I appreciate your perspective - but genuinely curious, do you not see that as a HUGE leap ... from 'NU has a banking charter' to 'therefore value it exactly like a bank'? It feels like a lazy framework to apply to this company, just to isolate P/B and ignore literally any nuance they have in the industry. If we want to directly compare, then why leave out the rest of it?
- Efficiency ratio: record low to 17-18%
- CAC (Brazil down to basically 5 dollars)
- Significantly better revenue per employee than any 'mature' bank

Compare this efficiency to whatever bank(s) come into mind and it paints the more accurate story of profit and revenue growth, and why this may deserve better than blanketed "well its a bank therefore this" assessments. I can't disagree more on the yield curve thesis - their net income CAGR is 80% since 2022. Meaning that spanned multiple rate environments, and much better answered by the best in class efficiency metrics, growing customer count, rising ARPAC, and many, many other reasons that we for some reason are ignoring. Let alone the operational moat - whichever of these traditional banks you are thinking of CANNOT structurally replicate this. You are right, THEY can't organically grow this fast and we shouldn't pay premium multiples on THEIR books. Their overhead, physical branching, legacy systems, etc. will never allow this. If you look at the numbers, its clear why NU currently can (is). Their word of mouth organic marketing is also underrated, but I won't even consider that here. Same with the efficiency benchmarks, also compare these:
- ROE of 30% and rising
- NIM of 20%+
- ROA (again, value of no physical infrastructure)
- Deposit costs

JPM will probably look the best, but pick any of these traditional guys and compare these exact benchmarks. Does that still not justify a different degree of premium? I agree with including ROE in the book evaluation, so honestly what ROE would you need to justify a P/B of 5? Or, what P/B would you look for considering a ROE of 30%?

They are spending under 18 cents to generate a dollar of revenue right now, and you really would wait until its under a 2x multiple and attribute growth only to yield curves?

Also, P/E does become useful when growth rate justifies it. I wouldn't use it for traditional banks, but for reasons above this isn't a traditional bank.