Altron Capital Management, an investment management firm, published its fourth-quarter 2021 investor letter – a copy of which can be downloaded here. The S&P500 had a return of 11.0% in the fourth quarter, bringing the total return for 2021 to 28.7%. The firm’s portfolios have underperformed this quarter, but are taking this opportunity to buy more into some of its current positions. Spare some time to check the fund’s top 5 holdings to have a clue about their top bets for 2022.
Altron Capital Management, in its Q4 2021 investor letter, mentioned SoFi Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:SOFI) and discussed its stance on the firm. Founded in 2011, SoFi Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:SOFI) is a San Francisco, California-based online personal finance company with a $6.2 billion market capitalization, and is currently spearheaded by its CEO, Anthony Noto. SoFi Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:SOFI) delivered a -50.22% return since the beginning of the year, while its 12-month returns are down by -55.71%. The stock closed at $7.87 per share on April 08, 2022.
Here is what Altron Capital Management has to say about SoFi Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:SOFI) in its Q4 2021 investor letter:
“We have been building our position in SoFi over the last two quarters but have not yet written about our thesis until now. SoFi is an online financial technology company that started off refinancing student loans. This segment remains a big part of the company’s business, but they have more recently expanded their products to offer an entire suite of financial services including personal banking, investing, and credit. While their collection of products is still evolving and not yet complete, we believe the company is in the early stages of its inflection. The company nearly doubled its member count over the past year and is growing 50%+ despite its loan refinancing business taking a hit due to the COVID-related loan moratorium. Furthermore, the company is close to obtaining a bank charter through its acquisition of Golden Pacific Bancorp, a community bank based in Sacramento. A bank charter would allow SoFi to take in its own customer deposits, lowering its cost of capital and expanding the company’s breadth of financial offerings.
While SoFi is not the only online banking platform out there, we believe it could take a decent share of the financial services market. Banking is a notoriously sticky business, as the inconvenience and hassle of switching banks prevent consumers from jumping to competitors regardless of cost. This is one of the reasons that traditional banks are one of the few businesses to have truly been disrupted by technology. We think SoFi is well on its way to changing that and creating a new paradigm for the future of consumer banking and financial services.
The factors that will ultimately drive consumer adoption of online banking are cost and convenience. In our opinion, SoFi is best positioned to drive consumers away from the legacy banking model. Their one-stop-shop approach for financial services and their lack of a brick-and-mortar branch network to maintain may eventually propel them into becoming one of the larger players in the banking industry in the United States…” (Click here to see the full text)
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Our calculations show that SoFi Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:SOFI) failed to obtain a mark on our list of the 30 Most Popular Stocks Among Hedge Funds. SoFi Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:SOFI) was in 24 hedge fund portfolios at the end of the fourth quarter of 2021, compared to 33 funds in the previous quarter. SoFi Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:SOFI) delivered a -42.72% return in the past 3 months.
In March 2022, we also shared another hedge fund’s views on SoFi Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:SOFI) in another article. You can find other letters from hedge funds and prominent investors on our hedge fund investor letters 2021 Q4 page.
Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
