Opendoor Technologies (OPEN) has been living on the edge this year with the stock ricocheting from near delisting to meme-stock darling due to macro jitters. But this time, the drama has been entirely self-inflicted.
The trouble started in May, when Opendoor was put on notice by Nasdaq for trading under $1, the minimum required to maintain its listing.
Once the poster child for iBuying, Opendoor’s algorithm-driven home-flipping model has faced significant headwinds as housing markets cooled and margins shrank after Trump’s Liberation Day.
By June, the company was asking investors for permission to approve a reverse stock split, filing a preliminary proxy statement while also cutting jobs as part of a restructuring plan.
But the split never happened. In July, Opendoor got swept into the meme stock craze, which rocketed shares from a 52-week low of 51 cents on June 26 to a high of $4.97 by July 21, nearly a 10x move.
Trading volumes were equally dizzying. Roughly six billion shares of OPEN changed hands in the last two weeks of July.
The company quickly called off the shareholder meeting that was supposed to rubber-stamp the reverse split. Suddenly, survival didn’t look so precarious.
Volatility sweeps the C-Suite
Then came another twist. CEO Carrie Wheeler revealed on Friday that she was stepping down after three years at the helm. In her farewell note, Wheeler said she had been tasked by the board to “stabilize the company and do what was necessary to survive.”
“It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t about glamorous headlines, but we stopped the bleeding,” she wrote.
“We restructured the business, rebuilt an exceptional leadership team, set a bold vision for long-term value creation, and reshaped the company for the future — all against the backdrop of one of the toughest real estate markets on record.”
The stock jumped 19% on news of her departure, bringing its six-month gain to more than 135%. The surge wasn’t just relief. It was fuelled by retail traders who had been egged on by activist investor Eric Jackson.
Jackson, who first kicked off Opendoor’s meme rally by slapping an $82 price target on the penny stock in July, publicly called for Wheeler’s ouster in an August 7 post.
“Carrie Wheeler is not the leader to take $OPEN to $82 and beyond,” he wrote. “The board needs to act now. I’ve never been more convinced about a CEO needing to step aside now. Not since Yahoo. Not since Viacom.”
The board moved quickly, elevating Shrisha Radhakrishna, Opendoor’s CTO, to interim CEO.
As of now, the stock is up 126.3% year-to-date, which is a remarkable turnaround for a company that just weeks ago was staring down the barrel of a Nasdaq delisting.
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