NEW YORK (AP) — Trump Media & Technology Group, whose flagship product is social networking site Truth Social, will begin trading on the Nasdaq stock market on Tuesday.
Shareholders of Digital World Acquisition Corp, a publicly traded shell company, approved a deal to merge with the Trump’s media business in a Friday vote.
Shares of Digital World have been volatile. On Friday the stock slumped 13.7 per cent after the merger was approved. On Monday, it soared 35.2 per cent to USD49.95.
Former President Donald Trump is set to own most of the combined company — or nearly 79 million shares, with a value of nearly USD4 billion.
Trump won’t be able to cash out his stake in the Palm Beach, Florida-based company immediately, unless the company’s board makes changes to a “lock-up” provision that prevents company insiders from selling newly issued shares for six months.
The former president was in New York Monday attending a hearing on his criminal hush money case. Elsewhere, a New York appeals court reduced to USD175 million what he must post in cash or a bond while appealing a USD454 million civil fraud ruling.
Truth Social launched in February 2022, one year after Trump was banned from major social platforms including Facebook and X, formerly Twitter, following the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. He’s since been reinstated to both but has stuck with Truth Social. Trump has promoted Truth Social on the platform itself — on Friday he posted “I love Truth Social.”
Trump Media hasn’t so far disclosed Truth Social’s user numbers but now that the company is publicly traded, more information will be disclosed. Research firm Similarweb estimates that it had roughly 5 million active mobile and web users in February. That’s far below TikTok’s more than 2 billion and Facebook’s 3 billion — but still higher than other “alt-tech” rivals like Parler, which has been offline for nearly a year but is planning a comeback, or Gettr, which had less than 2 million visitors in February.
Trump Media lost USD49 million in the first nine months of last year, when it brought in just USD3.4 million in revenue and had to pay USD37.7 million in interest expenses.
The common stock of Trump Media & Technology Group will trade under the ticker symbol “DJT”.
