Trump to launch new social media platform TRUTH Social

[essentialsaltes]

Truth Social investors agree to pay $18 million fine​

The SEC had been investigating whether DWAC executives held merger discussions with Truth Social's parent company before its initial public offering in 2021, which isn't allowed, and the firm would be required to pay an $18 million penalty after the closing of a merger.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has approved the merger proposal of former president Donald Trump’s media start-up with a special purpose acquisition company, a critical step for a long-delayed deal

On paper, this means Trump's stake in the company is worth something like $4 billion.

Jay Ritter, a finance professor at the University of Florida, said the windfall is “paper wealth … with the emphasis on ‘paper,’ since his [Trump Media] shares cannot currently be sold.”

Ritter said that in his opinion the merged company’s valuation — roughly $9 billion, based on Digital World’s current price — is out of sync with the Trump company’s financial performance. Trump Media generated $3.4 million in revenue and lost $49 million during the first nine months of 2023, Digital World said in a recent SEC filing.

Trump Media is “a money-losing company that generates less than $5 million per year,” Ritter said. Digital World, he said, is in his view “a classic meme stock, whose price is totally unrelated to the underlying fundamentals.”

On the plus side (for Trump) there's a sucker born every minute. If his fan base keeps the stock price elevated, he can make a mint once he's cleared to sell shares six months after the deal closes.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Trump Media co-founders sue company, alleging a scheme to dilute shares​

The case could complicate a long-delayed bid by the owner of Truth Social to go public​

The co-founders of former president Donald Trump’s media company filed a lawsuit Wednesday, claiming that Trump and other leaders had schemed to deprive them of a stake in the company that could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss, who met Trump as contestants on his reality show “The Apprentice,” pitched Trump on the idea of a Trump-branded tech start-up and social media platform in early 2021 after he lost the White House and was banned from Twitter, now called X.

Trump agreed to the deal and was given 90 percent of the company, according to a motion for expedited proceedings filed Wednesday in the Delaware Court of Chancery by the co-founders’ partnership, United Atlantic Ventures.

UAV launched the Trump Media business, hired employees and raised funding while receiving no “fee or payment for its work,” the motion said. And though Litinsky and Moss left Trump Media that year amid a dispute with its current leadership, UAV retained its shares, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing this month from Digital World.

 

[essentialsaltes]

More lawsuits!​

Trump Media, launched after an insurrection, faces rebellion of its own​

Four lawsuits involving the founding boosters of Truth Social threaten to erode former president Donald Trump’s grasp on a massive financial haul​

But in the lead-up to Friday’s vote [for shareholders to approve the acquisition/merger], both companies [Trump Media and Digital World Acquisition] have been rocked by legal warfare. Their leaders, past and present, have traded heated accusations of deception and impropriety across four lawsuits in three states.

Their lawsuits call into question how Trump Media’s shares will be distributed, and a legal victory could chip away at Trump’s equity during a time when he is facing a cash crunch.

In the most recent lawsuit, filed Tuesday in a New York state court, Digital World asked a judge to force [former CEO] Orlando to vote in support of the merger, saying he could tank the deal by not voting shares owned by a company he controls — Digital World’s biggest founding investor, Arc Global Investments II. [Maybe this can be an election strategy. Trump will sue every US citizen to vote for him.]

If [its lawyers say] Digital World “fails to effectuate a merger, it will be forced to dissolve. Urgent relief is required by March 22 to avert such harm.”

Even more facts could come out in the weeks ahead. Orlando posted a photo last month to Truth Social showing him wearing a Truth Social hat with the caption “TRUTH! John 8:32” — a Bible verse that reads, “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

 

[essentialsaltes]

Trump Media & Technology Group, the owner of struggling social media platform Truth Social, is began its long-delayed journey as a public company at Tuesday’s opening bell under the ticker symbol “DJT.” The stock surged about 50% at the market open.

Wall Street is assigning Trump Media an eye-popping valuation of around $14 billion — a price tag that experts warn is untethered to reality.

[Forget P/E ratio; that's a price to revenue ratio of more than 1,000.]

The skyrocketing share price comes despite the fact that Trump Media is burning through cash, piling up losses and its main product, Truth Social, is losing users.

Trump Media generated just $3.4 million of revenue through the first nine months of last year, according to filings. The company lost $49 million over that span.

For context, Reddit was only valued at $6.4 billion at its IPO last week — even though it generated 160 times more revenue than Trump Media.

“This is a very unusual situation. The stock is pretty much divorced from fundamentals,” said Jay Ritter, a finance professor at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business, who has been studying initial public offerings (IPOs) for over 40 years.

 

[Whyayeman]

Buy!

 

[iluvatar5150]

The stock is pretty much divorced from fundamentals,”

That’s pretty on-brand for DJT.

 

[durangodawood]

.......If his fan base keeps the stock price elevated, he can make a mint once he's cleared to sell shares six months after the deal closes.

6 months is a long time to hold your breath.

 

[stevil]

On the plus side (for Trump) there's a sucker born every minute. If his fan base keeps the stock price elevated, he can make a mint once he's cleared to sell shares six months after the deal closes.

At which point prices will plummet, law suits will ensue, and perhaps a bankruptcy. But D Trump himself will have sucked much money out and will be very happy.

 

[essentialsaltes]

The Monday filing said that Trump Media has a number of outstanding promissory notes worth millions of dollars that are scheduled to come due within the next year.

In May, Trump Media filed a lawsuit against The Washington Post, alleging an article had made false and defamatory statements in describing a loan from an entity called ES Family Trust.

The Digital World filing Monday named ES Family Trust and said that, in June, Trump Media received a demand to repay part of the loan. The filing said ES Family Trust later agreed to extend the terms of the loan until next year.

And now the rest of the story...

Exclusive: Trump Media saved in 2022 by Russian-American under criminal investigation​

The situation [the delay in the SPAC thingy] led Trump Media to take emergency loans, including from an entity called ES Family Trust, which opened an account with Paxum Bank, a small bank registered on the Caribbean island of Dominica that is best known for providing financial services to the inappropriate content industry.

Through leaked documents, the Guardian has learned that ES Family Trust operated like a shell company for a Russian-American businessman named Anton Postolnikov, who co-owns Paxum Bank and has been a subject of a years-long joint federal criminal investigation by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) into the Trump Media merger.

The existence of the trust has previously been reported by the Guardian and the Washington Post. However, who controlled the account, how the trust was connected to Paxum Bank, and how the money had been funneled through the trust to Trump Media was unknown.

Paxum Bank does not offer loans in the US as it lacks a US banking license and is not regulated by the FDIC. Postolnikov appears to have used the trust to loan money to help save Trump Media – and the Truth Social platform – because his bank itself could not furnish the loan.

Postolnikov, the nephew of Aleksandr Smirnov, an ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has not been charged with a crime.

After this story was published, a lawyer representing Trump Media said in a statement: “The Guardian continues to propagate its false narrative that TMTG has these fake connections to Russia. It is a hoax. Litigation will continue on this point and we are confident that The Guardian will ultimately be held responsible for its defamation and this story should be retracted.”

 

[BPPLEE]

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/cha-ching-trump-makes-4-billion-from-his-re-election-campaign-5fb87700

Away from the headlines, Donald Trump has just made a staggering sum of money, all of it driven by the publicity from his campaign for the White House. (A terribly, terribly cynical person might even suggest that is part of the point.)

How much? Forget these fines, which add up to less than $500 million. Trump is suddenly on track for a windfall of nearly $4 billion. And he has made most of it just in the five weeks since his big win in the Iowa caucuses put him in pole position for the Republican presidential nomination.

 

[essentialsaltes]

That first sentence is definitely the kind of prose that people want to read "perhaps, according to experts, more than anyone else['s] in the World."

 

[MotoToTheMax]

I remember when Obama was referred to Narcissist In Chief back in the day. Gives a mild chuckle when I read any of Trump's social posts. What an embarrassment of this country to elevate someone like him to this status. The long term ramifications of MAGAdonian thinking will take too long to flush out. Shame.