** Shares of mortgage lender Better Home & Finance BETR.O up 2.5% premarket to $54.32 after it unveiled planned equity raise
** New York-based firm files up to $75 mln ATM ("at-the-market") stock offering with Cantor and BTIG as managers
** It plans to use net proceeds from any sales for general corp purposes
** With 15.3 mln shares outstanding, co has about $810 mln market cap
** BETR shares roughly doubled in value over first two sessions last week after hedge fund manager Eric Jackson called co "the Shopify of mortgages" on X.com and said his firm EMJ Capital is long on the stock
** Shares rocketed as high as $94.06 last Mon
** In Apr, BETR announced debt restructuring deal with Japan's SoftBank 9984.T when its stock had closed at $10.28 the session prior
** BETR, which went public in 2023 after a SPAC merger, hit the headlines in Dec 2021 after it laid off 900 employees via Zoom
** Meme darling Opendoor Technologies OPEN.O saw its stock more than triple in Jul after bullish posts from Jackson
(Lance Tupper is a Reuters market analyst. The views expressed are his own)
((lance.tupper@tr.com 1-646-279-6380))