These 3 Stocks Have Lost More Than 50% of Their Value Despite Growing Extremely Fast
SoFi, Sea, and Grab are growing revenue by 22% to 48% a year, yet they’re worth roughly half what they were a year ago. The market has stopped paying for growth and is asking who’s financing it. The answer is different for each company.
Key points
SoFi reported record revenue and profit, yet its stock fell 9% on earnings day
Sea increased revenue by 48%, but profit by only 11%, leaving the market wondering where the difference went
For every $100 spent on Shopee, the company keeps less than a dollar in operating profit
Grab has $5.4B in net cash and is trading near its yearly low
Three earnings dates through mid-November will show which company’s slump is a bargain
Half the price for growth most companies can only dream of
Most companies in the S&P 500 would do anything for double-digit revenue growth. SoFi Technologies $SOFI , Sea Limited $SE , and Grab Holdings $GRAB have it, yet their stocks are roughly 55% below their yearly highs. Grab is faring worst: it has fallen 54.8%, from a high of $6.24 to $2.82, and is trading just above its yearly low of $2.74.
The common denominator isn’t a slowdown. It’s the currency each company pays for growth: SoFi pays with new shares, Sea with margin, and Grab with the gap between paper profits and cash. The test is simple: growth only has value for shareholders when it shows up per share and in cash. That’s how you tell where a slump is a bargain and where it’s a bill.
SoFi: record revenue, but 16% more shares to split it among
On paper, SoFi looks like a dream. In the second quarter, it reported revenue of $1.22B (+43%) and net income of $157M (+61%); its membership grew 35% to 15.8 million, and management raised its full-year revenue outlook to $4.75B to $4.85B. Yet the stock fell 9% that day.
The reason is in a single line of the financial statement. The average number of shares was 1,284 million, versus 1,107 million a year earlier, up 16%. The December offering of $1.5B strengthened the bank’s capital, but earnings per share grew only 50% as a result, while total profit grew 61%. The market also added a second concern: SoFi holds tens of billions of dollars in consumer loans on its own balance sheet, and high inflation in mid-October sent the stock to a yearly low of $13.86 on October 15, shortly after Goldman Sachs cut its price target.
What SoFi has going for it: a net interest margin of 5.98%, personal-loan charge-offs of 2.62% (down 21 basis points year over year), and a growing share of fee-based revenue. A total of $3.1B passed through its platform in the quarter, where loans are simply brokered to partners and SoFi doesn’t bear the credit risk. It works like a car dealer earning a commission for arranging a loan without providing it itself.
“2026 is shaping up to be a pivotal year, and our second-quarter results represent a clear turning point for SoFi. Despite continued market uncertainty, our business model continues to demonstrate its resilience.”
Anthony Noto, CEO of SoFi Technologies (Q2 2026 earnings release)
Sea: revenue +48%, profit +11%, and now cloud and a spin-off of its fastest-growing division
Sea is a company where everything is growing except the metric the market is watching. In the second quarter, revenue rose 48% to $7.8B, but net income grew just 11% to $458M, and adjusted earnings per share of $0.70 fell short of the $0.83 expected. The value of goods sold through Shopee rose 28% to $38.3B, while the e-commerce platform’s adjusted EBITDA was $255M, or roughly 0.7% of goods sold. For every $100 customers spend, Shopee keeps less than a dollar.
Advertising is what mainly sustains that thin margin, while TikTok Shop is stepping up competition in the same countries. Management nevertheless insists Shopee will reach $1B in adjusted EBITDA for the full year, and is targeting a medium-term margin of 2% to 3%.
Then, on October 20, came a memo from founder Forrest Li: Sea plans an IPO for its financial division, Monee (a loan portfolio of $11.1B, +62%, and the group’s most profitable business), while also entering enterprise cloud with AI under the Sea Cloud brand. The stock fell 9.1% during the day and another 3% the next day, to $77.94. The market read it simply: a capital-intensive cloud bet funded by a margin Shopee has only just started earning, plus a spin-off of the division currently driving the group’s growth. Meanwhile, Maybank cut its price target from $155 to $150, still almost double the current price.
“With this solid momentum, we are optimistic that Shopee will reach the $1 billion adjusted EBITDA milestone for the full year.”
Forrest Li, Chairman and CEO of Sea Limited (Q2 2026 earnings release)
Grab: first paper profits, but cash is still flowing elsewhere
Grab is the only one of the three with more cash than debt: $5.4B in net liquidity. And yet it’s trading near its yearly low, with a market capitalization of around $11B. That’s because the market doesn’t trust its accounting profit.
In the second quarter, the company reported a profit of $235M on revenue of $997M (+22%). But $307M of that profit came from a one-time revaluation of its stake in Indonesia’s Superbank, which Grab began consolidating. Operating profit was just $19M, operating cash flow was $56M (down 12% year over year), and stock-based compensation was $62M—more than total operating profit. So its P/E of around 19 is largely based on profit that won’t recur.
Where the money is going: financial services, where revenue is growing 59% but the segment is still losing money ($15M in the quarter), and the loan portfolio has nearly tripled to $2.3B. Add higher fuel costs, which led Grab to increase driver incentives to 10.9% of gross bookings. Management nevertheless raised its full-year revenue outlook to $4.10B to $4.15B and announced a $750M share buyback, making it the only one of the three actively countering dilution.
Three dates through mid-November will decide who just needs time and who needs new money
SoFi, October 27. Watch the share count (above 1.3 billion means further dilution), personal-loan charge-offs versus 2.62%, and the share of fee-based revenue. If charge-offs don’t spike and the share count stabilizes, the slump is a bargain; SoFi doesn’t need new money—it needs the market to stop expecting another share offering.
Grab, early November. The key is profit excluding one-off items and operating cash flow. If, after excluding the Superbank revaluation, profit comes in at just tens of millions and cash remains stagnant, its P/E of 19 will remain an illusion. Grab doesn’t need new money, but it has to show that its profit holds up in cash, too.
Sea, November 10. Shopee’s margin versus its target of $1B in annual EBITDA, goods volume growth of around 25%, and the first figures for Sea Cloud capital spending. Sea is the only one whose new strategy genuinely requires money, and the Monee IPO is a way to raise it without issuing shares in the parent company. But if Shopee’s margin falls below 0.7% of goods sold, the market will have confirmation that the cloud is being funded by the e-commerce business.
All three companies will keep growing next year. The difference between a bargain and a bill comes down to how much of that growth ends up per share and in cash. You’ll know by mid-November.
