Trump Media Plunges as Truth Social’s $58 Million Loss Reported

Drew Harwell, reporting for The Washington Post:

Former president Donald Trump’s social media company said Monday it lost more than $58 million last year, sending its stock plunging more than 21 percent only days after a highflying public debut set the company’s value at more than $8 billion.

Trump Media and Technology Group, which owns Truth Social, said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that the company generated just over $4 million in revenue last year, including less than $1 million in the last quarter.

The nosediving share price of the company — which uses the stock ticker DJT, for Trump’s initials — fell to its lowest level since Trump Media went public last week and shaved more than a fifth of its market value in a single day. It also slashed the value of Trump’s 57 percent ownership in the company by roughly $1 billion, to $3.8 billion.

The company’s 8-K filing is just bananas. They not only aren’t turning a profit, they don’t foresee ever making one. They don’t track any sort of metrics typical for a social media company — signups, monthly active users, average revenue per user — none of it. And they don’t plan to, either. To call it a scam gives scams a bad name.

I want to laugh, but: If Trump is elected again in November — which, based on the close results of 2016 and 2020, and the current polling data, is definitely possible — shaking down lobbyists and foreign governments with exorbitant rates for ads on Truth Social seems like a much better grift than running a hotel across the street from the White House. A corrupt president owning a social media site would be a grift that scales. If there’s any rational reason for Trump Media to have any value at all, it’s that. It’s worthless today, but could be a veritable goldmine in a second Trump administration.

★ Monday, 1 April 2024