New Trump Media Stock Ticker DJT Skyrockets After Huge DWAC Merger!

The share price of Donald Trump's social media company jumped more than 50% minutes after it went public under the symbol DJT on Tuesday morning.

Trading at Trump Media & Technology Group briefly paused amid the surge due to volatility before resuming around 9:40 a.m. ET. More than 6.5 million shares of Trump Media had changed hands as of 9:50 a.m.

The symbol debuted on the Nasdaq stock market nearly three decades after the former president used it to launch his publicly traded hotel and casino company to great fanfare in 1995.

Those shares were ignominiously delisted from the New York Stock Exchange nine years later.

The symbol “pays direct tribute to the former President and Director of the company, and to the 45^th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump,” Trump Media said in a statement.

“We believe the start of DJT's commercialization in public markets demonstrates Americans' demands for free speech platforms that reject the stifling censorship imposed by Big Tech,” the statement said.

Trump Media's merger with shell company Digital World Acquisition Corp. was completed on Monday, allowing it to go public.

As of mid-afternoon, Trump Media had a market valuation of at least $8.4 billion on an undiluted basis.

Trump is the majority shareholder of the company, whose directors include his son, Donald Trump Jr., and other close allies of the former president.

SEC filings show Trump will own 78.75 million shares in Trump Media, representing up to a 69% stake in the company, depending on the rate of share redemptions by DWAC shareholders. That stake was worth nearly $6 billion on undiluted paper, given the share price of $75.57 around 2:30 p.m.

The terms of the merger prohibit Trump from selling his shares for six months. But the company's board of directors could grant you an exemption from that blackout period.

Despite Trump Media's relatively high market valuation, the company reported less than $3.5 million (that is, millions, not billions) in revenue for the first three quarters of 2023, with reported losses of more than 10 times that amount.

The company website page for “Finance” contains no information.

On its last day of trading on Monday under the symbol DWAC, the company's shares soared more than 35% after a New York appeals court reduced the amount of a $454 million to $175 million settlement. bail that Trump would have to deposit to suspend collection of a business fraud. he sentences while appealing the case.

The company's closing price on Monday was just under $50 per share.

Trump's notoriety helped make Trump Media's deal with DWAC the highest-profile special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, merger ever.

The company's shareholders may dream that its Truth Social app platform will significantly increase its market share enough for the company to turn a profit. Perhaps its growth could even accelerate if Trump is elected president in November.

But for now, Trump Media, like the previous company that traded under the symbol DJT, is a loser.

Trump Media reported losses of $49 million for the first nine months of 2023, more than 14 times what it generated in revenue.

When Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts went public at $14 a share in 1995 under the symbol DJT, it also made headlines.

He made money for Trump, personally, for years.

Trump received more than $44 million in salary from the company over a decade, even though the company repeatedly failed to turn a profit, according to a 2016 Washington Post article about the company.

After losing $1 billion, Trump Hotels filed for bankruptcy in November 2004, the same year DJT was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange.

“I don't think it's a failure, it's a success,” Trump told NBC News in an interview in 2004, after the bankruptcy filing listed $1.8 billion in debt and the stock was trading at about 50 cents a share. .

“In this case, it was something that worked better than other alternatives,” he said of the bankruptcy.

“It's really just a technical issue, but everything went well.”