Two major Wall Street investment banks have issued different views on the recent public fintech company Figure (FIGRY) as the company is working to expand its blockchain-based lending and capital market platform in addition to home capital lines.
Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW) initiated coverage of figure with a “better than” rating and a 12-month price target of $ 48.50, which suggests 17.5% upwards. The bank praised the figure’s early dominance on tokenized credit markets, where it has 73% of the private credit segment and 39% of all tokenized assets in the real world, according to KBW’s estimates.
Founded by former Sofi CEO Mike Cagney, Figure became public in September and has increased 12% since its IPO. Its core business tokenizes Helocs and connects borrowers to investors through a vertically integrated platform that includes loan origin, distribution and a digital asset market.
KBW sees the figure’s tech stack as under-utilized and able to support a wider range of credit assets, such as first-lien mortgage loan and personal loans. It also pointed to the upside from products such as figurative exchange and a tokenization tool for third -party assets.
Another broker, Bernstein, started earlier coverage on the stock with a more optimistic view. It estimates that it is a “better than” price of $ 54, citing the company doing to lend what stableecoins did for payments, tokenize traditional assets to make markets faster and more efficient.
Read more: Figure is a blockchain pioneer in the credit markets, says Bernstein, who started at Outperform
Flipside
However, Bank of America had a more cautious view.
The initiated coverage with a “neutral” rating and a price target of $ 41, with reference to risks of execution, regulation and figure’s dependence on its Heloc business, which still generates most of its profits and is not yet fully blockchain-native.
BOFA sees Figure Connect – a new marketplace that helps lenders match with capital providers – as the company’s next growth driver. The bank expects it to account for 75% of the company’s total revenue growth between 2024 and 2027.
While both banks recognized the figure’s management in a neglected corner of consumer lending, they diverged how easily the company can scale to a wider fintech platform. BOFA cited possible road barriers that onboarding large institutions, competition from other tech providers and changing regulatory rules, including updates to the truth of the lending law.
The difference in price targets – $ 48.50 from KBW versus $ 41 from BOFA – reflects the uncertainty of whether the figure’s blockchain infrastructure can transition from a niche to a more central role in modern financing.
Read more: Blockchain-based lender figure prices IPO at $ 25 per Stock which raises nearly $ 788m
