Trump loses US$1 billion in one day, with his social network’s shares falling by more than 20% | Business

Just a week after entering, for the first time, the group of the 500 richest people in the world, former President of the United States Donald Trump lost $1 billion of his fortunethis Monday (1), according to The New York Times. The drop is a consequence of a 21.47% drop in the share price of its social media company.

With this devaluation, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), whose main product is Truth Social – a social network similar to X, formerly Twitter – lost around US$2 billion in market value. It is now worth about $6.5 billion, after peaking at nearly $10 billion last week.

The reason for this is simple: Investors began to realize that the excitement about these shares may not reflect the reality of the company’s financial situation.

Last Tuesday (26), TMTG shares were listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange after completing a long merger process, which took 29 months, between the company and Digital World Acquisition. With the debut, the market got excited and caused the price of the shares to soar by more than 40% on the first day of trading.

However, the excitement soon gave way to caution and, within a week, the shares had already fallen by more than 30%.

And, yesterday, the release of the company’s corporate balance sheet, which reported a loss of US$58 million in 2023, caused its prices to melt even further, taking its shares to the position of most sold on the market – that is, investors betting that prices will continue to fall.

In addition to the million-dollar loss, what caught the most attention in the company’s results was its revenue last year: just US$4 million, raising the question of how profitable the business is.

In this scenario, Trump’s pocket is also affected. If last week he reached the group of the 500 richest with a fortune estimated at US$6.5 billion, just seven days later, this value has already dropped to around US$3.7 billion.

Trump Media owns the social network Truth Social. On its website, the company describes itself as “a unifying force for free speech” that is “cancelling cancel culture” and “free from political discrimination.”

Despite this, social media provides an environment for interaction between Trump supporters, especially now, in his campaign for a new election in 2024.

The billion-dollar merger agreement took years to complete, as it was the target of investigations by the United States Department of Justice. The company even reached an agreement worth US$18 million with the American market regulator, on charges of inaccurate disclosure of business information, in July last year.

According to the news agency Reuters, the deal injected around R$300 million into Truth Social’s cash flow, after the company lost US$10.6 million from its operations in the first nine months of 2023.

The news of the conclusion of the agreement came at a difficult time for the former president. He was ordered to pay nearly $500 million in bail in a civil fraud case in New York. However, after an appeal, the court reduced the payment amount to R$175 million last Monday (25).

Although he was already a billionaire, with a fortune of more than US$2 billion, Trump faced problems paying the bail amount because of where that money was located: most of his assets were in real estate and, therefore, did not have good liquidity for resolve debts in court.

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