Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Shares in Donald Trump’s social media business jumped in their New York market debut on Tuesday, making the former US president’s stake worth $4.6bn.
Trump Media & Technology Group, the company behind his Truth Social platform, rose as high as $79.38 a share from the previous day’s price of $49.95, before closing up 16 per cent at $57.99. Trading was so volatile that it was halted for several minutes.
TMTG is now listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker symbol DJT — Trump’s initials — after completing its merger with blank-cheque company Digital World Acquisition Corp on Monday.
Trump, owner of 58 per cent of the shares in the merged company before accounting for dilution, is the biggest beneficiary of the price surge.
The former US president faces a pile-up of legal and financial woes ahead of what is expected to be the most expensive presidential election campaign in US history.
On Monday, a New York appeals court ruled that Trump could pay just $175mn to delay enforcement of a $464mn fraud judgment. He had claimed it would be “impossible” to secure a bond for the full amount.
Trump was given 10 days to come up with the bond money. However, TMTG’s share price jump is unlikely to help him secure the funds because of a lock-up agreement that prevents him from selling his shares for six months.
The former president could ask the board to waive the lock-up, but selling a stake of his size would be likely to sink the company’s stock price.
TMTG now has a market valuation of nearly $12bn.
The share price jump also enriched three of Trump’s former business partners who had previously filed legal claims alleging that their stakes in TMTG have been substantially diluted.
Patrick Orlando, the Miami-based businessman behind DWAC, recently sued the company, claiming he should receive a larger distribution of shares. His stake in TMTG is worth more than half a billion dollars.
Orlando’s stake includes 5.5mn “founder shares” he received for the nominal fee of $25,000. Those shares are worth more than $350mn, while his overall stake is worth roughly $530mn.
Wes Moss and Andy Litinsky, two former contestants on Trump’s reality television show The Apprentice, together own shares worth about $436mn.
Their partnership, United Atlantic Ventures, also sued ahead of a shareholder vote on the merger with DWAC, alleging that Trump and his associates had orchestrated a “last-minute stock grab”.
Also benefiting from the share surge are former government officials, including Devin Nunes, a Trump ally and former congressman who left office in 2022 to become TMTG’s chief executive. He owns $8mn worth of shares.
TMTG has never turned a profit. The company, which operates Truth Social and plans to launch a streaming service in the next year, lost $49mn in the first nine months of 2023 and earned $3.4mn in revenue.
DWAC has been popular among retail traders who have helped send its share price up almost 300 per cent over the past six months. It has also become a prominent topic on the WallStreetBets Reddit forum, where day traders share stock tips.
Additional reporting by Joe Miller in New York
