TRUMP AND JUMP

Junk Billions: Trump’s Meme Stock Buries Bad News in Victory

The re-elected president holds billions in Truth Social stock, but can he sell any of it?

Trump Media, the company behind Truth Social—which is majority-owned by Donald Trump and makes up the bulk of his theoretical net worth—buried their latest financial results after the market closed on Nov. 6 while attention was concentrated on Trump’s re-election.

The company, which trades as DJT on the Nasdaq, revealed that it had generated $1.01 million in quarterly revenue. $1m-a-quarter is typical for DJT, which has done $6.8m in sales over the past seven quarters.

Reader, DJT is valued at $7.2 billion. It trades at more than 2000x its revenue. How much should it be worth?

It has no evident value. Barry Diller (the majority owner of the Daily Beast) commented on the company in April on CNBC’s Squawk Box, comparing it to Game Stop, the famed pandemic-era meme stock.

“It’s ridiculous. The company has no revenue,” he said then. “How could you put a value on it?”

Elon Musk bought Twitter for around nine times its revenue in 2021 , overpaying handily for it. If Trump Media was to be valued on the same basis, it would be worth around $30m.

That would be generous. Trump Media has in the past two years lost tens of millions in quarters in which it has struggled to make $1 million in revenue.

It’s true eventual value is likely to approach $0. That leaves Trump—whose nominal shareholding is worth $4.1 billion—in a strange position.

How much of the stock can he liquidate without cratering its value entirely?

Two of the company’s co-founders immediately sold out of their share in the company six weeks ago as soon as a lock-up period preventing them from doing so had ended.

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Harry LambertSpecial Correspondent

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