1 Reason Now Is a Great Time to Buy SoFi Stock

With just a month left to the year, the S&P 500 is back in fine form, up 17% year to date. Unless something disastrous happens, which isn't a possibility to count out, it will be the third year in a row of double-digit gains for the index.

While the market has been lifted by artificial intelligence (AI) stocks, there are plenty of other high-octane stocks to consider buying right now. And if you already own AI stocks, it would be a good idea to make sure you do have other categories of growth stocks to diversify.

SoFi Technologies (NASDAQ: SOFI) is an amazing growth stock that has been outperforming the market and most AI stocks, up 85% this year, even though it's just a humble bank stock. OK, maybe it's not so humble. Here's one reason to buy it today.

The SoFi slogan. Image source: SoFi.

More customers are joining the platform

SoFi's online banking platform fits the bill for the way young banking customers want to manage their money. It offers all of the traditional banking services a user would want, all online, and a growing array of alternative services like cryptocurrency trading and access to some initial public offerings (IPOs).

The company had an early start in this space, and it has leveraged its lending platform into a complete financial services source. As it adds services and offers value, it's benefiting from a positive cycle of more people joining the platform, leading to more services, and so on.

One reason to buy SoFi stock today is that it's onboarding an accelerating numbers of new customers. Gone are the days when it was a small digital bank that was trying to turn a profit. Today, it's a fully profitable growth machine that's attracting new business like a magnet.

Usually, when growth companies get too big, they start to slow down. SoFi is very, very far from that stage, as demonstrated by the accelerating interest in its services. Here's how it's been going over the past four quarters.

Data source: SoFi quarterly reports.

Each of these new customers brings added revenue to the platform, but there's much more value than that. They represent years of new growth and monetizing opportunities.

SoFi's strategy is to capture younger users and cross-sell new services. It's working, as demonstrated by how many more services are being used by existing customers; it was 40% in the third quarter, the highest level since 2022.

Even when new customer growth eventually slows, there should be years of opportunities ahead from the existing members. Think of recently graduated professionals getting their first SoFi checking account, then moving on to credit cards, investing tools, and more. As they adopt more products, they're also moving up in their careers and getting paid more, which brings more money into the company's ecosystem. That's how management sees the growth progression.

It also contributes to higher profitability, since SoFi doesn't have to lay out more customer acquisition costs to generate this new business. It has been reporting stellar profitability, with earnings per share (EPS) up from $0.05 last year to $0.11 in the third quarter.

There are many more reasons

The fintech is committed to standing out by offering innovative, valuable services to its users. It recently relaunched cryptocurrency trading on its platform, and it says it's the only nationally chartered bank to offer this service straight through its app. It's also rolling out global remittances on a blockchain network to make it fast and cheap to send money worldwide, and it says it's going to bring out other blockchain-based services.

SoFi stock isn't cheap. It trades at a price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) of almost 52. That's a premium price tag, and there's growth baked into that. However, there's a reason the market is so confident in its chances.

As more customers join and the cycle continues, the runway looks very, very long. Management even hinted in its most recent earnings call that it could launch services globally, keeping the growth story alive for the foreseeable future.

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.