Truth Social shares sink 21% in second day of trading
Shares of Donald Trump‘s social media company plunged on Monday, wiping out the gains from its debut last week, after disclosing millions in losses and saying it would struggle to meet its financial liabilities going forward.
Trump Media & Technology Group lost more than $58 million in 2023, it said in a filing, sending shares reeling less than a week after the Truth Social parent went public through a high-profile blank-cheque merger.
The stock surged in its March 26 debut to close at nearly $58 a share on retail buyer enthusiasm, including supporters of Mr Trump, the likely Republican nominee in 2024’s presidential election. But Monday’s disclosure reversed that trend, sending shares down $13.30, or 21.47 per cent, to $48.66.
“Truth Social was overvalued and that reality is dragging down the stock. Because the service does have not have a clear path to profitability and its revenue are meagre, its high debut was unsustainable,” said Ross Benes, analyst at Insider Intelligence.
Mr Trump owns 78.75 million shares, which could result in a big windfall for the former president, depending on their value.
At the stock’s peak last week, his stake would have been more than $6 billion, but after the sell-off it would be valued at about $3.8 billion. Mr Trump is not allowed to sell or borrow against any of his shares for six months – and any move by him to try to alter that agreement would likely trigger more selling.
Even with the stock’s decline, it still has a market value of more than $6 billion, compared with social media platform Reddit‘s market capitalisation of $8 billion.
Truth Social “enjoyed a huge run-up on hype and enthusiasm, but it is a long way off from becoming a true scaled social media challenger to X (Twitter), Instagram, TikTok and other platforms,” said Michael Ashley Schulman, analyst at Running Point Capital.
Truth Social’s revenue was $4.13 million last year, up from $1.47 million in 2022, it said. By comparison, Reddit brought in revenue of $800 million in 2023.
The latter has 73 million active users, whereas Truth Social only discloses its total number of sign-ups, which come to 8.9 million.
Updated: April 01, 2024, 8:59 PM
