Bullish on SOFI due to undervaluation (PEG 0.7) and strong fundamentals driven by national banking license enabling high growth and profitability.

And guys, my favorite fintech stock just launched a huge partnership with Mastercard. Given the significant decline in the stock's current price, I thought it was a good time not only to share my views on the matter, but also to outline my five most optimistic reasons why I would choose to buy SoFi stock throughout 2026.

Again, one of those points involves the new Mastercard partnership, which I believe could be a real game-changer for their business and for the stock in the long run. Okay, first, the number one reason I bought SoFi stock today.

It's about the huge gap between how the market prices SoFi shares and what I feel they should actually be worth.

Guys, when I'm looking for stocks to add to my portfolio, I specifically look for companies that the market has no idea how to properly value. SoFi may be one of the best examples of this.

Currently, the stocks have fallen by about half their total value. This brought the price-to-earnings-to-growth (PEG) ratio down to just 0.7. It is more than 30% cheaper than the sector average.

Well, there are two things about that. Firstly, the PEG index takes into account future growth. Any value for this indicator that is less than one is already considered a great deal.

But more importantly, in this particular case, it's an even more amazing value because the finance sector as a whole is already one of the cheapest sectors in the entire market.

The reason for this is that it includes all those old traditional banks that rarely grow more than at very small rates. Therefore, they tend to get some of the cheapest valuations, because why would you buy them if they weren't going to see significant growth? Therefore, they tend to be inexpensive.

But SoFi is a financial technology company, which means it also has tremendous growth potential like technology stocks, not like traditional finance stocks. So, not only is the price-to-earnings-to-growth (PEG) ratio less than one, which is in itself an incredible valuation, but it is also 30% lower than the old traditional finance sector, which was already very cheap.

This is something that I feel the market, for whatever reason, doesn't seem to grasp yet, at least when it comes to Sophie.

This leads us to the second reason. The remarkable growth with the added advantage of obtaining a national banking license. According to analysts' estimates, Sofi's revenue and earnings per share are expected to grow by about 30% annually over the coming years.

This is a level of growth that you will almost never see in any traditional bank.

But as I said, there is an added advantage when it comes to Sofi: it is no longer just a technology company, but now has a national banking license, which enhances its profitability like traditional banks.

This also helps them to expand the scope of their net profits.

In fact, discretionary free cash flows are expected to exceed $2 billion by 2028. In other words, this is no longer the unprofitable SPAC it was 5 years ago, burning through hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital.

Instead, Sophie has now achieved 11 consecutive quarters of profitability and continues to break new records.

Again, the major driving force for this in the long run will be that banking license. This is what truly distinguishes it from any other financial technology company in the market, which relies almost entirely on those large traditional banks to finance and issue all of its loans.

While those partner banks take huge shares of all fees and interest income, this is one of the reasons why traditional banks are so profitable in the first place.

Sophie saw this problem coming for years for fintech companies. Therefore, they worked hard to obtain a national banking license for themselves in 2022. This now allows them to use their customers' deposits to fund their loans.

Wow, they've succeeded in attracting massive deposits. In 2022, they had approximately $1.2 billion in deposits. But, looking at today, that figure has skyrocketed to over $46 billion.

Because of this, approximately 93% of Sofi's total funding base now comes directly from those low-cost deposits.

That step has now helped them save more than $700 million a year on financing expenses compared to borrowing from the open market. This is precisely why their net interest margin is close to 6%.

This is a level that traditional commercial banks can only dream of. This number is usually about half of that amount.

So with SoFi, you get incredible growth for a technology company with increasing profitability that may eventually rival established financial institutions. But by combining them, you get a fantastic financial technology (fintech) company.

But the third reason for me is that none of this would have been possible without their highly attractive and interactive ecosystem, where they encouraged consumers to save, borrow, insure and even invest, all through an integrated financial application and a very smooth electronic platform.

In order not to dwell on the subject of the bank's licensing, I would just like to point out that this is another reason why so many people are flocking to SoFi. Because there are no operating costs for physical branches or fees to third parties, SoFi has already been able to offer higher returns to savers and better interest rates to borrowers, helping to attract more of them to the platform.

While other finance companies have to spend hundreds of dollars on marketing to attract each customer to just one product, SoFi instead focuses on cross-marketing all of its products to the same customer within the ecosystem, which is achieving great results.

In the last quarter, for example, we saw the strength of this accelerating effect, with total members rising to 15.8 million, an annual increase of 35%, while total products grew by an even greater percentage of 42% to reach 24.4 million products.

To clarify, this was also the first time in the company's history that they added literally twice as many new products as new members.

Most impressive was their cross-buying rate, which measures the number of products adopted by existing users, and which accelerated to 51%, meaning that more than half of the products unlocked in SoFi today are acquired by people already active on the platform.

This pushed the average number of products per member to a record high of 1.54.

And again, in my opinion, all this interaction is driven by that absolutely high quality of their services. In fact, SoFi has already been ranked as the number one bank in the United States in terms of customer satisfaction and overall trust by Forbes magazine, outperforming all the traditional giants in the field.

Honestly, this is rather embarrassing for them. How are you losing to this new company here? You should have gotten this under control after being in the market for so many decades, shouldn't you?

Even J.D. Power also gave SoFi the top spot in overall investor satisfaction. It's crazy that they outperform everyone else in this aspect.

I would say that these are high-level proving-performance awards, which should give you a good idea of how outstanding SoFi is performing, even at the consumer level, driving everything from the bottom up. This is the foundation you need.

Fourth, this would be quick, but it lies in the fact that their CEO—and I think this is a big deal—has been very active in buying back the company's shares himself. This is something I always want to see in any stock I invest in.

If you are the CEO, and if the company is as good and strong as you say, then you should also buy its shares. It shouldn't just be me, it should include you too. You lead the company, and you know how great it is.

Don't tell me how great everything is if you don't have the confidence to buy shares in your own company that you run and lead.

Fortunately, this is a CEO I honestly have a lot of respect for, because he does exactly that. Whenever the stock falls, he goes out and buys shares, demonstrating that he truly believes this company is undervalued in the market at today's prices.

In fact, this year alone, Anthony Noto has spent more than double what he spent in the previous two years combined, with more than $2.2 million in purchases in the first half of 2026 alone.

Some of those purchases exceeded $18 per share, and on average, all were higher than the stock's trading price today. In other words, even at high prices, SoFi's CEO believed the stock was still undervalued.

Even when it was higher than it is today. It is now less than that.

Finally, my fifth and final point about SoFi is not just about the pace of their continuous product innovation. Instead of complacency and inaction, which I contend all traditional financial institutions have done, SoFi continues to push the boundaries hard to always remain at the forefront. I think this will continue in the long term.

I think we can highlight that quickly through the expansion into artificial intelligence and the historic payments deal with Mastercard. In the field of artificial intelligence, they recently launched SoFi Coach, the first AI-powered smart financial guide in the sector.

It connects to all of the user's financial accounts. It analyzes his spending habits in real time. It also monitors credit reports. It provides customized and automated financial reports and advice directly within the application, within the integrated ecosystem we talked about, helping members improve their financial situations and make the right decisions.

Furthermore, they acquired Composer to include actual AI agents within the SoFi platform as well. These are not just simple chatbots offering general advice. These tools can even build, test, and automate complete trading strategies for the user or investor in real time. This is extremely important.

Equally important, SoFi became the first bank ever to use its stablecoin to settle payments instantly across Mastercard's global network. Historically, traders have been hesitant to use any form of cryptocurrency; Because they would have to train staff, replace card machines, change accounting software, and deal with price fluctuations and complex legislation.

But instead, SoFi uses its own currency, SoFi USD, which is fully pegged to the US dollar and backed by cash, helping them overcome most of these obstacles.

So, every time someone uses a SoFi card over the Mastercard network, for example? That card that bears the Mastercard logo. Each time it is used, SoFi not only collects processing fees, but because each coin is backed by actual cash at the Federal Reserve, they also reap interest on those huge sums.

With SoFi members already spending over $25 billion annually through their cards, everyday purchases instantly become a high-profit source that other competitors have yet to exploit.

It is truly amazing that SoFi is the first to do this, just as it does with so many other things.

In any case, this is just another great example that when you look at the big picture, you'll realize that SoFi is a growth engine, indeed a monster in its field, I don't know how to describe it.

I feel that the market may still be so stuck in the past that it doesn't fully appreciate all that SoFi has accomplished, is doing now, and will do in the future.

As for me, I see a lot of real, long-term value in this name. This is why I continue to buy stocks to this day. Do you agree with my optimistic view on SoFi? Or are you more pessimistic about SoFi's current market position and what the long-term future may hold for it?