Donald Trump\u2019s return to the stock market could be right around the corner. All eyes are on a vote scheduled for Friday by shareholders of Digital World Acquisition Corp., a publicly traded shell company that is looking to merge with the former president\u2019s media business. The deal\u2019s approval would open the door for Trump Media and Technology Group, whose flagship product is the social networking site Truth Social, to soon begin trading on the Nasdaq stock market in Digital World\u2019s place.<\/p>\n
If the merger is green-lit, which is likely, Trump stands to receive a sizeable payout. He would own most of the combined company \u2013 or nearly 79 million shares. Multiply that by Digital World\u2019s current stock price of more than USD 42, and the total value of Trump\u2019s stake could surpass USD 3 billion. The prospect of the deal arrives at a time when the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is facing his most costly legal battle to date: a USD 454 million judgment in a fraud lawsuit.<\/p>\n
But even if the Digital World merger is approved Friday, Trump wouldn\u2019t be able to immediately cash out his windfall, unless some things change, due to a \u201clock-up\u201d provision that prevents company insiders from selling newly issued shares for six months. Trump\u2019s earlier foray into the stock market didn\u2019t end well. Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts went public in 1995 under the symbol DJT \u2013 the same symbol Trump Media will trade under.<\/p>\n
By 2004, Trump\u2019s casino company had filed for bankruptcy protection and was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. Digital World listed many of the risks its investors face, as well as those of the Truth Social owner, if Trump Media also goes public. One risk, the company said, is that Trump would be entitled to vote in his own interest as a controlling stockholder \u2013 which may not always be in the interests of all shareholders.<\/p>\n
Digital World also cited the high rate of failure for new social media platforms, as well as Trump Media\u2019s expectation that it would lose money on its operations \u201cfor the foreseeable future.\u201d Trump Media lost USD 49 million in the first nine months of last year, when it brought in just USD 3.4 million in revenue and had to pay USD 37.7 million in interest expenses. Trump Media and Digital World first announced their merger plans in October 2021.<\/p>\n
In addition to a federal probe, the deal has faced a series of lawsuits leading up to Friday\u2019s vote. Truth Social launched in February 2022, one year after Trump was banned from major social platforms including Facebook and Twitter, the platform now known as X, following the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. He\u2019s since been reinstated to both but has stuck with Truth Social as a megaphone for his message.<\/p>\n
Trump promoted Truth Social in a post on the social media network on Thursday evening, saying: \u201cTRUTH SOCIAL IS MY VOICE, AND THE REAL VOICE OF AMERICA!!! MAGA2024!!!\u201d Trump Media doesn\u2019t disclose Truth Social\u2019s user numbers. But research firm Similarweb estimates that it had roughly 5 million active mobile and web users in February. That\u2019s far below TikTok\u2019s more than 2 billion and Facebook\u2019s 3 billion \u2013 but still higher than 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Donald Trump\u2019s return to the stock market could be right around the corner. All eyes are on a vote scheduled\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":34485,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10300,11476,168,679,9776,11477,9124,11478,298,11479,11475,3530,11480,5816],"class_list":["post-34484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-civil-lawsuit","tag-digital-world-acquisition-corp","tag-donald-trump","tag-january-6-riots","tag-legal-battles","tag-merger","tag-nasdaq","tag-payout","tag-republicans","tag-trump-media","tag-truth-social","tag-us-2024-presidential-elections","tag-usd-454-million-judgment","tag-wall-street"],"reading_time":"3 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}