Transcript for:
Open Door Investment Outlook

The current meme stock mania can be tied back to a post from our next guest. That's Eric Jackson, EMJ Capital founder and president, writing in a post on X on July 14th that his firm was taking a long position in Open, which was then trading under a buck a share. He said later in the thread that the stock could hit $82 a share based on the fundamentals. Since then, the stock is up nearly 200% as retail investors have piled in along with Jackson. He's joining us now to break down his bull case for Open Door. Eric, it's been a long time since we've talked. It's great to be connected again. How you doing, Julie? Good to see you. I'm doing all right. Good to see you, too. So, first of all, I should ask, are you still in Open Door? I mean, obviously, you've I I mean, depending on when you got in, you've done pretty well with this recent rally. Yeah. No, I I I am I'm I'm ride or die to uh 82. I mean, not, you know, obviously I'm, you know, it's not like I got married to the stock. I mean, if if I, you know, suddenly saw that the management team was making terrible moves or whatever, I I would change my mind. But I think this, the reason why I'm so excited about Open Door is that I I don't think it's a meme stock. Uh, it, you know, the post predates all this meme stock mania. Uh, Carvana wasn't a meme stock. Uh, and Open Door is not a meme stock. This is a real turnaround, legitimate turnaround story. It's an opportunity for anybody who missed Carvana. And I missed it at 350. I got in at $15 on Carvana. So, I think I do know what to look for in these kinds of situations. Um, and I think that this is the ground floor for a move to 82. So, uh, you know, something could happen to change my mind, but the plan is to stick with this and sit on my hands and let this thing compound. So, so for people who maybe just have seen it as a meme stock or don't know what it is, this is a a mobile platform for buying and selling real estate. Zillow was in that business and got out of it because they weren't making any money on it. And you know, at least if I look at the average Wall Street forecast, this thing is not expected to make money as far as the eye can see. So, what are you seeing here? What's your bull case? Well, I mean, nobody thought Carvana could make money. uh there was a time where nobody thought Uber could make money on a on a on a large national plat or international platform basis. So uh it's not unusual when you kind of e-commerceify or you know webify some kind of previously large fragmented uh industry uh plagued with you know kind of legacy kind of uh ways of of purchasing whether it's the the agents in the case of real estate or the the dealers in the case of cars and Carvana. So uh this is a I buying is difficult. It's tough to make money and uh I have been bullish on open door before and have been wrong because I have been too early. Um which is the same as being wrong uh because it's this thing has taken much longer uh since Powell raised interest rates and made it much much more difficult to kind of get this thing to a steady state profitability. And so the reason why it got to 50 cents a few weeks ago is that Wall Street and most investors assume that this thing was just going to go, you know, file for bankruptcy. It's not going to make it just like what happened with Carvana in 2022 when it go, you know, goes from $400 to 350. Uh so I don't think it will. I think they are going to have earnings in a couple of weeks and they're going to announce like their first EVA positive quarter in about three years and they might not guide to kind of profits uh forever more but I think they're going to give some hints in that direction and I think basically this is a business on the road to within 6 months steadystate profitability and the turn in the stock always comes before the proof that a company has reached steady state profitability. So you you could I might be wrong. I've been wrong before about open door, but uh you know I was wrong about Carvana. I didn't jump in at 350. I jumped in at $15. And you know that I still did great, but uh this time I'm sort of leading with my chin more and saying now's the time to buy. When it was under a buck, it's still at two bucks. People say, "Oh, I missed the move, Julie. Oh, you know, Eric, tell me about tweet tweet me tweet tweet me the next one." Yeah, I mean, we're talking about a stock that could go to 82 bucks. You didn't miss the move. Um, I guess I would love a little more clarity on like how this turn happens, right? Yes, the the Fed might cut rates, but you know, how does that then get this company to profitability? Like what needs to happen? Well, what's happened in the background for the last sort of three three years is that Carrie Wheeler, who's the current CEO, took over for Eric Woo, um who is sort of like co-founder, first generation CEO, uh she's been cutting cutting cutting. She's sort of like more comes from a banking, you know, private equity background. uh cut cut cut you know get the fixed cost out of the business sim sim you know not dissimilar to what Carvana did and get this business to the point where um you know we can we even make money at eye buying at the current interest rate levels they got thrown for a bit of a loop last year when Powell kind of paused on cuts and so they had to cut more cut cut so what happens is um they can make money at you know they will make money this quarter probably uh you know at these rates but their business is now set up for with a little bit of easing with a little bit of a decline in interest rates which I think it's a it's a sure thing I mean you know may maybe something happens and you know a POW kind of you know tariff wars explode or something like that but I think you know most of us think 99% you know interest rates are going to drop volumes increase and the current platform that now exists at open door can push a lot more business through it make a lot more money uh than than Wall Street currently expects. So that will be a huge tailwind for the business that no analyst on Wall Street is sort of counting on when they kind of look forward and make their estimates for this business uh in future years. Eric, um you said before it's not a meme stock. You believe in the fundamental story. Is it a bad thing that it has become a meme stock in the eyes of a lot of retail traders? In other words, like if everybody's excited about just sort of trading it or short squeezing it or what have you, does is that sort of counter to what you're trying to achieve? Well, like I take offense to the meme stock characterization because I've yet to see a meme stock, you know, and because I don't include open door among amongst the group that is a real business. I think these meme stocks are dumb businesses. I would never want to own a donut business. I would never want to own GoPro. I don't think we're on this on the cusp of some go GoPro resurgence and everyone's going to be walking around GoPros on their heads the way that we thought when they initially IPOed. So why people get caught up in that, you know, that's not that's not me. I don't even think GameStop was a real real business. Although you could, you know, obviously initially in the early days it was it was a value play and a high short interest and all that kind of stuff. That's that's sort of the most believable. today. Why would I, you know, there's there's other Bitcoin treasury businesses. Why do I want to own a dying retail chain? So, Open Door, I I think is is a real business. Uh, is it bad that uh you get the flippers? Well, like a couple of days ago, you know, we sort of like almost broke the markets where the when Open Door surged like 120% and almost touched five bucks uh when a lot of shorts would have had to cover by the way. And then suddenly the NASDAQ halted it and uh then there was sort of like mass confusion on that day. Um 1.9 billion shares of open door traded. 723 million shares exist in that's the total shares outstanding for open door. So uh the next day a billion shares traded. Yesterday about half a billion shares traded. So obviously there are flippers here. You know I I think you know I don't understand it because I still think we're we're in the early innings. I mean, everybody's got to make their own investment decisions for themselves. But, I mean, I I did put out a tweet this morning that said, "Wouldn't it be interesting if all retail shareholders, all institutional shareholders, if if they buy this this argument that this is the next Carbana and this thing is going to 82 and we're on the ground floor. Imagine if they just put all their energy into buying the stock and holding it." Um, if they did and didn't flip out every two hours or whatever they're doing, um, this thing would have a Cisco.com era type of an explosion. It would be a supernova event. It would GameStop would pale in comparison to what's possible if they if we applied the Wall Street Bets crowd to a real serious turnaround business. So maybe people will think about that. I mean, I I I'm not counting on it, but you know, it's a real be great for you though if that's what happened. Eric, to be clear, it would benefit you. It would benefit you as well. Um, just real quick, real quick before we before we let you go, anything else you've got your eye on now that's going to be sort of your next bet here? Well, I mean, two stocks I mentioned before, Open Door, uh, which gave me kind of the idea, you know, that, oh, I think, you know, I think there's an audience for the next Carvana with Open Door, but I, you know, two other next Carvanas, which I own, uh, iron, I ren and Cipher, CFR, they're both Bitcoin miners. They make a lot of money from mining Bitcoin right now, but they are they've moved aggressively years ago into the AI AI HPC business, similar to what Core Scientific was doing. But these two are much bigger. They have much more in the pipeline. They each have three gigawatts of AI data centers which they have built or are building which are going to get energized in the next 12 to 18 months. And I think Brian Sazi this morning was like tweeting out like the massive shortage for these AI data centers for power for you know getting connected to the grid. These two stocks have those connections. They have the gigawatts and I think there's going to be a massive rerating in them.