Student loan provider Sallie Mae (NASDAQ: SLM) missed Wall Street’s revenue expectations in Q3 CY2025, but sales rose 42.2% year on year to $546 million. Its GAAP profit of $0.63 per share was 20.8% below analysts’ consensus estimates.
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Sallie Mae (SLM) Q3 CY2025 Highlights:
- Net Interest Income: $373 million vs analyst estimates of $382.4 million (2.5% miss)
- Revenue: $546 million vs analyst estimates of $554.2 million (42.2% year-on-year growth, 1.5% miss)
- Pre-tax Profit: $185.8 million (34% margin, 412% year-on-year growth)
- EPS (GAAP): $0.63 vs analyst expectations of $0.80 (20.8% miss)
- EPS (GAAP) guidance for the full year is $3.25 at the midpoint, beating analyst estimates by 5.3%
- Market Capitalization: $5.63 billion
Company Overview
Originally created as a government-sponsored enterprise before privatizing in 2004, Sallie Mae (NASDAQ: SLM) is a financial services company that provides private education loans, savings products, and educational resources to help students and families pay for college.
Revenue Growth
A company’s long-term sales performance can indicate its overall quality. Any business can have short-term success, but a top-tier one grows for years. Unfortunately, Sallie Mae struggled to consistently increase demand as its $1.92 billion of revenue for the trailing 12 months was close to its revenue five years ago. This wasn’t a great result, but there are still things to like about Sallie Mae.
Long-term growth is the most important, but within financials, a half-decade historical view may miss recent interest rate changes and market returns. Sallie Mae’s annualized revenue growth of 6.1% over the last two years is above its five-year trend, but we were still disappointed by the results. 
Note: Quarters not shown were determined to be outliers, impacted by outsized investment gains/losses that are not indicative of the recurring fundamentals of the business.
This quarter, Sallie Mae achieved a magnificent 42.2% year-on-year revenue growth rate, but its $546 million of revenue fell short of Wall Street’s lofty estimates.
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Key Takeaways from Sallie Mae’s Q3 Results
We were impressed by Sallie Mae’s optimistic full-year EPS guidance, which blew past analysts’ expectations. On the other hand, its net interest income missed and its EPS fell short of Wall Street’s estimates. Overall, this quarter could have been better. Still, it seems that expectations were low, and the stock traded up 5% to $28.10 immediately after reporting.
Is Sallie Mae an attractive investment opportunity right now? When making that decision, it’s important to consider its valuation, business qualities, as well as what has happened in the latest quarter. We cover that in our actionable full research report which you can read here, it’s free for active Edge members.
