SoFi Added a Record 1.2 Million Members Last Quarter. Its Stock Is Still Down More Than 30% in 2026.

The numbers are encouraging enough. Last quarter's top line of $1.38 billion was up 44% year over year, extending and even accelerating a pace that's been in place for well over a year. More scale is making an even bigger positive impact on the bottom line, too. The third-quarter per-share profit grew 64%, from $0.11 to $0.18. Customer growth also reached a record 1.2 million during the three months ending in September, bringing its headcount from less than 3 million in the third quarter of 2021 to more than 17 million now.

And yet, even with its recent post-earnings bullish bump, SoFi Technologies (NASDAQ: SOFI) shares are still down 33% year to date and down more than 40% from last October's peak.

What gives? A crowd of investors that seemed to be looking for a reason to take profits found one, and then took that ball and ran with it, so to speak.

They may have also overshot their target.

Not the problems they were supposed to be

If you're not familiar with it, SoFi Technologies is an online bank, offering everything you'd expect from your local brick-and-mortar bank branch. This includes checking, savings, lending, credit cards, investments, etc.

Except SoFi is only an online bank. It has no physical branches.

It clearly works, though. Over 17 million people are now on board, with a sizable share using more than one product or service. Like so much else, consumers are now "mobile first" when it comes to banking, with the American Bankers Association reporting that 54% of the nation's bank customers now use a mobile app as their go-to means for handling banking matters.

So what went wrong beginning late last year? A combination of things.

One of these bearish factors was the loss of a third-party user of its technology platform that led to a 27% decline in this business' revenue during the first quarter of this year. Although not a major profit center, the monetization of its existing technology has been a nice, high-margin addition to its bottom line. The loss of one institutional customer implies others could be about to make the same move.

Image source: Getty Images.

Then in March, a damaging report from a well-followed short-seller suggested the company's balance sheet was misleading. Management's decision not to raise its full-year profit guidance with its Q1 and Q2 reports was also interpreted as a red flag.

In retrospect, though -- and in light of recently released Q3 numbers that included a raised 2026 earnings outlook from $0.60 to $0.61 per share -- none of these alarming headlines ended up being the problem they were supposed to be. Again, SoFi Technologies continues growing its way to new records.

Buckle up and dive in

Don't overthink it. Things are what they look like with SoFi, and no more than that. The sellers simply overplayed their hand with an already-vulnerable stock. Now it looks like they're preparing to put SoFi Technologies shares back on their bullish long-term track.

Just know that SOFI has always been a volatile ticker. Even if the bigger-picture trend is taking a turn for the better, volatility will almost certainly remain the norm here. Buckle up if you're diving in.

James Brumley has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.