Mizuho analysts are feeling even more bullish on SoFi Technologies after its earnings report, thanks to what they see as a sizable opportunity in student loan refinancing.
Mizuho analysts maintained their Buy rating on shares of SoFi (ticker: SOFI) Wednesday, but raised their price target to $15 from $9 and lifted their earnings estimates. That wasn’t enough to boost the stock higher, however. The shares fell 2.6% to $10.08, while the Nasdaq Composite fell 2.2%.
SoFi began as a lender focused on refinancing student debt, and shares have rallied this year amid news that federal student loan repayments will resume in the fall—ending the moratorium that started during the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. SoFi said Monday that its student-loan volume fell 1% to $395.37 million in its second quarter, continuing “to reflect the uncertainty around federal student-loan payments.”
There’s an ongoing debate over how big a market this will be for the fintech, and Mizuho weighed in on Wednesday with a projection on the higher end.
The analysts wrote that SoFi has a $350 billion to $400 billion total addressable market opportunity in student loan refinancing, which would represent nearly a quarter of the total outstanding federal and nonfederal student loans.
“We do not believe this opportunity is fully reflected in current consensus estimates,” they added.
Even SoFi itself has provided a lower projection than Mizuho. In an interview with Barron’s on Monday, Chief Executive Officer Anthony Noto reiterated the company’s forecast for a student loan refinancing opportunity around $200 billion. Also in June, J.P. Morgan analysts said they expect the opportunity to be about half of that, nearer to $90 billion.
“We believe refinancing with a private lender like SoFi makes economic sense for just a fraction of borrowers—those with relatively high income, credit scores, and [annual percentage rates],” J.P. Morgan analysts wrote at the time, adding that most borrowers are better off holding on to their existing federal loan or applying for an income-based repayment plan.
Analysts are mixed on the fintech, with 35% rating it Buy, 45% rating it Neutral, and 20% rating it Sell, according to FactSet.
Not everyone thinks the stock, which has more than doubled this year, can keep up its rapid gains. Earlier this week, analysts at Keefe Bruyette downgraded shares to Underperform from Market Perform but raised their price target to $7.50 from $5.50. After the stock’s strong run this year, its “valuation has overshot the fundamental earnings outlook,” they said.
