On Tuesday, the shares of Trump Media & Technology Group, whose main offering is the social media platform Truth Social, will start trading on the Nasdaq.
A merger between Trump's media company and the publicly listed shell company Digital World Acquisition Corp. was authorized by shareholders on Friday. The stock price of Digital World has fluctuated a lot. Following the merger's approval on Friday, the stock price dropped 13.7%. Monday saw a 35.2% increase, to $49.95.
roughly 79 million shares, valued at roughly $4 billion, will be owned by former president Donald Trump, making him the majority owner of the combined business.
Unless the board of directors amends a "lock-up" provision that prohibits insiders from selling newly issued shares for six months, Trump will have to wait six months before he can sell his investment in the Palm Beach, Florida-based corporation.
On Monday, the ex-president was in the Big Apple for a hearing related to his criminal hush money case. Additionally, while appealing a $454 million civil fraud ruling, a New York appeals court decreased the amount that he was required to post as bail or cash to $175 million.
Launched in February 2022, Truth Social came a full year after Facebook and X (previously Twitter) banned Trump in the wake of the January 6th uprising at the United States Capitol. Despite being reinstated to both platforms, he has remained loyal to Truth Social. Even the platform itself has been used to promote Truth Social; on Friday, Trump wrote, "I love Truth Social."
Since Truth Social is now publicly traded, more information will be disclosed by Trump Media, including the number of users. In February, according to research firm Similarweb, there were approximately 5 million active users on both mobile and the web. Even if it's much lower than TikTok's 2 billion and Facebook's 3 billion, it's still greater than other "alt-tech" competitors like Parler (which has been down for almost a year but is contemplating a comeback) or Gettr (which had less than 2 million visitors in February).
After deducting $37.7 million in interest costs from $3.4 million in income, Trump Media lost $49 million in the first nine months of last year. Under the ticker symbol "DJT," Trump Media & Technology Group's common stock will be traded.
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