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Better Home & Finance is now the favorite lending tech company, even over Upstart, though riskier because it is still very early. Its HELOC with a credit card turns home equity into a revolving credit line, making borrowers long-term customers and generating fees, and a Coinbase partnership lets borrowers use bitcoin or USDC as loan collateral. It grows at 40% yet trades at half Upstart's valuation, with fair value estimated at $40-50. x.com
Better Home & Finance's selloff while Upstart rallies sets up a pair trade favoring Better. Its focus on secured housing loans is safer than Upstart's lending, even though Better itself is riskier. Its HELOC and credit card revolving credit line carry huge potential, and a planned Coinbase partnership would let borrowers use crypto as loan collateral. x.com
A clearing of the gloomy environment will make lending stocks the next multibaggers. SoFi, Upstart and Klarna are down now, much as many cybersecurity stocks were before rising two- to fourfold in under six months. Better Home & Finance (-75% YTD), LendingTree (-55%) and Rocket (-47%) join them among lending names whose current prices will look dirt cheap in 2028-2029. x.com x.com
Limited access to capital could help Figure's SMB HELOC channel outperform expectations. It has already performed better than almost anyone expected. Figure says more than 150 partners embedded its home-equity technology in 16 months, funding $135 million in business-purpose HELOCs in Q3 2026 alone. Figure's fair value is $35-$40 right now. x.com x.com
Better Home & Finance remains unattractive because it lost $206 million on $108 million of revenue in 2024, nearly $2 lost per dollar brought in, and has lost over $1.5 billion since 2022. Those losses drove the bearish view despite Eric Jackson's claim it could be a 350-bagger. x.com
Upstart remains weighed down by worries over delinquency rates despite growing numbers, because it relies solely on lending. A safer route is fintech companies that don't depend only on lending, where investors feel more confident. x.com
Upstart has no AI underwriting moat; it is simply winning fewer personal-loan customers in a higher-rate environment while spending heavily. Originations rose 61% to $3.4 billion on auto (+300%) and home (+250%) with personal loans flat, but it returned to a GAAP net loss as contribution margin fell to 50% from 55% and operating expenses rose 45% to about $316 million. If the 10-year stays above 4.4%, a 55x P/E faces brutal valuation gravity, though hitting the $294M EBITDA guide would help. … Show more
Upstart should make a big comeback once interest rates come down, since high rates are what really hurt the stock. x.com
Upstart offers a second chance to follow insider buying. In May the director and CEO bought $6.5M of stock combined at around $25-27; shares rebounded as high as $37 and have since round-tripped back to about $27. x.com
Upstart has zero moat, and a lending platform supposedly so much more efficient than traditional methods should not be losing money. @mukund notes it is intentionally burning capital to blitz-scale into home and auto lending, and that at a 55x P/E, a 10-year yield above 4.4% is a brutal headwind. x.com
Robinhood's on-chain activity gives it an actual revenue line that TradFi will have to react to, and quickly. It resembles buying Coinbase when Base was announced, because TradFi wouldn't get it then either. @AltcoinSherpa bought after seeing the activity, hoping to front-run the bankers, and says the chart looks awesome. x.com
Rate-hike fears are dragging down the whole lending sector, making Figure Technology look like a bargain around $25. That sector selloff could offer an opportunity over the next few months. x.com
