Some news. Today, for the first time in Opendoor's history, we bought back our own stock.
Our share count is down 5%. We paid for this buyback with money borrowed at a 0% coupon and we still have hundreds of millions of dollars left to grow faster.
There are plenty of helpful details, along with a lot of legalese, in our press release and 8-K (linked below). But there are a few things I want to say directly and in plain English.
First, I *despise* dilution. On my first earnings call at Opendoor, I told you that if we issue a share, it has only one job: to make every other share worth more for our existing shareholders, not to extend runway for management. The flip side is just as simple: when our own stock is one of the best uses of capital, we should buy it back. Today, we did just that - by 5%.
Second, I run a publicly traded company. I don’t get to have feelings about the macro or the way Wall Street works. My job is to understand the rules of the game and use them to find an edge and build a better company.
One of those realities is that our stock price has lots of volatility.
People disagree - A LOT - about what Opendoor could be worth one day. Some think we're worth less. Some think we're worth dramatically more. I obviously have a view…
That disagreement isn’t just noise - it has economic value that Wall Street monetizes every single day.
Most companies would treat this as a headache, but we see it as an asset. If people are going to speculate about our future, I'd rather our shareholders get paid than anyone else. So instead of complaining about volatility, we used those dynamics to borrow $650M at a 0% coupon.
Then we turned around and used part of those proceeds to buy back our own stock. At today's prices, buying back our stock and call options was one of the best trades on the board. The rest stays on our balance sheet so we can buy more homes and grow faster.
As for dilution, we bought our stock where we thought it was cheap and pushed any future dilution far above today’s price. Not one net new Opendoor share will exist below $10.38. And if we buy back stock in the future, that floor goes higher.
But why raise now? Because the best time to raise capital is when you don’t need it. We’ve proven the business can reach ANI profitability, but profitability is just the starting point, not the finish line. And waiting could make the shares we are buying back today more expensive, and homes we could be buying don’t get bought. I’d rather move now.
Some people will call what we did today aggressive. They’re right. But being aggressive is how we fixed a company that spent years being careful. I’d make that trade again.
To our shareholders: You trusted us with your capital. Today, for the first time, Opendoor used its own capital to buy more of itself. The company is putting its money where its mouth is. Tomorrow, I will too.
After our lawyers allow, I’m personally buying $100K worth of shares. I'm all in, and I plan to keep buying.
great post by @cubeqube; thanks. just deconstructing the opendoor-zillow warrant structure a bit more here. why tranche 1 is just the start, and it could possibly get better from here.
according to the opendoor’s latest 10-q, @zillow officially vested tranche 1 (300k shares) of those 2022 partnership warrants. some of you might be wondering why it took four whole years just to hit milestone one, and what it means going forward.
here is some food for thoughts:
1️⃣ why did tranche 1 take so long?
the timing was just brutal. right after they signed this in july 2022, the fed started spiking interest rates, which completely froze the housing market. add in the fact that the zillow integration rolled out super cautiously city-by-city rather than nationwide overnight, and possibly the milestone meter was barely moving for two years. it wasn’t until opendoor stabilized its unit economics and scaled "opendoor 2.0" that zillow's funnel finally caught real traction. also, at the same time, opendoor had to play defense, tightening its buy-box and pausing heavy acquisitions. it'd be interesting to know how much of tranche 1 success comes from post-kaz and kaz era, but i think this is not something that @nejatian can publicly disclose.
2️⃣ the clock is ticking (and zillow knows it)
the entire agreement has a hard deadline in july 2027. zillow only has about a year left to unlock the remaining 5.7 million unvested shares. since these tranches vest sequentially based on cumulative referral fees, zillow has a massive incentive to push as many clean, high-quality seller leads to opendoor as possible right now. if they don't optimize the funnel today, they permanently lose out on millions of shares of potential upside.
3️⃣ credit where credit is due. this contract protects us even though old management drafted this, you have to admit it was engineered beautifully to protect retail shareholders from toxic dilution.
first, the exercise price has a hard floor at $15.00; meaning zillow can't dilute the company at pennies on the dollar.
second, the net exercise math means far fewer shares actually hit the float than the headline numbers look like.
third, and more importantly imo, opendoor holds the ultimate veto: they have the right to cash-settle any exercise. if the stock is absolutely ripping, opendoor can refuse to issue new shares and just cut zillow a check for their net profit instead.
and fourth, the $30.00 max cap ensures zillow has serious skin in the game (and you need this in partnership). if they push incredible volume and help send the stock past $30 into the stratosphere, their strike price stays locked at $30, giving them a guaranteed discount and a multi-million dollar payday.
the bottom line:
this setup aligns perfectly with the exact capital allocation rules kaz keeps preaching: zero dilution happens unless shareholders get massive value first. zillow is highly motivated to pump transaction volume before july 2027, and opendoor holds all the structural leverage.
45 millones de personas han leído el artículo de Ray Dalio sobre el orden mundial en los últimos dos días.
Estos podrían ser los 60 minutos más importantes que le dediques este año.
🧵Te dejo un resumen en español en el primer comentario
Escrow & Closing is to Opendoor what AWS was to Amazon. The infra we use to run our business. It is great. We want it to power what others are building.
Today, Opendoor acquired Doma’s escrow services to make home closing faster, cheaper and more certain. For everyone.
https://t.co/PmYiTdIVuL