By Mackenzie Tatananni
Shares of financial technology company SoFi Technologies have lagged behind the broader market this year. Some analysts are urging Wall Street to look past this underperformance.
Citizens JMP moved off the sidelines Monday as analysts with the firm upgraded SoFi to Outperform from Market Perform with a $30 price target.
Shares rose 2.4% to $21.36 in premarket trading. The price target indicates shares could rise more than 40%.
Analysts led by Devin Ryan noted that the stock has retraced to around $21 after rising as high as $30 in late 2025. So far this year, the stock has declined 20% against a 0.9% decline for the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite as strong earnings last month failed to lift SoFi higher.
The fintech appears to have become a casualty of a risk-off rotation penalizing what the firm calls "higher-growth" or "speculative-adjacent" narratives -- think cryptocurrency or software -- even as macro proxies such as regional banks have withstood the market turmoil.
"Accordingly, in our view, the selloff is less about near-term macro fear and more about style factor compression and technicals," analysts wrote. The result is a buying opportunity affording investors access to "one of the most compelling long-term compounders in fintech."
The Citizens team believes the stock's risk-reward balance has "improved materially" since SoFi reported earnings on Jan. 31, providing a clearer picture of its fundamentals and medium-term growth prospects.
"SoFi's 'one-stop shop' is translating into measurable cross-sell and rising engagement," analysts wrote, borrowing the tagline executives use to describe the business. SoFi noted that 40% of its new products are opened by existing members, and record member and product adds in the latest quarter reflect an expanding ecosystem, analysts said.
Crucially, "diversification is accelerating, while fee-based and capital-light streams are now central," analysts wrote. SoFi's fourth-quarter earnings indicate the business is becoming "meaningfully less dependent on pure balance-sheet spread income."
The company has expanded far beyond its roots as a student loan provider, and while the loan business continues to bring in significant revenue, Citizens flagged increasing diversification across SoFi's various business segments and improving profitability as each segment grows.
In the firm's view, "areas that remain only partially modeled" will be the most likely growth drivers in the future, with cryptocurrency held out as a notable example.
In the fourth quarter of 2025, SoFi became the first nationally chartered bank to launch consumer crypto trading and its own stablecoin on a public blockchain. CEO Anthony Noto told Barron's in November that the blockchain was a way to transmit "cheaper, faster, and safer" payments.
The Citizens team has previously argued that SoFi has "a strategic 'right to win'" in crypto. Not only does the company have the ability to integrate the technology into its platform, but it also has access to assets that can be tokenized, like loans. "This area remains early, but it is beginning to progress toward commercialization," analysts asserted.
The ratings change Monday makes Citizens JMP more bullish than the average Wall Street analyst. Of 26 firms tracked by FactSet, 12 rate SoFi stock at Hold. Of the remaining, nine rate it at Buy and five at Sell.
Write to Mackenzie Tatananni at mackenzie.tatananni@barrons.com
This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 09, 2026 09:18 ET (14:18 GMT)
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