Sallie Mae Q3 2026 Earnings: The Charge-Off Rate to Watch on October 22
Sallie Mae, formally SLM Corporation and listed on Nasdaq under the ticker SLM, is scheduled to release its third-quarter 2026 financial results after the market closes on Thursday, October 22, 2026, according to a Business Wire announcement issued October 13, 2026. The company has set its third-quarter earnings call for 5:30 p.m. ET the same day, per its investor relations calendar. Until the release crosses the wire, none of the quarter's figures are public.
The first number most credit-focused analysts will go to is the net charge-off rate. This is the share of loans the lender writes off as uncollectable, net of any money it later recovers on those loans, measured against average loans in repayment and annualized (scaled up to a full year so quarters can be compared). For a private education lender, that ratio is the cleanest read on borrower performance, because it strips out the effect of balance growth and reports losses as an annual run rate.
The comparison set is short but useful. Sallie Mae reported $77 million in private education loan net charge-offs for the third quarter of 2024, equal to 2.08% of average loans in repayment on an annualized basis, down from 2.53% in the third quarter of 2023 (earnings presentation). Its third-quarter 2025 earnings release then reported 1.95% on the same basis (Q3 2025 earnings release). That gives a three-year sequence of 2.53%, 2.08%, and 1.95% for the third quarter. Today's print will be read against the 1.95% prior-year figure, and the direction of the change will matter more to most readers than the absolute level.
Expenses are the other line to watch. An SLM Corporation exhibit filed with the SEC reported $180 million in non-interest expenses, which are operating costs outside of interest and credit losses (SEC exhibit).
In my view, the credit line and the expense line belong in the same conversation. A lender earns from the gap between what it pays to fund loans and what those loans yield, so losses and running costs together set most of the earnings picture. A move in one without the other can be misleading.
The balance sheet has moved as well. Loans held for sale, which are loans the company has classified for sale rather than holding to maturity, stood at $933 million on December 31, 2025 and $236 million on March 31, 2026 (Form 10-Q). Investors will want to see whether that balance changes again in the third quarter and how it flows through to reported income.
On a per-share basis, the company had 198,154,626 shares of common stock outstanding as of January 31, 2026 (proxy-related filing). That count is the denominator for any per-share figure, meaning profit divided across each share.
Sallie Mae last reported quarterly results on July 23, 2026, for the second quarter (Business Wire). Thursday's release will be the first full read on the third quarter.
The most useful test on Thursday is whether the annualized charge-off rate holds at or below the prior-year 1.95%, whether expenses stay near the levels in the filings, and whether the loan book behaves as the earlier filings suggest. Those are questions for the numbers, not forecasts, and the answers will not be known until the release and call are public.
