(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) It was recently revealed that Donald Trump’s media enterprise, the proprietor of Truth Social, closed its first trading day with a valuation soaring to $8 billion and became more valuable than the New York Times.
Initially peaking at $10 billion amidst frenetic trading, the company’s valuation has settled at a still-impressive figure, even though it’s been generating only $3 million in revenue for the first nine months of 2023, according to the Daily Mail. Additionally, the news source reported that the Times is only valued at around $7 billion.
This financial phenomenon placed Trump’s media firm’s share price at an astonishing 2,000x its revenue, which drew attention from investors and Trump’s critics, Trending Politics reported. Some people argued that the reason why the company’s value skyrocketed was not because of its financial fundamentals but more about investment in Trump’s brand and potential political future.
In February 2021, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) launched Truth Social. The platform was created as an alternative to other social media networks like Twitter and Facebook, the platforms that became infamous for censoring conservatives for their political point of view.
The development and launch of the social media platform were announced after Trump was banned from major social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube after Jan. 6, 2021.
“This is a very unusual situation. The stock is pretty much divorced from fundamentals,” Jay Ritter, a finance professor at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business who has studied initial public offerings for 40 years, said.
He also warned that the platform’s stock could settle far below its current share price, adding that the investors who previously lived through the era of meme stocks like AMC and Gamestop should be cautious about approaching the next opportunity for volatility, the news source said.
“I’m reasonably confident the stock price will eventually drop to $2 a share and could even go below that if the company blows through the money it got from the merger,” he said.
