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David Crowther & Luke Kawa

Opendoor surges after trading firm Jane Street reveals 5.9% stake

Shares in retail darling Opendoor Technologies are 8% higher in early trading on Thursday after proprietary trading firm Jane Street revealed a 5.9% stake in the company in a new filing, equivalent to beneficial ownership of more than 44 million shares. At current prices, that’s a position worth $390 million and change.

Many Opendoor bulls are cheering this announcement as vindication from a major institution and a material positive catalyst for the online real estate company. The reality is much less clear and considerably more nuanced. Jane Street is a firm that specializes in market-making and holds a 5% stake or more in 221 US publicly traded securities, per Bloomberg data. It is impossible to know what Jane Street’s true net Opendoor exposure is, since its options positions are not disclosed. No one but Jane Street knows that.

If we had to make an educated speculation, this stock position is much more likely to be a hedge related to calls Jane Street may have sold on Opendoor than it is a plain vanilla expression of optimism on the company’s prospects.

(There is a certain irony that, in this scenario, traders’ reaction to the revelation of a hedge serves as something that immediately makes that hedge more useful!)

The stake is owned by a number of different Jane Street Group subsidiaries. Jane Street Capital reported owning about 3.2 million shares; Jane Street Global Trading reported owning 17.2 million shares; while Jane Street Options, LLC, was reported as the beneficial owner of the bulk of the stake, equivalent to 23.6 million shares. A little over one-third of the stake, 15.5 million shares, were reported as “acquirable through conversion of convertible bonds held.”

Opendoor’s stock has whipsawed in recent days as large shareholders have exited some of their positions. Indeed, just yesterday it came to light that Access Industries, one of Opendoor’s top shareholders, had sold nearly $100 million of OPEN on Tuesday.

Separately, data out yesterday revealed that “sales of newly built homes rose a much larger-than-expected 20.5% in August compared with July,” per CNBC, which might have contributed to positive sentiment on the stock, which gained 16% yesterday.

As of 5 a.m. ET, the stock was the ninth-most-traded in the United States, with heavier volumes (in dollar terms) than tech giants Oracle, Google, and fellow retail favorite Palantir.

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Tasha Matsumoto
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CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - DECEMBER 23: Benny the Bull, the Chicago Bulls mascot, dresses as Santa Claus in the game against the Milwaukee Bucks during the second half at the United Center on December 23, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois
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Luke Kawa

Microsoft is in talks to shift its custom chip business to Broadcom from Marvell, The Information reports

The Information’s profile of custom chip specialist Broadcom includes this tidbit:

“And now Microsoft is also in talks to design future chips with Broadcom, which would involve Microsoft switching its business from Marvell, another maker of custom chips, according to one person involved in the discussions.”

Shares of Marvell Technology briefly dipped into the red after this report hit the wires, but then pared that drop to trade modestly higher. The company codesigns the Maia line of ASICs for Microsoft that are custom-built for Azure. Microsoft is its second-biggest hyperscaler client, behind Amazon.

Marvell tumbled on a ho-hum earnings report earlier this week before going on to surge after CEO Matt Murphy offered a $10 billion revenue target for its upcoming fiscal year, which was above analysts’ expectations.

Perhaps this is a bit of Information fatigue, given how Microsoft was quick to deny a report from the outlet earlier this week about how the tech giant lowered its sales targets for AI products.

markets
Luke Kawa

Memory stocks soar as AI supporting cast repairs damage from steep November declines

There’s not much rhyme or reason to it, but memory stocks are ending the week with a stellar showing.

Shares of high-bandwidth memory specialist Micron, hard disk drive sellers Seagate Technology Holdings and Western Digital, and flash memory company Sandisk are all rising today.

Three of these stocks dropped about 20% in November as credit risk seeping into AI and a downturn in speculative momentum stocks weighed on the theme, with Sandisk faring the worst.

Micron, Western Digital, and Seagate have all since rebounded strongly and are about 5% or less from reclaiming all-time highs, while Sandisk has made up the least ground.

While GPUs (and, more recently, TPUs) get most of the headlines, data centers also need a boatload of memory chips that store information and feed it to those processors.

markets
Nia Warfield

Ulta soars as Q3 beat sparks flood of price target hikes

Ulta’s latest makeover is happening on Wall Street. Shares leapt Friday morning as analysts hiked their price targets after the beauty retailer topped Q3 estimates and raised its full-year outlook after the bell Thursday.

Earnings came in at $5.14 per share, handily beating analyst expectations of $4.64. Revenue also topped estimates at $2.86 billion, compared with the $2.72 billion expected. Ulta has benefited from resilient beauty spending, even as consumers pull back elsewhere and hunt more aggressively for discounts.

Ulta now expects full-year net sales of about $12.3 billion, up from a prior forecast of $12.0 billion to $12.1 billion. The retailer also lifted its earnings outlook to $25.20 to $25.50 per share, up from $23.85 to $24.30 previously. This marks Ulta’s second straight quarter of hiking its sales and profit forecast. Analysts are taking note:

  • Goldman Sachs maintained its “buy” rating and raised its price target to $642 from $584.

  • DA Davidson maintained its “buy” rating and raised its price target to $650 from $625.

  • JPMorgan maintained its “outperform” rating and raised its price target to $647 from $606.

  • Baird maintained its “outperform” rating and hiked its price target to $670 from $600.

  • Telsey Advisory maintained its “outperform” rating and raised its price target to $640 from $610.

  • Piper Sandler maintained its “outperform” rating and raised its price target to $615 from $590.

  • Canaccord Genuity maintained its “neutral” rating and raised its price target to $674 from $654.

markets
Max Knoblauch

Southwest cuts its earnings outlook on lost revenue due to government shutdown

Another big four airline has put a price tag on the 43-day government shutdown.

Southwest Airlines on Friday said lower revenue due to a temporary decline in demand during the shutdown, together with higher fuel costs, will ding its annual earnings before interest and taxes by between $100 million and $300 million. The carrier lowered its full-year EBIT outlook to $500 million, down from a prior range of $600 million to $800 million.

According to Southwest’s filing, bookings have returned to previous expectations following the end of the shutdown. Its shares dipped down about 1% in premarket trading.

The carrier joins Delta Air Lines in assigning a cost to the government closure. Earlier this week, Delta said the shutdown would cost it $200 million in the fourth quarter.

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