Investors are rushing to buy shares in embattled iBuyer Opendoor Technologies this week, propelling the company’s price per share to its best week ever — even though there’s been no news from the company.
The rally in Opendoor’s price per share started at the beginning of July but has picked up speed this week, with more than 1.2 billion shares in the company changing hands in the last three days alone.
At $2.24 on Friday afternoon, shares in Opendoor were up 36 percent from Thursday and 283 percent in the last month. That’s a 339 percent increase from the 52-week low of 51 cents registered on June 26.
Opendoor’s price per share has surged in July
Source: Yahoo Finance.
Opendoor did not respond to a request for comment on what’s behind the demand for the company’s shares.
In the absence of news from the company, Motley Fool contributor Jeremy Bowman attributed the surge to “a combination of a meme stock rally, a possible short squeeze, and a thesis shared on Reddit and X.com that the company could be the next Carvana.”
TAKE THE INMAN INTEL SURVEY FOR JULY
In a widely read post on the WallStreetBets subreddit, an investor said they’d placed a “$155k bet on Opendoor,” speculating that the company “made a billion dollars flipping houses in 2021, but is struggling in a frozen housing market. When Jerome Powell fixes the housing market Opendoor will start making money again.”
Opendoor “has financing and staff to scale revenue by 3x, it’s just waiting on the housing market,” the investor theorized.
Opendoor CEO Carrie Wheeler has said the company is hoping to reach more sellers by “flipping the script” and giving them the option of listing their home with an Opendoor preferred agent with an all-cash backup plan.
After pilot tests in 11 markets, Opendoor announced last month that it was expanding its Key Connections program, which puts partner real estate agents in touch with high-intent sellers who want to explore their options.
Opendoor, which posted a $392 million 2024 net loss and has racked up $3.81 billion in cumulative losses through March 31, was notified in May that it faced delisting from the Nasdaq Stock Market after its price per per share fell below the minimum $1 per share requirement for 30 consecutive business days.
Opendoor had planned to ask shareholders on July 28 to approve a reverse stock split at a ratio between 1-for-10 and 1-for-50 to get the company’s share price back above $1.
Shares in Opendoor closed above $1 on Tuesday, July 15 for the first time since April 11 and were changing hands for more than double that Friday.
Get Inman’s Mortgage Brief Newsletter delivered right to your inbox. A weekly roundup of all the biggest news in the world of mortgages and closings delivered every Wednesday. Click here to subscribe.
