Donald Trump has taken back the White House – and eager investors are eagerly buying shares in his social media company, increasing his wealth by hundreds of millions of dollars.

The former reality TV host and real estate mogul’s presidential victory sent Trump Media & Technology Group’s stock price soaring Wednesday morning.

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Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group, which operates the money-losing social network Truth Social, soared more than 30% in premarket trading Wednesday to more than $44 per share. That gives the company, whose shares trade under the symbol “DJT” on Nasdaq, a current market capitalization of about $8.9 billion. The jump came after the United States the presidential election was called for Trump in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Trump owns 56.6% of TMTG’s stock, bringing his majority stake in the company to more than $5 billion, up from $3.9 billion at market close Tuesday. In September, Trump said he had “absolutely no intention” of selling his nearly 115 million shares after the lock-up period on TMTG’s insider stock sales expired. His holdings of TMTG stock make up the majority of his net worth.

“I LOVE SOCIAL TRUTH!” he said in a November 3 article.

And Trump’s big night also sent Tesla shares and cryptocurrencies higher as investors reacted to the political realignment. Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk was one of Trump’s biggest supporters, investing more than $130 million in efforts to elect the former president and promising $1 million in gifts to voters from some of the key states that broke Trump’s path. Musk is expected to play an important role in the next Trump administration. The president-elect said Musk would be his “cost-cutting secretary,” advising him on government efficiency. Tesla shares rose about 12% to $281.75 in premarket trading.

Bitcoin was hovering around $75,000 on Wednesday morning, surpassing the previous record high of $74,000. During his campaign, Trump heavily courted the crypto industry in his attempt to win over male voters, promising to ease regulations on the currency.

The major U.S. market futures indexes also rose in the premarket hours, including Dow Futures (+3.3%), S&P Futures (+2.3%) and Nasdaq Futures (+1.7%).

Now that Trump has won a second term as president of the United States, federal ethics rules could force him to sell stocks to avoid a potential conflict of interest, according to the New York Times. reported.

TMTG stock saw volatile fluctuations since the company went public in March. Its shareholders are largely individual investors, who appear to trade the shares not on the basis of their financial fundamentals, but as a sort of token of their Trump fandom — or as a bet that the company’s fortunes will rise with his return to the White House.

As of October 15, according to TMTG, it had around 650,000 shareholders with “a unique profile composed mainly of retail investors”: only around 2,100 of these investors held more than 5,000 shares, and fewer than 1,000 held more than 10,000 actions.

Trump now has just over 8 million followers on Truth Socialaccording to the platform’s public counter. The company did not disclose the total number of active users on Truth Social.

“At this stage of its development, TMTG believes that adhering to traditional key performance indicators, such as registrations, average revenue per user, ad impressions and pricing, or active user accounts, including including monthly and daily active users, could potentially distract from its strategy. assessment against the progress and growth of its business,” the company said in its 10-Q Filing with the SEC for the third quarter of 2024.

To date, TMTG has generated a lot of red ink. Its third-quarter earnings report, released on Election Day, showed a net loss of $19.2 million on revenue of $1 million, as well as interest income of $4.7 million. dollars. TMTG reported net revenue of $836,900 and a net loss of $16.37 million for the second quarter – and in the first quarter it reported revenue of $770,500 and a net loss of $327.6 million. The company said most of the first-quarter loss was due to expenses related to TMTG’s merger with special purpose acquisition company Digital World Acquisition Corp.

The company says its mission is to “end big tech’s attack on free speech by opening up the internet and giving people their voices back.” In August, it launched Truth+, a video streaming platform “focused on family-friendly live TV channels and on-demand content.”

“At this stage of the company’s development, its revenues largely comprise startup revenues related to emerging advertising initiatives on the Truth Social platform and other advertising initiatives currently being tested with various partners,” TMTG said in announcing third quarter results. He said he believed Truth+ could become “a major driver of long-term earnings and shareholder value, and enable TMTG to robustly expand its ecosystem beyond the social media component of the Truth Social platform.

Trump created TMTG in 2021 after being banned from Twitter (now owned by Musk, who renamed it incitement to violence in relation to the events of January 6. attack on the US Capitol. Since then, Trump’s accounts have been reinstated by Musk on X by Musk as well as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and others.

Among the risk factors listed in its 10-Q, TMTG cited its licensing agreement with Trump. This includes a provision that requires him to post “any non-political social media posts from any of his personal (i.e. non-professional) accounts on Truth Social” and to “refrain to post the same post on another social media site.” for an exclusive period of six hours. However, according to the company’s filing, Trump “may post any post that he considers, in his sole discretion, to be politically related…on any social media site at any time, whether or not such post originates from ‘a personal account’.

“If TMTG disagrees with President Donald J. Trump on the scope of his obligation to use or post first on Truth Social, TMTG has no meaningful remedy with respect to such disagreement – which could have a material adverse effect on TMTG’s business and/or operations,” it states in the filing.

TMTG’s stock hit a closing price of $12.15 per share on September 23 following the expiration of a six-month lock-up period during which company insiders were not allowed to sell their shares, but it quickly rebounded. The stock’s intraday high was $79.38/share on March 26, the first day of trading after merging with DWAC to become a publicly traded entity.

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