Anthony Noto has been in the trenches.
A graduate of West Point, Noto, who was also a star linebacker for the military academy’s football team, went on to become a U.S. Army Ranger.
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After serving in the military, Noto attended business school at the University of Chicago, while working at Kraft Foods as a brand manager, and later received an MBA from the Wharton School of Business.
Noto became a partner at Goldman Sachs and then chief financial officer of the National Football League during the 2008 financial crisis.
“I went to bed every night thinking I was going to be the CFO who bankrupted the NFL,” he told Wharton Magazine in 2018, adding that the stress was making him sick. “But what I learned is that I thrive in those situations.”
And thrive he did. Noto returned to Goldman Sachs in 2010, helped the investment firm win the role of lead underwriter for the public offering of Twitter, now X, and then joined the microblogging site as chief operating officer.
So after all this, what comes next?
SoFi CEO Anthony Noto
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SoFi CEO sees ‘milestone quarter’
Noto became CEO of SoFi Technologies (SOFI) in 2019 and initiated the fintech company’s IPO in 2021.
Last year, SoFi sued the Biden administration to end its pause on federal student loan payments, saying the moratorium had no legal basis and had cost the bank millions of dollars in profits.
Related: Analyst updates SoFi stock outlook after earnings
Student-loan payments first were halted at the start of the pandemic by President Donald Trump’s administration.
The Department of Education called the lawsuit “an attempt by a multibillion-dollar company to make money while they force 45 million borrowers back into repayment.”
SoFi dropped the lawsuit last June.
Which brings us to July 30, when SoFi — short for Social Finance — posted better-than-expected second-quarter results.
“I think this quarter is definitely a milestone quarter,” Noto told CNBC’s Jim Cramer. “When people sit back and do the work, they’ll realize the magnitude of the transition we made. We had record revenue … up 22% year-over-year.”
“That would have never happened without us driving diversification outside of lending, which only grew 5%,” he added. “The financial services sector grew 80% year-over-year.”
Noto said that “we’ve made a transition from risky capital intensive lending business to higher return less capital less risk financial services business.”
Cramer asked whether the company’s heritage of student loans was deterring some investors due to the Biden administration’ s proposed student loan forgiveness rule.
“I do think there’s a legacy of us being predominantly a lender,” he said. “On the earnings call, as a matter of fact, we had analysts ask questions and 99% of them were about lending. There was only one question about the financial services segment.”
“Their focus continues to be on the thing that we used to be, as opposed to the thing that we’ve become,” Noto said.
TheStreet Pro Analyst: ‘What’s not to like?’
SoFi said net interest income — the difference between what a bank takes in on loans and pays out on deposits — increased 42% year over year to $412.6 million. The net interest margin widened to 5.83% from 5.74%.
New-member additions ran past 643,000 for the quarter and total membership reached nearly 8.8 million by quarter’s end, up 41% from a year earlier.
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Product additions ran past 946,000 for the quarter, reaching nearly 12.8 million, up 36% from a year ago. SoFi Invest saw a 58% increase in assets under management.
Total revenue for the financial services segment increased 80% year over year to a new record $176.1 million.
For the full year, SoFi said that it now expects to drive adjusted net revenue of $2.425 billion to $2.465 billion, up from prior guidance of $2.39 billion to $2.43 billion. Wall Street is looking for $2.41 billion.
TheStreet Pro’s Stephen Guilfoyle admitted to a possible bias toward SoFi in his recent column and acknowledged that he has “a lot of faith in former Army Linebacker and SoFi CEO Anthony Noto.”
“What’s not to like?” he asked. “SoFi beat expectations, while posting a third consecutive profitable quarter. Growth is stable to strong to very strong across all metrics. That includes membership, products and segments. Even more impressive than the results is the guidance.”
Guilfoyle, a trader and economist, added that “the current quarter is projected to be strong, while the year in full just keeps improving.”
He said that Noto credited SoFi’s “relentless” focus on product innovation and member growth for the strong results. The company’s “one-stop shop strategy continues to deliver strong, diversified growth and profitability, despite macroeconomic volatility,” he said.
“SOFI remains a name of conviction in my book,” Guilfoyle said. “Remember, on nearly every dip, [Noto] has been buying shares for his personal account since he got here. He has been in the trenches with the investors.”
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