Trump’s Truth Social Makes Successful Market Debut

Donald Trump’s social media company has enjoyed a successful public offering via a merger on Tuesday, which saw its share price rise about 16 percent in the first day of trading on the Nasdaq.

Trump Media & Technology Group Corp (TMTG) had merged Monday with a blank-check company called Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC).

DWAC had announced its intention to merge with TMTG and take it public in October 2021, but the deal since then had been mired in challenges including charges of insider trading.

Public debut

Following the merger, the Associated Press reported that Trump Media, which runs Donald Trump’s social media platform Truth Social, has now taken Digital World’s place on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

According to the AP, shares 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.

Donald Trump holds a nearly 60 percent ownership stake in the company, now worth about $4.6 billion.

The share price on Wednesday closed even higher at $66.22.

On Monday, Trump told reporters that “Truth Social is doing very well. It’s hot as a pistol and doing great.”

On Tuesday, he posted “I LOVE TRUTH SOCIAL, I LOVE THE TRUTH!,” on the platform.

According to the Associated Press, 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.

Those shareholders reportedly helped the stock of Digital World more than double this year in anticipation of the merger going through.

In October 2023 in a very cheeky move, the campaign group for President Joe Biden created an account on Trump ‘s Truth Social, with the words saying ‘converts welcome’.

It even used a Fox news headline, and added “Follow us there for truths and retruths or whatever they call them.”

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.