The latest polling which shows former President Donald Trump ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris is good news for the stock price of his media company.
Shares of Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company of Trump’s social media platform Truth Social, rose by more than 7% during Monday’s trading session on Wall Street before retreating somewhat later in the day.
The stock closed at $18.04, up 5.5%, or 94 cents.
Investors were buying up more shares of the firm after a new New York Times/Siena College poll released on Sunday found that Trump pulled slightly ahead of Harris, 48% to 47% — an improvement over previous surveys which showed the vice president leading the Republican.
Trump got more good news on Monday after Nate Silver, the data journalist and founder of the FiveThirtyEight forecasting site, published his own model which shows the former president winning every single critical swing state over Harris — which would ensure an Electoral College landslide of 312 compared to just 226 for the vice president.
A second Trump presidency would be a boon to Truth Social, which would effectively become the platform that he would use to issue statements and break news.
Despite the recent spate of positive developments, Trump Media’s stock is down 70% from its peak back in March, when it debuted on the Nasdaq index. As of Monday, the company had a market capitalization of $3.63 billion.
Given that Trump’s stake amounts to nearly 59% of Trump Media’s outstanding shares, his piece of the company is valued at around $2.18 billion — or $4 billion less compared to earlier this year.
On Sept. 19, a lockup provision which prevented Trump, who owns 115 million shares of the company, from selling any of his outstanding shares expires.
That means Trump could dump his shares on the open market and walk away with a handsome 10-figure sum.
But doing so would tank the price of the company’s stock and eviscerate what’s left of the value to more than 600,000 shareholders.
Trump has not indicated what he intends to do. The Post has sought comment from Trump Media.
Last month, Trump Media reported that it lost more than $16 million in the most recent quarter while also seeing a decline in revenue.
Half of the loss was on account of legal expenses related to its merger with a company called Digital World Acquisition Corp., which was essentially a pile of cash looking for a target to merge with.
In the first quarter, Trump Media reported losses of more than $300 million.
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