SoFi Stock Has a $38 Price Target From Mizuho, 31% Annual Revenue Growth, and a Share Price of $15. Something Is Off.

On any given weekday in San Francisco’s financial district, SoFi’s name can be seen on posters in bank branch windows, advertisements for bus shelters, and podcasts that are playing on earbuds while commuting in the morning. With a digital financial platform that has expanded far beyond its initial identity as a student loan refinancer into banking, investing, insurance, and now a burgeoning loan origination business serving some of the biggest institutions in the world, the company has created something truly visible. The revenue figures are accurate. The growth is genuine. In Q4 2025, quarterly revenue reached $1.02 billion, up more than 40% from the previous year, and earnings per share exceeded forecasts by almost 9%. However, on March 27, the stock closed at $15.23, down 4% for the day. SoFi announced new loan platform partnerships worth over $3.6 billion with a financial services and insurance group, a top five private asset manager, and a major global bank. On a bad day in a bad market, the market responded to good news by selling nonetheless.

The SOFI story in early 2026 is becoming characterized by this pattern, which has been occurring for months. The stock has had a negative 44.5 percent return so far this year. The return over the last three years has increased by 150.9%. Both of those figures are accurate at the same time, and the difference between them reflects the current state of SoFi, a business that has come a long way since its founding but is now caught between a challenging macroenvironment, a damaging short-seller attack, and a wider market correction that has made anything with a growth multiple seem suddenly pricey.
Since the short-seller report has been the most significant development for the stock since the beginning of the year, it is worthwhile to comprehend it in more detail. SoFi’s loan accounting and balance sheet transparency were called into question when Muddy Waters released a report on March 17 that claimed the company had at least $312 million in unrecorded debt. SoFi responded quickly and clearly, calling the report “factually inaccurate and misleading,” threatening legal action, and vehemently opposing it in executive statements and investor communications. On the day the report was released, the stock fell as much as 6.5%. Since then, it has been battling that perception. You can see how the market is currently scoring that battle by looking at the share price.
The $3.6 billion in loan platform agreements that were made public on March 26 were partially intended to allay Muddy Waters’ particular worry about SoFi’s ability to expand its loan business without incurring undue balance sheet risk. The new agreements are based on what SoFi refers to as its “Loan Platform Business,” in which the company either originates loans on behalf of institutional partners or refers pre-qualified borrowers to them, collecting fees and servicing rights while the partners bear the capital and credit risk. For the past year, CEO Anthony Noto has been outlining this fee-based, capital-light model to investors. The agreements with a top-five private asset manager (up to $2 billion over two years), an insurance-linked financial group ($600 million over twelve months), and a global bank ($1 billion in anticipated funding) are intended to show that the biggest organizations in the world desire access to SoFi’s platform and borrower pipeline. Will Nance, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, referred to the increased funding access as “a clear positive.” According to Dan Dolev of Mizuho, the agreements “help alleviate concerns” regarding SoFi’s performance on personal loans. On the day of the announcement, the stock continued to drop by 4%.
It is difficult to ignore how much of SoFi’s current predicament is due to timing. The company’s fourth-quarter results were truly impressive: the Loan Platform Business secured more than $10 billion in commitments for the entire year 2025, total loan originations reached an all-time high of $10.5 billion, and financial services revenue increased by 78% to $456.7 million. Over the past two years, the underlying business has grown at a rate of thirty-one percent annually, and earnings per share have grown at a rate of about 148 percent annually. Few financial companies of any size can match this growth rate. Although it is not inexpensive in absolute terms, the forward P/E ratio of roughly 26 times is arguably reasonable for a business expanding at this rate.
The business is not the issue. It is the story that surrounds the company, and Muddy Waters severely damaged it in a way that new institutional partnerships, no matter how big or reputable the counterparties, have not yet been able to completely restore. The average analyst price target for SOFI is approximately $25.33, which suggests a sixty-six percent increase from the current price. Mizuho’s goal is $38. Both Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo have hold ratings at $25 and $19, respectively, indicating that they think there is potential for growth but need more proof before endorsing active purchases. Although implied volatility has increased, indicating that the market is pricing in ongoing price swings rather than a short-term resolution of the uncertainty, the options market has been active, with call options still outnumbering puts—a sign that some traders are positioning for a recovery.
Observing all of this develop over the past few weeks, it seems that SoFi is a company that has completed the majority of the labor-intensive process of creating a legitimate financial institution from the ground up, including obtaining a bank charter, attaining GAAP profitability, and forming billion-dollar institutional partnerships. However, it now finds itself in an awkward position between what it has created and what the market is willing to believe about it. A question has been planted by short sellers. The market has not received a definitive answer to the question. The difference between the stock price and the fundamental story will probably remain large until that happens. The next few quarters of results, the outcome of the Muddy Waters dispute, and whether institutional demand for the Loan Platform Business continues to scale as the new commitments suggest may determine whether that gap eventually closes in SoFi’s favor or the direction of the market.