Opendoor Technologies (OPEN 6.30%) has already had a wild year.
Shares of the online home-flipper seemed headed for delisting by June as the share price of the long-struggling company slipped below $1 and fell as low as $0.51 in June before something surprising happened.
The stock started to catch fire on online sites like Reddit and X as a group of investors argued that lower interest rates and an improving housing market could drive a comeback in the stock. The most prominent one, Eric Jackson, a hedge fund manager, began arguing that Opendoor could be the next Carvana, which jumped more than 100 times after it escaped bankruptcy in late 2022, and gave the home-flipper stock a price target of $82.
Meme stock investors piled into the stock, aiming to squeeze shorts and take the stock to the moon, and shares jumped as much as 2,000% by September off the low in June. The rally culminated in the board bringing in a new CEO, Kaz Nejatian, who was formerly the COO of Shopify, and two of the company's co-founders, Keith Rabois and Eric Wu, returned to the board with Rabois taking over as chair.
Since then, the stock has been relatively quiet. That is, until a recent announcement from Nejatian that may be unprecedented in the modern stock market.
Image source: Opendoor.
Opendoor's new "shareholder-first dividend"
At the same time as the company reported third-quarter earnings, Opendoor also announced an unusual "shareholder-first dividend." The company is distributing warrants, which are a type of option issued by the company, to shareholders.
Shareholders as of the record date Nov. 18, 2025, 5 p.m. ET, will receive one warrant that allows them to purchase one share from each of three series of warrants for every 30 shares of the stock they own.
The series includes Series K with an exercise price of $9, Series A with an exercise price of $13, and Series Z, which has an exercise price of $17. Opendoor said the warrants will be listed on the Nasdaq under the tickers OPENW, OPENL, and OPENZ, once the warrants are distributed on Nov. 21. The warrants expire on Nov. 20, 2026, meaning they would need to be exercised by then.
Nejatian said in the announcement, "To everyone who chose to be on this journey with us -- thank you. You have been critical to this rebirth, and you should share in the upside just as we in management do."
On the earnings call, Nejatian made that short sellers were the target of the warrant offering, saying, "Yes, I'll admit it, it gives me just a bit of joy that this will totally ruin the night of a few short sellers."
As of mid-October, about 25% of the stock's float was sold short.
NASDAQ: OPEN
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What the warrants mean for investors
On one level, the warrants look like a brilliant move to help pump the stock higher, reward investors, squeeze shorts, and generate more interest in the stock.
The move also favors retail investors, as anyone can buy 30 shares of the stock for less than $300. If the stock reached $25 a share, essentially tripling from today, you would be sitting on a gain of about $500 in stock and $360 from the warrants, significantly increasing your return.
The tactic seems to be working as Opendoor stock rallied on high volume in the two days following the earnings report, gaining nearly 30%.
However, the move also seems misguided on another level, and signals management is doubling down on meme stock investors looking for short-term gain, rather than building a base of long-term investors who will be patient with a turnaround.
In the unconventional earnings report, Nejatian outlined a number of objectives for the company, including scaling acquisitions, improving unit economics and resale velocity, and building operating leverage. It's also aiming for adjusted net income to break even by the end of 2026 as well.
Those are noble goals, but achieving them may not be so easy. After all, Opendoor is still losing money on an adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) basis, and essentially all of its margins worsened in the third quarter. It also gave downbeat guidance for Q4, though it blamed that on decisions made by the old management team.
Ultimately, Opendoor's fate is still mostly in the hands of the housing market, which has yet to bounce back despite falling mortgage rates.
Regarding the warrants, the stock could continue to climb through the record date, but that's not a stable way to drive share price growth, and it will only further dilute shareholders if the warrants get exercised.
Speculative traders may want to take a chance on the stock ahead of the record date, but for long-term investors, Opendoor stock still looks like a no-go until the numbers start to improve.
