loyal following. Sales had been declining when inflation was climbing, but active customers and orders placed have continued to rise, and sales and profits are climbing again. In the first quarter, sales increased 10% year over year, while net income rose 5%. As usual, active customers increased, 6% year over year, and total orders placed were up 4%.

As more companies start to imitate its digital, AI, and social media model, Revolve has a first-mover's edge. When the economy is in a better place, Revolve is well positioned to thrive.

4. Nu: 23% off highs

Nu is an all-digital bank and financial services company operating in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. It is a leader in disrupting the traditional banking sector in its region, and it's bringing in customers at a rapid pace. It already has more than half of the adult population in Brazil as members, but it's still adding new ones to the tune of about 1 million monthly, and this is in part because it has gone beyond its original core customers who couldn't access the banking system, which has high barriers to entry, and it's now targeting a more affluent consumer base. As fast as it's growing in its hometown of Brazil, it's growing even faster in Mexico and Colombia, and it sees international expansion down the line.

It reports high growth every quarter, with a 40% sales increase year over year in the first quarter. Net income increased 74% to $557 million, and the interest-earning portfolio was up 62%.

Nu fell earlier this year when investors were worried about high inflation and instability in Brazil, and on the news that Buffett sold out of it. But it's back in favor with the market because it doesn't have exposure to U.S. tariffs, and there's massive long-term potential.

5. RH: 74% off highs

RH is a luxury furnishings retailer, but it's styling itself these days as a global luxury brand. It has a small list of global galleries, most of which are in affluent cities in the U.S., but it's been expanding with stores in the United Kingdom and other large European cities. It also owns several restaurants and offers "experiences" like a guesthouse and yacht rentals.

It has a fair amount of resilience since it targets an upscale crowd, but even that hasn't been able to pull it through inflation without damage as consumers put discretionary items on hold. However, it might be on the rebound. It reported solid results in the 2025 fiscal first quarter, including a 12% year-over-year increase in revenue and a 7% adjusted operating margin.

It may take time for RH to get back to its previous highs, but as it turns a corner, now looks like a good time to buy.

Should you invest $1,000 in Shopify right now?

Before you buy stock in Shopify, 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 Shopify wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $664,089!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $881,731!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 994% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 172% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of June 23, 2025

Jennifer Saibil has positions in Nu Holdings and SoFi Technologies. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Revolve Group and Shopify. The Motley Fool recommends Nu Holdings and RH. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

SoFi Technologies (NASDAQ: SOFI) has been a major winner in the past 12 months. Shares are up just over 100% since early June 2024, highlighting how the business is winning over investors in remarkable fashion. But to be fair, it has been a volatile stretch.

This leading digital bank hardly flies under the radar anymore. It's doing a great job bringing on new customers, especially as it continues innovating with new products. Shares currently trade 45% below their peak, though.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Learn More »

Investors should consider what the future might hold. Where will this top fintech stock be in five years?

Becoming a top 10 financial institution

CEO Anthony Noto, who has an impressive background working for the National Football League, Goldman Sachs, and Twitter (now X), has high hopes for his company. "Meeting all of a person's financial needs in one place with world-class products delivered seamlessly and digitally gives us a massive advantage," he said on the 2024 third-quarter earnings call last October. "This is why you will often hear me say it's a matter of when, not if, we become a top 10 financial institution."

It's not exactly clear what metric Noto is focused on with this goal. It could be market cap, revenue, or assets, for example. Nonetheless, it's strikingly clear that SoFi still has a long way to go.

According to Federal Reserve data, the 10th largest bank in the U.S. by assets is State Street. As of March 31, it had $368 billion in total assets on its balance sheet, more than 10 times bigger than SoFi.

It's part of every CEO's job to drive investor excitement. But from Noto's perspective, it's easy to be optimistic about what SoFi could look like in the future. That's because growth has been superb.

The business added 800,000 net new customers last quarter, with the total count approaching 11 million. And SoFi's first-quarter adjusted net revenue of $771 million was more than it brought in for all of 2020.

I'm confident that by 2030, SoFi will be a much larger financial services entity. It should have more customers, more products, higher revenue, and higher profits. Based on the company's success, it's difficult to think any other way.

However, there could still be some risks that affect SoFi's success over the next five years. For one, the culture of product innovation could weaken and pressure customer growth.

What's more, management could loosen up lending standards and its risk management in the name of faster expansion. So far, though, there's nothing concerning, but investors should be mindful of risk factors.

SoFi stock in 2030

As of this writing, this stock trades at a price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) of 34.9. This appears to be an expensive valuation, but there's more to it than meets the eye.

Management believes that profits will soar. It's expected that in 2026, earnings per share (EPS) will be $0.68 at the midpoint. And in the years after that, the company thinks EPS will grow at a compound annual rate of 20% to 25%. Based on these forecasts, EPS will total $1.25 in 2030.

Let's assume the P/E contracts to 23.4 in 2030, which is the current multiple of the S&P 500. I believe this could be a conservative view. Then, we're looking at a stock price of $29.25 at the end of the decade.

Of course, this is a rough estimate, but it shows that SoFi Technologies shares could return 105% in the next five years. No one will argue with that kind of performance.

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 Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $657,871!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $875,479!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 998% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 174% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of June 9, 2025

Neil Patel has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Goldman Sachs Group. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Financial services is arguably the most important industry in our economy, as the movement of money, as well as saving and lending activities, is vital for individuals, businesses, and governments. But alongside the massive banks we're all familiar with, there are smaller businesses to pay attention to.

In the past decade, the integration of technology within this sector in an effort to better serve customers has become hard to ignore. And this ongoing trend has investment implications for those looking to put money to work in this area.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »

Here are the smartest fintech stocks investors can buy with $500 right now.

PayPal

The first fintech enterprise that should be on your radar is PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL). The business has been at the forefront of digital payments for more than two decades, and it continues to be a leader in the space.

PayPal has 436 million active accounts. During the first quarter, it handled a whopping $1.7 trillion in annualized total payment volume, showcasing its impressive scale. There are multiple segments under the hood, like the PayPal-branded checkout solution, Braintree for merchants, and Venmo. It's the latter that is exhibiting the fastest growth lately, driven by the notable adoption of the Venmo debit card product.

While there is intense competition in the payments landscape, PayPal has carved out a successful niche. That's because it has a strong brand name in the industry that individuals and merchants have come to trust. As a two-sided platform, the business benefits from a powerful network effect.

PayPal's financial situation is robust. The balance sheet is in solid shape, with $15.8 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities compared to $12.6 billion in debt. Profitability is worth mentioning, as the operating margin was a stellar 19.6% in Q1. For this full year, the company is expecting to produce $6 billion to $7 billion in free cash flow. The plan is to spend $6 billion just on share repurchases.

The market has soured on this company, as the stock currently trades 77% off its peak from July 2021 (as of June 3). This gives investors a cheap forward P/E ratio of 14 to take advantage of. That's a good deal for a growing and profitable payments leader.

SoFi Technologies

Another fintech stock to buy right now is SoFi Technologies (NASDAQ: SOFI), the budding digital bank that's continuing to register fantastic growth. During the first quarter, the business posted a year-over-year revenue gain of 20% while adding 800,000 net new customers to the mix. As of March 31, SoFi had amassed 10.9 million customers, up tenfold in the past five years.

Clearly, the company's products and services are a hit. That's because SoFi is finding success with a goal that seems to emphasize utilizing technology to provide an exceptional user experience when it comes to handling one's finances. The average customer uses 1.5 different products, so there remains a significant opportunity to cross-sell.

A new development is that SoFi is now firmly profitable. Diluted earnings per share (EPS) totaled $0.06 during Q1, marking the sixth straight quarter of positive generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) net income. The leadership team believes this is just the beginning. After forecasting $0.68 (at the midpoint) of EPS in 2026, the expectation is for this bottom-line figure to increase at a compound annual rate of between 20% and 25% in the years after.

It won't always be smooth sailing. Something all banks deal with is cyclicality. Should there be an economic downturn in the U.S., it's likely that SoFi's robust growth and improving profitability will take a hit. This should be temporary, though.

As of this writing, investors must be comfortable paying a forward P/E ratio of 49 to add the stock to their portfolios. At first glance, this doesn't look like a bargain deal. However, when you consider the earnings trajectory, the valuation becomes more compelling.

Should you invest $1,000 in PayPal right now?

Before you buy stock in PayPal, 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 PayPal wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $669,517!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $868,615!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 792% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 171% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of June 2, 2025

Neil Patel has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends PayPal. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2027 $42.50 calls on PayPal and short June 2025 $77.50 calls on PayPal. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Market volatility over the past few months could lead investors to sell and take their winnings home before things get worse. But investing success means riding out the short-term waves and holding on to long-term winners. The S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) has already made up whatever it lost in value earlier this year, and it would have been a shame to have sold at a low and missed out on the quick rebound.

If you can hold on for at least 20 years, you can choose excellent stocks and let them work their magic on your investments. Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), Shopify (NASDAQ: SHOP), MercadoLibre (NASDAQ: MELI), and SoFi Technologies (NASDAQ: SOFI) are four monster stocks that should reward you well over the next 20 years.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Learn More »

1. Amazon: E-commerce and AI

Amazon is the leader in e-commerce and cloud computing, two massive growth industries. It has about 40% of the U.S. market share in e-commerce and about 30% of the global market for cloud computing. Both of these industries are growing organically, and Amazon is benefiting from these organic tailwinds.

Shoppers know Amazon as the king of e-commerce, and the company is heavily investing in keeping its lead there. But management has identified generative artificial intelligence (AI), primarily through the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud-computing business, as its main growth driver over the next few years.

Amazon said it would invest upwards of $100 billion in 2025 alone to keep building out this business, and it offers a huge assortment of features and tools to every size and stripe of client. AWS itself generated a 17% year-over-year increase in sales in the first quarter and has a $117 billion annualized revenue run rate. Management expects that with generative AI, that rate will increase.

"We thought AWS had the chance to ultimately be a multihundred-billion-dollar revenue run rate business," CEO Andy Jassy recently said of the pre-generative AI opportunity. "We now think it could be even larger."

Advertising and streaming continue to grow and add value to the business, and Amazon is investing in new concepts like Zoox autonomous vehicles and Project Kuiper broadband. It has a huge growth runway, and its stock should keep rewarding investors over many years.

2. Shopify: The other e-commerce giant

You won't see Shopify on any list of highest e-commerce sales because it doesn't sell products, it sells e-commerce services, like websites and payment processing. But its gross merchandise volume (GMV) is similar to Amazon's e-commerce sales, giving you a picture of Shopify's important and dominant position in the e-commerce space.

Shopify is also benefiting from the organic tailwinds of e-commerce growing as a percentage of retail sales. According to eMarketer, e-commerce accounted for 20.3% of retail sales in 2024, and that's expected to increase to 23% by 2027. Even that's still a small percentage, and with each percentage point translating into trillions of dollars, Shopify has a long growth runway.

It also continues to identify new ways to expand its market share and help its clients increase their sales. It has gone from a platform helping small businesses get online to targeting large businesses with individual e-commerce components. It offers a full-service omnichannel platform combining physical and digital retail, and it's making a bigger move into international, where there are several bigger players. International sales only accounted for 30% of the total in Q1, and that could be a huge growth driver in the coming years.

Patient investors should expect Shopify to be a top stock as it keeps growing and innovating for the foreseeable future.

3. MercadoLibre: The Latin American tech disruptor

MercadoLibre is similar to Amazon in that its core business is e-commerce, but it has dipped its toes into several other businesses that are driving fantastic growth. It operates in Latin America and offers a host of digital services in both e-commerce and financial technology. It consistently reports strong growth across metrics, such as a 40% increase in GMV year over year and a 72% increase in total payment volume in the 2025 first quarter.

The opportunity here is enormous because Latin America lags many other global regions in both e-commerce and digital penetration. In fact, 85% of sales are still offline, and some of its regions are underbanked, leading to a greater necessity for digital financial services.

Because its regions are still in their early innings in its industries, there are so many levers MercadoLibre can pull to move growth. It's doing so step by step, bringing in new, unique visitors to its ecosystem and generating higher purchase frequency. It's launching all sorts of innovative services, such as a new, free streaming initiative powered by its growing ad business.

MercadoLibre has a wide-open runway and tons of opportunities to grow its business and stock gains.

4. SoFi: The modern way to bank

SoFi is a digital financial disruptor offering all banking services online. It targets the young professional who's just starting their financial journey and appreciates SoFi's tech focus and easy-to-use interface.

Although its core business is lending, it has successfully expanded into a large array of financial services like bank accounts and investing tools. These are fee-based products that have low costs and are becoming incredibly profitable.

Even the lending business is bouncing back as interest rates go lower, and lending revenue increased 25% year over year in Q1. Financial services, though, more than doubled, and contribution profit increased 299%.

It's adding members at a high rate and generating higher engagement through cross-selling and upselling, and SoFi has a massive growth opportunity over the next 20 years as it gets closer to its ambition of becoming a top-10 U.S. bank.

Should you invest $1,000 in Amazon right now?

Before you buy stock in Amazon, 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 Amazon wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $653,389!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $830,492!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 982% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 171% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of May 19, 2025

John Mackey, former CEO of Whole Foods Market, an Amazon subsidiary, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Jennifer Saibil has positions in MercadoLibre and SoFi Technologies. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, MercadoLibre, and Shopify. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

SoFi Technologies (NASDAQ: SOFI) is shifting to a more asset-light business model, which could lessen the risk for investors in its stock.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »

*Stock prices used were the afternoon prices of May 25, 2025. The video was published on May 27, 2025.

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 Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $653,389!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $830,492!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 982% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 171% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of May 19, 2025

Parkev Tatevosian, CFA has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Parkev Tatevosian is an affiliate of The Motley Fool and may be compensated for promoting its services. If you choose to subscribe through his link, he will earn some extra money that supports his channel. His opinions remain his own and are unaffected by The Motley Fool.

SoFi Technologies (NASDAQ: SOFI) gave investors critical insights you will not want to miss.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »

*Stock prices used were the afternoon prices of May 24, 2025. The video was published on May 26, 2025.

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 Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $653,389!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $830,492!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 982% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 171% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of May 19, 2025

Parkev Tatevosian, CFA has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Parkev Tatevosian is an affiliate of The Motley Fool and may be compensated for promoting its services. If you choose to subscribe through his link, he will earn some extra money that supports his channel. His opinions remain his own and are unaffected by The Motley Fool.

SoFi's (NASDAQ: SOFI) CEO, Anthony Noto, said on the company's first-quarter 2025 conference call that the company will invest heavily in crypto and the blockchain over the next few years. Is SoFi becoming a crypto company? Travis Hoium digs into what we know in this video.

*Stock prices used were end-of-day prices of May 9, 2025. The video was published on May 10, 2025.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »

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 Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $614,911!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $714,958!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 907% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 163% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of May 5, 2025

Travis Hoium has positions in Coinbase Global, Robinhood Markets, and SoFi Technologies. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Coinbase Global. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Travis Hoium is an affiliate of The Motley Fool and may be compensated for promoting its services. If you choose to subscribe through their link, they will earn some extra money that supports their channel. Their opinions remain their own and are unaffected by The Motley Fool.

Banking disruptor SoFi Technologies (NASDAQ: SOFI) has grown at an impressive pace in roughly four years since it became a publicly traded company. The company's membership base has more than tripled since the end of 2021, SoFi's banking platform has grown from zero at the start of 2022 to more than $27 billion in consumer deposits today, and its adjusted EBITDA in 2024 was about 23 times what it was just three years prior.

Even after this fantastic growth, SoFi remains a relatively small financial institution. It is currently the 63rd largest U.S. bank by assets, according to Federal Reserve data. Not only does it have tons of room to grow its customer base and relationships, but there are also some extremely promising growth drivers that investors should know about.

Is SoFi ready to jump to the next level?

In the first quarter of 2025, SoFi grew its revenue by 33% year-over-year, posted its highest earnings per share yet, and added about 800,000 new members – the most it has ever added in a single quarter.

However, 10.9 million members still gives the company tons of room to grow, and management is doubling down on its brand awareness efforts. As one example to show how small SoFi still is, consider that online financial institution Discover (NYSE: DFS) has about 300 million open accounts.

There are some particularly interesting potential catalysts to keep an eye on:

• The average SoFi member has just 1.4 products with the company. A product is something like a bank account, loan, or credit card. The focus has understandably been on growing the membership base, but this has created massive potential to cross-sell products and services to existing members.
• SoFi is rapidly scaling its third-party loan origination platform, which requires none of its own capital but generates a low-risk, high-margin stream of fee income.
• SoFi's core lending business is personal loans, but its student loan and home loan originations increased by 58% and 54%, respectively, in the most recent quarter. If interest rates start to fall, the home loan segment could be a particularly interesting opportunity, especially when it comes to refinancing, as Americans are sitting on more home equity than ever before.

These are just a few examples. But the point is that there are some big catalysts that could help SoFi continue to grow its business and become more profitable in the coming years.

Can SoFi stock produce life-changing wealth?

With a valuation of 2.9 times tangible book value and about 50 times forward earnings as of this writing, SoFi is not exactly a cheap bank stock. However, considering its momentum and high net interest margin, SoFi could be a massive home run if it can deliver on its growth strategy.

SoFi's management has previously stated that its goal is to grow to the point where it is a top 10 financial institution.

For context, the 10th largest commercial bank in the United States today is TD Bank (NYSE: TD), which has about $373 billion in domestic assets. SoFi has $37.7 billion in total assets, so it would need to grow tenfold in size to break into the top 10 list. (Note: TD is roughly one-tenth the size of the largest U.S. bank, JPMorgan Chase.)

If SoFi were to achieve such scale, the business would probably be a highly valued one. For one thing, SoFi is rapidly building out the asset-light parts of its business, such as the third-party loan platform, and these could conceivably scale to a large size as well. Plus, the nature of SoFi's loan portfolio as well as its low cost structure gives it the potential for a higher return on assets than the typical bank. In fact, every single one of the 10 largest U.S. banks is primarily branch- or office-based.

In other words, if SoFi were to increase tenfold in size, in terms of assets, it would probably command a higher valuation than the other large U.S. banks. Therefore, if management can achieve its goal and reach a top 10 position within the next decade or two, its stock could potentially produce life-changing wealth for investors.

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 Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $623,685!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $701,781!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 906% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 164% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of April 28, 2025

JPMorgan Chase is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Discover Financial Services is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Matt Frankel has positions in SoFi Technologies. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends JPMorgan Chase. The Motley Fool recommends Discover Financial Services. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Companies using technology to disrupt the traditional financial services sector stand to capitalize on a significant growth opportunity. PayPal (NASDAQ: PYPL) and SoFi Technologies (NASDAQ: SOFI) are recognized as fintech leaders that have found success in carving out distinct niches within the evolving landscape.

Despite their volatile stock prices during the past year, both companies' strong product innovation and ongoing expansion efforts position them to reward shareholders over the long run.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Learn More »

Let's discuss which of these fintech growth stocks is the better buy for your portfolio right now.

The case for PayPal stock

With a history spanning more than two decades, PayPal pioneered online payment processing as an early disruptor to legacy banking systems. Today, the company facilitates transactions for 436 million active customers in more than 200 countries. PayPal has evolved by focusing on differentiated and value-added solutions to drive profitability rather than emphasizing user growth and low-margin activities. The strategy appears to be working.

In the recently reported first quarter, even as the number of total payment transactions declined by 7% year over year, the company's key performance metric of total payment volume (TPV) climbed by 3% year over year, generating a 7% increase in transaction margin.

Branded checkout, representing payment experiences where PayPal's brand or the Venmo platform are central to the transaction, has been a key part of the TPV growth. PayPal is also seeing traction in its market with its merchant-oriented payment service provider (PSP) offerings. Even more impressive was the 23% increase in adjusted earnings per share (EPS) compared to the prior-year quarter.

Management expects the trends to continue, targeting full-year transaction margin growth between 4% and 5%, alongside a 6% to 10% increase in adjusted EPS over 2024. Where PayPal shines as a growth stock, and part of its allure as an investment opportunity next to SoFi Technologies, is its attractive valuation. Shares of PayPal trade at a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of just 13 based on analysts' average estimated 2025 EPS. That's well below SoFi's forward P/E of 44.

Investors confident in PayPal's ability to further consolidate its payments market share have ample reasons to buy and hold the stock for the long run.

PYPL PE Ratio (Forward) data by YCharts.

The case for SoFi Technologies stock

SoFi Technology's $14 billion market capitalization makes it smaller compared to PayPal's $65 billion valuation, yet it offers faster growth in a more lucrative fintech segment.

The company stands out with a comprehensive approach to personal finance, turning its expertise in lending products -- such as personal loans and mortgages -- into a one-stop shop for financial services. SoFi's ability to cross-sell to its 10.9 million-strong membership base across a broader range of products, including banking accounts, credit cards, and investing options, has translated into a rapidly expanding and diversified technology platform.

In the first quarter, net revenue surged by 33% from a year earlier in what management described as a "tremendous start to 2025." Perhaps the biggest development for SoFi is its ongoing diversification beyond lending products into more fee-based financial services, which now represent 41% of the business, up from 37% last year. This is important as it supports more durable earnings and high-quality cash flow, compared to the credit risk exposure from its loan portfolio. Indeed, profitability is accelerating, with management targeting full-year adjusted EPS between $0.27 and $0.28, nearly double the $0.15 result in 2024.

Ultimately, SoFi's outlook helps justify the valuation premium its shares command. Investors who believe SoFi represents the future of banking and remains in the early stages of fulfilling its platform potential will be hard-pressed to find a better fintech growth stock to own.

Decision time: The edge to SoFi

Although I predict shares of PayPal and SoFi Technologies will both climb higher during the next year and beyond, my choice for the better growth stock is clear. SoFi's combination of rapid platform membership growth and earnings momentum should allow its stock to outperform in a resilient macroeconomic environment. A few more quarters with financial results exceeding expectations could be the key for SoFi stock to reclaim its previous highs, making it a compelling buy-the-dip opportunity for investors to consider adding to diversified portfolios.

Should you invest $1,000 in PayPal right now?

Before you buy stock in PayPal, 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 PayPal wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.

Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $623,685!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $701,781!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 906% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 164% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of April 28, 2025

Dan Victor has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends PayPal. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2027 $42.50 calls on PayPal and short June 2025 $77.50 calls on PayPal. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Shares of SoFi Technologies (NASDAQ: SOFI) are up an impressive 70% in the past 12 months. However, they have been extremely volatile. As of April 25, they trade 28% below their 52-week high.

Investors won't struggle to find reasons to like this digital banking powerhouse that's aiming to disrupt a massive industry. It's developing competitive strengths and still has a lot of growth potential.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »

Here's why this fintech stock could be a no-brainer buy in April.

SoFI is looking at a huge goal

"It's a matter of when, not if we become a top 10 financial institution," CEO Anthony Noto said on the third-quarter 2024 earnings call. Noto could be referring to market cap, total assets, or even revenue. Regardless of what metric he's focused on with that ambitious goal, it's clear that SoFi still has a long runway for growth. That's impressive in what is considered to be an extremely mature industry.

SoFi continues to win over customers with its fully digital platform. There are no physical bank branches to invest in and maintain. This allows the leadership team to prioritize providing a superior tech-driven user experience. SoFi's customer base has expanded by 10-fold just in the last five years. This indicates the company's offerings, like checking/savings accounts, various loans, and investment brokerage, are resonating strongly with consumers.

According to Wall Street consensus analyst estimates, SoFi's revenue is projected to increase at a compound annual rate of 18.5% over the next three years.

The customer base is growing, and there is a significant opportunity to cross-sell products. For example, someone who has a checking account with SoFi could eventually take out a loan. And it helps that the business typically brings on a younger demographic that has greater lifetime value.

Building competitive strengths

Companies with an economic moat are considered high-quality because they can defend themselves against the constant threat of competition. Dominant financial services entities, like JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, fit this category. They typically benefit from switching costs and a cost advantage.

Founded in 2011, SoFi is still a newbie in the industry. However, it's trending in the right direction in terms of developing durable competitive strengths. Customers will deal with switching costs as time passes and they sign up for more products from SoFi. Of course, this depends on the business continuing to expand its offerings to cater to a variety of customers' financial needs.

As mentioned, SoFi doesn't have a physical retail presence, which can lower overhead costs. Some of its biggest expense categories are, unsurprisingly, technology and product development, and sales and marketing. Investors shouldn't want the leadership team to pare back in these areas as it would likely stunt growth. But as revenue continues to grow, SoFi should see some operating leverage, which can lead to an improving bottom line.

Banking on higher profits

Adding to that last point, SoFi is already showing signs of improvement. It posted $0.46 in earnings per share (EPS) in 2024, the company's first year of GAAP profit. And management expects to make major strides in building on this success.

SoFi's 2026 EPS is forecast to total $0.68 (at the midpoint) in 2026. In the years following, the business should see annualized growth of 20% to 25%. It's usually wise to take any executive team's financial forecasts with a grain of salt, but based on the positive factors discussed, it's easy to be optimistic in this situation.

The stock trades at $12.89 today (April 25). Based on the EPS estimate for 2027 of $0.83, this implies a three-year forward P/E of 15.5. That looks like a reasonable deal to buy this rising fintech enterprise.

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 Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $594,046!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $680,390!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 872% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 160% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of April 21, 2025

Bank of America is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. JPMorgan Chase is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. Neil Patel has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

In this video, I will go over my first-quarter SoFi Technologies (NASDAQ: SOFI) earnings prediction and recent updates about the company. Watch the short video to learn more, consider subscribing, and click the special offer link below.

*Stock prices used were from the trading day of April 24, 2025. The video was published on April 24, 2025.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Learn More »

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 Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $591,533!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $652,319!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 859% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 158% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of April 21, 2025

Neil Rozenbaum has positions in SoFi Technologies. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Neil is an affiliate of The Motley Fool and may be compensated for promoting its services. If you choose to subscribe through his link, he will earn some extra money that supports his channel. His opinions remain his own and are unaffected by The Motley Fool.

To say that SoFi (NASDAQ: SOFI) has shown impressive momentum in the few years since it went public would be an understatement. In the three-year period including 2022, 2023, and 2024, SoFi's membership base nearly tripled, and its bank grew from $0 in deposits (it got its banking charter in early 2022) to nearly $26 billion.

There are plenty of impressive numbers throughout SoFi's results that are important to watch. The growth in its third-party lending platform, as well as the progress made by the Galileo technology platform are two big examples.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Continue »

However, there's one unconventional metric that is especially important for SoFi's success, especially when it comes to growing its bottom line.

SoFi's productivity loop

One metric that SoFi reports with its earnings is the ratio of financial services products to loans in its ecosystem. Financial services products include SoFi's bank accounts, investment accounts, and credit cards.

SoFi aims to create what it calls a "financial services productivity loop," and growth in the financial services side of its business is the main way it plans to get there.

Here's how this metric has evolved over time:

Year	Financial Services Product Per Lending Product
2021	3.8
2022	4.9
2023	5.7
2024	6.3

Data source: SoFi.

Here's why this is important. SoFi's customer acquisition costs have been high for some time. It regularly offers bonuses of $300 or more for members referring someone for personal loans, for example.

However, a larger proportion of financial services customers means that SoFi has more of a natural marketing funnel to cross-sell loan products to its existing customers. Right now, with high economic uncertainty and elevated interest rates, demand for consumer loans (especially mortgages) is low. But as this changes, a high ratio of financial services customers sets the company up to take advantage of loan opportunities in a more efficient manner.

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 Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $566,035!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $629,519!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 829% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 155% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of April 21, 2025

Matt Frankel has positions in SoFi Technologies. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

The financial market made a quick recovery this week with some of the more volatile names in the industry leading the way. Wenesday's news that tariffs (outside of China) would be delayed by 90 days led to some optimism and even weak economic data late in the week didn't put a damper on the market.

According to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence, shares of SoFi Technologies (NASDAQ: SOFI) jumped as much as 11.3% this week, KKR (NYSE: KKR) was up 9.2% at its peak, and Capital One Financial (NYSE: COF) rose 7.4%. The stocks are up 10.6%, 7.5%, and 6%, respectively, as of 2:30 p.m. ET.

Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Learn More »

Bouncing off a low

To be fair, the moves this week are compared to last week's market collapse. Shares are still down from the beginning of April, only 11 days ago, and have all fallen so far in 2025.

SOFI data by YCharts

With that perspective, it's hard to call this a durable rally. But investors were betting this week that a delay in some tariffs and potential deals on others would reduce the risk of a recession and therefore defaults on the debt companies like SoFi and Capital One have on their balance sheets. KKR's rise was clearly because asset values are up, and that's a big part of their fee structure.

While the short-term risk may be seen as lower than a few days ago, there are still more risks today than early this year as economists ramp up their expectations for a recession. And making matters worse is the rise in interest rates this week that could make it more costly for companies, consumers, and even the government to refinance debt. Oh, and the dollar is dropping, too.

Taking a step back

Long-term investors will want to take this opportunity to look at the long-term trends in the market and economy. So far in 2025 consumer confidence is down, tariffs and expectations for inflation are up, and interest rates are rising.

Those factors don't bode well for the economy or financial firms, so it'll be a matter of who will survive and thrive through upcoming market turbulence. I don't think we're in for major losses on loans at this point, but the risks for financial companies are leveraged compared to most stocks based on their business models, so earnings and guidance will be worth watching closely.

Ignore the volatility

As these stocks rise and fall rapidly, it's important for investors to keep in mind the long-term goal, which is to buy opportunistically when the market is thinking short-term. I think these companies will be able to manage risks better than what the market saw during the financial crisis and while the recovery may not be smooth I'm starting to dollar-cost average at lower prices. Long-term, any big dips are opportunities for investors.

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 Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $496,779!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $659,306!*

Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 787% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 152% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.

See the 10 stocks »

*Stock Advisor returns as of April 10, 2025

Travis Hoium has positions in SoFi Technologies. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends KKR. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.