Seven months ago a short seller accused SoFi of making its personal loans look safer than they are. On Tuesday the online lender and bank answered with the best quarter in its history, and with a second, less flattering loss figure that it publishes itself, right next to the one it puts first.
SoFi Technologies said revenue for the three months to September rose 44% from a year earlier to a record $1.4 billion. Net income reached $241.0 million, or $0.18 a share. It raised its forecast for the year and gave one for 2027 for the first time. The shares jumped 8.5% to $15.70 immediately after the release, StockStory reported on Yahoo Finance.
Chief executive Anthony Noto said the results were "even more remarkable given how 2026 has unfolded." For SoFi, 2026 has been a fight over one question: how many of its loans go bad, and whether its accounts show it.
The accusation
In March the research firm Muddy Waters said it was betting against SoFi's shares. In the Motley Fool's summary of its 28-page report, the firm pointed to what it believes are "improper accounting practices, financial engineering, and a complex web of off-balance-sheet transactions that distort the business's actual performance." It alleged "a material misstatement of at least $312 million in unrecorded debt," Insider Monkey reported, tied to the business in which SoFi makes loans for outside investors.
The sharpest point was about losses. When a borrower stops paying, a lender eventually writes the loan off; that is a charge-off. SoFi often sells loans that are badly behind before it gets there. Muddy Waters said SoFi's reported rate "does not reflect delinquent loans the company sells prior to having to classify a loan as a charge-off," the Fool wrote, and alleged that counting loans in off-balance-sheet vehicles, the rate "would be closer to 6%."
SoFi rejected the report. It said the report showed "a fundamental lack of understanding of our financial statements and business" and said it "intends to explore potential legal action," according to the Fool. Noto bought "about $500,000 worth of shares" after the report, and his insider-trading filings, listed on our SoFi page, show he kept buying in May and June.
Two charge-off rates, both lower
SoFi's earnings release gives both numbers, and both are moving the right way for the company. The rate it reports for personal loans was 2.26% in the third quarter, after 2.80% in the last three months of 2025.
The second number is SoFi's own estimate of the rate had it not sold late-stage delinquent loans: the gap Muddy Waters pointed to. It was "approximately 3.4%" this quarter, against "approximately 4.4%" at the end of last year. SoFi credits "an improvement in the underlying performance as well as strong growth in average loans."
That second reason matters. A loan rarely goes bad in its first months, so a lender that is growing fast carries many young loans that haven't had time to default, which holds the rate down for a while. SoFi made the same argument in reverse last winter, when its reported rate went up: the increase "was driven by portfolio seasoning rather than credit deterioration," it said then.
Neither number settles the claim about loans held outside the balance sheet; the release gives no rate that includes them. SoFi says its data "continues to support a 7–8% maximum cumulative net loss assumption for personal loans," the share of a year's loans it expects to lose over their life.
Where the assumptions moved
SoFi records most of its loans at fair value, its estimate of what they would fetch, so its assumptions about defaults flow straight into profit. Muddy Waters argued those assumptions were too kind. This quarter they got stricter: the value of the personal-loan book was hit by "a higher weighted average discount rate" and "a higher weighted average annual default rate," the release says, offset by a larger book.
Source: SEC EDGAR XBRL data
The growth behind it
The business kept expanding fast. SoFi added a record 1.2 million members in the quarter, for 17.1 million, up 35% in a year. Loans made in the quarter rose 71% to $16.9 billion. Personal loans were $12.6 billion of that, including $3.6 billion made for other investors through its Loan Platform Business, where Muddy Waters says it found $312 million of unrecorded debt. Deposits at SoFi Bank grew $5.8 billion to $51.3 billion, cheaper money to lend than the credit lines it used to rely on.
It is a young profit. SoFi lost $300.7 million in 2023 and earned $481.3 million on revenue of $3.6 billion in 2025, its annual reports show. This one quarter earned about half of last year's total.
The forecast
SoFi now expects adjusted net revenue of about $5.04 billion this year, which it says is about 40% growth, and about $6.4 billion in 2027, about 27% more. The release's title says SoFi raised its guidance, but not every line moved: SoFi "continues to expect adjusted net income of approximately $840 million" for 2026. These are the company's adjusted measures, and SoFi says it "has not reconciled forward-looking non-GAAP measures" to standard accounting ones.
Our read
This is analysis, not advice. The quarter answers part of the critics' case and leaves the hardest part open. Both of SoFi's loss measures came down, and it made its loan valuations more cautious, which is what a skeptic would want to see. But fast growth flatters loss rates, by SoFi's own past account, and much of the growth runs through the Loan Platform Business, the part of the company the short seller questioned most and the part that depends on outside buyers wanting its loans.
The test comes as this year's loans age. If the rate excluding loan sales stays near this quarter's level through 2027, while the platform keeps finding buyers, the bear case loses its strongest number. If it climbs back toward last year's, or SoFi's buyers pull back when credit gets tighter, the debate starts again. For now, SoFi has earned a record quarter, and it still has to show the loans behind it hold up.