Presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump’s media company reported that it lost in excess of $300 million in the first quarter of this year.
Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of the social media platform Truth Social, recently released its first earnings report, which it is required to do since it’s a publicly-traded company.
For the first quarter of this year, which ended on March 31, Trump’s company reported a total loss of $327.6 million. A large portion of those losses, $311 million, were classified as non-cash expenses that were related to the company’s merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp.
That merger is what made it possible for Trump’s media company to become public. That company is referred to as a SPAC, or special purpose acquisition company, which provides newer companies an easier and quicker path to having their shares be traded publicly.
Last year, Trump’s media company posted a $210,300 loss.
According to the filing, Trump Media earned $770,500 in revenue for the first quarter, which came mostly from its “nascent advertising initiative.” That represented a drop from the $1.1 million in revenue it reported last year.
In the earnings news release, Trump Media officials said:
“At this early stage in the Company’s development, TMTG remains focused on long-term product development, rather than quarterly revenue.”
The company has been surrounded in controversy recently. Earlier in May, it fired an auditor that was charged with “massive fraud” by federal regulators.
On Monday 3, Trump Media and Technology Group dismissed its one-time independent public accounting firm, BF Borgers. That move ultimately delayed the company’s filing of its required quarterly earnings report, security filings show.
That marked the third time that the company had gone through other auditors. In July of 2023, a previous firm the company used resigned. In March, the board of the company also terminated another company.
In after-hours trading on Monday, Trump Media shares increased by 36 cents, up to $48.74. The company first began trading on the Nasdaq with the ticker symbol DJT.
Not long after going public, shares increased, peaking at almost $80 late in March.
At its current stock price, reports say that the company is valued at almost $7 billion.
The main asset that the company has is the Truth Social platform, which company officials have marketed as an alternative to mainstream social media platforms such as Facebook, X (formerly known as Twitter), Instagram and others.
Because the stock price of the company has been very volatile thus far — dropping big at first, then spiking high and then dropping again — some analysts have compared it to meme stocks. Those companies are known for generating significant buzz on social media, which then has led to big increases in share prices — even if traditional financial measuring sticks like revenue growth and profitability aren’t good.
The most well-known meme stock — and perhaps the first — was GameStop, which in early 2021 saw its stock price explode by 1,500%, before it ultimately forfeiting nearly all of those gains.
