Opendoor Technologies (OPEN) stock surged as much as 16% before trimming gains on Friday after the company announced that CEO Carrie Wheeler will step down, effective immediately.
Shares closed 4% higher at $3.17 each after chief technology and product officer Shrisha Radhakrishna was appointed as president and interim leader of the company. Opendoor, which uses iBuyer real estate technology to flip homes, said it was searching for a new CEO.
Wheeler stepped into the CEO role in December 2022, replacing Eric Wu, one of the company’s co-founders. Prior to that she served as CFO and board member of Opendoor.
Since going public through a SPAC transaction in 2020, Opendoor has yet to post a profitable quarter. The company received a warning in May that it faced potential delisting from the Nasdaq after trading under $1 for more than 30 days.
Shares have surged more than 200% in the past month, powered in part by Carvana (CVNA) turnaround spotter EMJ Capital and retail investors on Reddit’s wallstreetbets, a haven for meme stocks.
In mid-July, EMJ Capital founder and president Eric Jackson announced that his firm was taking a long position in Opendoor.
Jackson and other shareholders have been pressuring the company to change its leadership in recent weeks. Even Opendoor co-founder Keith Rabois expressed a desire for Wheeler to step down.
“Not a single founder nor executive who built Opendoor to an IPO or billions of free cash flow or $18 B of market cap supports Carrie as CEO nor Pueo,” Rabois said, also referring to board member Pueo Keffer.
Opendoor shares tanked 20% last Thursday following a disappointing earnings forecast on the heels of its quarterly results.
“The communication on the earnings call from the CEO and the CFO was really awful,” EMJ Capital’s Jackson told Yahoo Finance last week.
Year to date, Opendoor shares are up roughly 100%.
Ines Ferre is a Senior Business Reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow her on X at @ines_ferre.
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