Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, while accuracy gets right to the point.
Stephen Guilfoyle knows all about precision.
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The veteran trader, whose career dates back to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in the 1980s, turned his sharp eye recently on Sofi Technologies (SOFI) , noting in a recent column that “SOFI’s been rocking; we adjust.”
Shares of the San Francisco-based fintech are up about 17% this year, and the stock has surged nearly 180% from this time in 2024.
“SoFi Technologies is expected to report second-quarter financials in about four weeks’ time,” Guilfoyle wrote. “Right now, Wall Street is looking for GAAP EPS of $0.06 on revenue of about $802 million.
“This would compare well to the year-ago comparison of $0.02 per share on revenue growth of more than 34%.”
Over the past thirty days, the veteran trader added, “two of the seven sell-side analysts I see that cover this stock have increased their estimates for the quarter, while four have increased their full-year earnings estimates.”
“None of the seven have revised anything lower,” he said.
On June 30, Sofi’s stock reached a high point of $18.92, just 33 cents short of Guilfoyle’s target.
SoFi CEO Anthony Noto says the company is getting back into crypto.
Brian Ach/Getty Images for TechCrunch
Trader sees possibilities for SoFi
“The stock is down small on Tuesday morning,” he said. “I know a few readers took some profits Monday as price targets really are more like hand grenades than sniper rifles.”
For those that don’t understand, he explained, grenades are area weapons, while sniper rifles are tools of precision.
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“If that’s you, you are not wrong,” said Guilfoyle, who boosted his price target to $20 from $19.25. “I hope you hung onto something because I still think the shares go higher.”
The military reference seems appropriate, given SoFi CEO Anthony Noto’s background.
A student at West Point, Noto was a star linebacker on the U.S. military academy’s football team, earning All East Linebacker and Academic All American titles, and receiving the Toyota Leadership Award in the 1990 Army-Navy Game.
After graduating from Army Ranger School at Fort Benning, Noto served as a Communications Officer with the 24th Infantry Division in Fort Stewart, Georgia.
He joined Goldman Sachs (GS) in 1999, and then moved on to the National Football League in 2008 where he was the chief financial officer.
He became Twitter’s CFO in 2014, and four years later, he took over the helm at SoFi where he initiated the online financial services company’s IPO in 2021.
SoFi—short for Social Finance—offers several financial products, including student loan refinancing, mortgages, personal loans, credit cards, investing, and banking, through mobile app and desktop interfaces.
The company announced on June 25 that it was expanding its digital financial services with new crypto-powered capabilities and blockchain innovations.
“The future of financial services is being completely reinvented through innovations in crypto, digital assets, and blockchain more broadly,” Noto said in a statement.
SoFi returns to crypto
This is Sofi’s second run at crypto, after closing down the service on Dec. 19, 2023.
SoFi made the decision after receiving a bank charter in January 2022, which required the company to cease engaging in crypto-related activities unless it received further approvals from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
Related: Analyst initiates SoFi coverage, mulls loans, growth prospects
Noto told CNBC in April that SoFI would bring back cryptocurrency investing this year after a “fundamental shift” in the regulatory landscape under the Trump administration.
“We’ll re-enter the business of allowing our members to invest in cryptocurrency,” he said
“We want to actually make a bigger, more comprehensive push into cryptocurrency [this time], to include really providing crypto or blockchain capabilities in each product area that we have,” Noto added.
Cryptocurrency ownership has nearly doubled in the three years since the end of 2021, according to a survey by Security.Org. In 2025, roughy 28% of American adults, or about 65 million people, own cryptocurrencies.
Sixty percent of adults familiar with crypto believe that the value of cryptocurrencies will increase during President Donald Trump’s second term, and 46% believe that Trump will boost mainstream cryptocurrency adoption in the U.S.
Over time, SoFi said that it intends to offer stablecoins and a range of other services, such as allowing members to borrow against their crypto assets, expanding payment options, and introducing new staking features, as well as blockchain and digital asset infrastructure capabilities for other companies offered by Galileo, SoFi’s technology platform.
“Crypto and blockchain innovations can and will be threaded through each of our businesses and capabilities, including buying, paying, saving, investing, borrowing, and protecting,” Noto said.
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