Opendoor shuffles leadership, appoints new CEO

Yahoo Finance Live anchors Julie Hyman and Brad Smith report that Opendoor has appointed CFO Carrie Wheeler as the company’s new CEO.

Video Transcript

[AUDIO LOGO]

JULIE HYMAN: [LAUGHS] Shares of Opendoor, that's another mover that we're watching, are down about 5% this morning, following a surprise shakeup atop the company. The online real estate platform announced Thursday, that Chief Financial Officer Carrie Wheeler has become CEO and a member of the board of directors effective immediately. Former chief executive officer and cofounder Eric Wu will be transitioning to a new role as president.

And again, this was a surprise. It was not something that the company telegraphed. And it's been a tough time for Opendoor, right? Opendoor was the company that very visibly had done the ibuying, right? Where they were also buying real estate and trying to flip it. And then we're caught with a lot of inventory that they could not get rid of.

And so that-- some of the analysts question the timing of this, towards the end of the year, that it was a bit unusual. And again, a surprise. But, you know, it's maybe a change that needed to happen. I don't know.

BRAD SMITH: Yeah, I mean, if anything, you would want to bring, perhaps, hopefully, I guess the CFO into this role at a time where the financials are going to be heavily scrutinized among investors, given the history that you mentioned, that Opendoor has with the inventory that they had taken on and then tried to work through. And in an environment now where you've got rising rates certainly impacting some of the demand within housing and the number of bids even continuing to decline for some of the existing homes that are out there. And the additional difficulty of even bringing new homes to market right now.

And so as we start to turn through some of that inventory for companies like Opendoor or even some of the other banks that had made significant purchases over the course of the pandemic and then immediately thereafter when you had a more favorable mortgage rate environment for them to be able to take advantage of, there is still this consideration for how much that would have more of an outsized impact on a company like Opendoor and perhaps this latest executive changeover will give them just some fresh-- some fresh minds at the top. At least those that are still within the company--

JULIE HYMAN: Right.

BRAD SMITH: --and know how it operates. But it seems like there's a little bit more of that clearing house, at least, that's going to be taking place. You've got one of the presidents that's resigned from their role, Andrew Low Ah Kee resigned from his role. He's gonna be pursuing some other opportunities as well. So we'll see who starts to backfill some of those chief-- or at least most executive positions within the company.

JULIE HYMAN: Right. One analyst at KeyBank saying, maybe now people are better aligned-- their skills are better aligned with the roles that they're in.

BRAD SMITH: Yeah.