Shares In Trump’s Truth Social Firm Rise, Then Tumble

The party seems to be over for Donald Trump’s social media company after it enjoyed a successful public offering via a merger last week.

Trump Media & Technology Group Corp (TMTG) had merged with a blank-check company called Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC) last week, with TMTG taking Digital World’s place on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

It was a successful market debut, after TMTG’s share price closed at $57.99, up 16.1 percent, giving the company a market value of $7.85 billion. At one point the stock was up about 59 percent.

Share price

TMTG’s share price peaked at $74.66, and at one point last week the company enjoyed a $11bn market valuation.

But on Monday shares of Donald Trump’s social media company fell by more than 20 percent to $45.65, after Trump Media & Technology Group reported it had lost nearly $60m (£48m) last year, while only bringing in around $4m (£3.2m) in revenue.

On Tuesday the share price had recovered to $52.74, and Trump’s firm now has a market value of $6 billion.

Donald Trump holds a nearly 60 percent ownership stake in Trump Media & Technology Group Corp.

It was been widely reported that many of those investing in Trump Media are small-time investors either trying to support Trump or aiming to cash in on the mania, instead of big institutional and professional investors.

Professional investors are concerned for the future, after TMTG admitted in a regulatory filing on Monday that it “expects to continue to incur operating losses and negative cash flows from operating activities for the foreseeable future.”

Social media ban

Donald Trump had been banned for a long period of time on almost all social networking platforms for his role in inciting a mob of his supporters to storm the US Capitol building on Wednesday 6 January 2021, which resulted in the deaths of seven people (including one police officer who was beaten to death).

As Trump tried and failed to restore his online presence via lawsuits, he resorted to DIY approaches. After leaving office Trump had launched a website to publish content ‘straight from the desk’ of the former president.

But after only one month of operation, Trump closed down that website.

Then in February 2022, Trump launched his ‘Truth Social’ media venture.

In November 2022, Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk reinstated Trump’s account, but Trump only used that platform to post his mugshot photo last year, after he was booked on 13 charges due to his efforts to reverse Georgia’s 2020 election results.

Trump has not used X since, preferring to post on his Truth Social.

Research firm Similarweb estimates that Truth Social had roughly 5 million active mobile and web users in February 2024.

That is a long way off TikTok’s more than 2 billion, Facebook’s 3 billion, and Twitter’s 550 million users.