Trump Media’s Stock Price Soars on His Presidential Win, Boosting Value of Trump’s Stake to Over $5 Billion

Donald Trump has retaken the White House — and excited investors are eagerly buying shares in his social-media company, driving up his wealth by hundreds of millions of dollars.

The former reality TV host and real estate mogul’s presidential victory turbocharged the share price of Trump Media & Technology Group on Wednesday morning.

Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group, which operates the money-losing Truth Social social media network, shot up more than 35% in premarket trading Wednesday to over $46 per share. That gives the company, whose shares trade under the “DJT” symbol on Nasdaq, a current market capitalization of around $9.3 billion. The jump came after the U.S. presidential election was called for Trump in the wee hours Wednesday morning.

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Trump owns 56.6% of TMTG’s shares, making his stake in the company now worth more than $5.3 billion, up from $3.9 billion as of the close of trading Tuesday. In September, Trump said he has “absolutely no intention” of selling his nearly 115 million shares after the expiration of the lockup period on TMTG insider stock sales. His TMTG stock holdings represent the largest component of his net worth.

“I LOVE TRUTH SOCIAL!” he declared in a Nov. 3 post.

And Trump’s big night also lifted the shares of Tesla and cryptocurrencies as investors reacted to the political realignment. Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk was one of Trump’s biggest supporters, putting more than $130 million into efforts to elect the former president and pledging $1 million giveaways to voters in some of the crucial swing states that broke Trump’s way. Musk is expected to have substantial input in the next Trump administration. The president-elect has said that Musk will be his “secretary of cost-cutting,” advising him on government efficiency. Tesla shares were up roughly 12% to $281.75 in pre-market trading.

Bitcoin hovered around $75,000 on Wednesday morning, topping a previous high-water mark of $74,000. During his campaign, Trump courted the crypto industry heavily in his bid to win over male voters, promising to loosen regulations on the currency.

Now that Trump has won a second term as U.S. president, federal ethics rules might require him to sell stock to avoid a potential conflict of interest, the New York Times reported.

TMTG’s stock has seen volatile swings since the company went public in March. Its shareholders are largely individual investors, who appear to trade the stock not based on its financial fundamentals but as a kind of token of their Trump fandom — or as a bet that the company’s fortunes will rise with his return to the White House.

As of Oct. 15, according to TMTG, it had approximately 650,000 shareholders with “a unique profile overwhelmingly comprising retail investors”: only about 2,100 of those investors owned more than 5,000 shares, and fewer than 1,000 owned more than 10,000 shares.

Trump now has just over 8 million followers on Truth Social, according to the platform’s public counter. The company has not disclosed how many active users overall are on Truth Social.

“At this juncture in its development, TMTG believes that adhering to traditional key performance indicators, such as signups, average revenue per user, ad impressions and pricing, or active user accounts including monthly and daily active users, could potentially divert its focus from strategic evaluation with respect to the progress and growth of its business,” the company said in its 10-Q SEC filing for the third quarter of 2024.

To date, TMTG has incurred a stream of red ink. Its third-quarter earnings report, released on Election Day, revealed a net loss of $19.2 million on revenue of $1 million, as well as interest earnings of $4.7 million. TMTG reported $836,900 in net sales and a net loss of $16.37 million for Q2 — and in the first quarter, it posted $770,500 in revenue and a net loss of $327.6 million. According to the company, most of the Q1 loss was due to expenses associated with TMTG’s merger with special purpose acquisition company Digital World Acquisition Corp.

The company says its mission is to “end Big Tech’s assault on free speech by opening up the internet and giving people their voices back.” In August, it launched Truth+, a video-streaming platform “focusing on family-friendly live TV channels and on-demand content.”

“At this stage of the company’s development, its revenues largely comprise early-stage revenue tied to emerging advertising initiatives on the Truth Social platform and other advertising initiatives now being tested with various partners,” TMTG said in announcing Q3 results. It said it believes Truth+ can become “a major driver of long-term earnings and shareholder value, and for TMTG to robustly expand its ecosystem beyond the social media component of the Truth Social platform.”

Trump formed TMTG in 2021 after he was banned from Twitter (now owned by Musk, who renamed it X), Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, YouTube and other internet platforms, which said he had violated rules against inciting violence in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Since then, Trump’s accounts have been reinstated on X by Musk — who figures to play a prominent role in the new Trump administration — as well as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and others.

Among risk factors listed in its 10-Q, TMTG cited its license agreement with Trump. That includes a provision that obligates him to make “any non-political social media post from any of his personal (i.e., non-business) accounts on Truth Social” and “to refrain from making the same post on another social-media site” for a six-hour exclusive period. However, according to the company’s filing, Trump “may make any post that he deems, in his sole discretion, to be politically-related… on any social media site at any time, regardless of whether that post originates from a personal account.”

“If TMTG disagrees with President Donald J. Trump about the scope of his obligation to use, or first post on, Truth Social, TMTG lacks any meaningful remedy with respect to such disagreement — which could have a material adverse effect on the business and/or operations of TMTG,” it said in the filing.

TMTG’s stock hit a low closing price of $12.15 per share on Sept. 23 in the wake of the expiration of a six-month lockup period during which company insiders were not allowed to sell their stock, but quickly rebounded. The stock’s intraday high was $79.38/share on March 26, the first day of trading after the merger with DWAC to become a publicly traded entity.