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In the past month, shares of Trump Media & Technology Group have plunged nearly 33% as the former president’s campaign falls into disarray.
Shares of Trump Media, the company behind Former President Donald Trump’s right-wing social media platform Truth Social, closed down 10% Wednesday — one of its largest slides to date — on the heels of his first debate against Vice President Kamala Harris.
The company ended the trading day at $16.68 per share, and the stock hit another new low of $15.30 early Thursday as it continues to free fall. That is a stark drop-off from highs of nearly $80 in April, weeks after the company completed its merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp., the special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, that took Trump Media public on the Nasdaq under the ticker DJT. At that time the company had a market valuation of more than $8 billion.
Since its debut on March 26, the company’s stock has sunk 71%, bringing its market capitalization to just over $3 billion.
These new lows come just weeks before Trump will get the green light to offload his 114.75 million shares of Trump Media, or about 60% of the company’s outstanding stock. The Republican presidential hopeful stands to make upwards of $2 billion from the stock sale — although the value of those returns depends on the share price.
Much of Trump Media’s market performance has depended on the company’s connection to the former president — and has become a proxy for his campaign success and election odds.
The company’s stock slid Wednesday after Trump found himself playing defense on issues including abortion, often playing into his Democratic rival’s hand and appearing rattled. Is shares spiked, however, following what many saw as a stronger debate performance from the former president against President Biden in June, and after an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania in July.
John Rekenthaler, vice president of research at Morningstar (MORN-0.89%), previously called DJT an “affinity stock” — one that trades on people’s feelings and perceptions of the former president, rather than its business performance. Rekenthaler warned that Trump Media stock would “go to zero or something close to it” if Trump were to lose the presidential election in November.
The company has said itself in regulatory filings that its “success depends in part on the popularity of its brand and the reputation and popularity” of Trump, and that “adverse reactions to publicity relating to [Trump], or the loss of his services, could adversely affect TMTG’s revenues and results of operations.”