Former President Donald Trump is now $1.8 billion richer.
Trump’s increase in wealth comes from his new public company, Trump Media & Technology Group, whose main asset is the social media platform Truth Social. The company awarded Trump an additional 36 million shares as an “earnout” bonus for shares remaining above $17.50 per share for 20 trading days in any 30-day period stock market, according to a regulatory filing Tuesday.
With the stock bonus, Trump now controls 114.75 million shares of Trump Media, which trade under the symbol DJT – the same as his initials. Based on the company’s current closing price, that values its entire stake at $5.7 billion.
Trump’s total net worth is about $8 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which indicates that most of his fortune is now tied up in DJT stock.
The value of Trump’s stake in DJT has been bolstered by a recent rise in the stock’s value. Since its IPO in late March, Trump Media has had a rocky ride, with the stock first climbing to a high of $79.38 per share, followed by a week-long slide that prompted CEO Devin Nunes to accuse certain investors to manipulate stocks through an illegal type of short selling.
But since last Monday, the stock has jumped 43%, regaining some of the lost ground. On Tuesday, shares rose $3.24, or 7%, to $49.93.
Still, Trump won’t be able to cash in his newfound fortune anytime soon. This is due to a so-called lock-up period that prevents him and other Trump Media executives from selling their shares for another five months. Lockups are common in newly listed companies because they prevent insiders from selling their stakes soon after a company goes public, which could cause a stock’s value to decline.
The additional stock award means Trump now owns about 65% of Trump Media & Technology Group, a company that is in the red and had just $4.1 million in revenue last year.
But many of Trump Media’s shareholders are small investors who support the former president, with Nunes telling Fox Business that the company has about 600,000 retail investors. On Truth Social, some of them celebrated Trump’s new stake, predicting that it could put pressure on short sellers, who are traders who bet that a stock will lose value.
“Prezz and company just played them like a fiddle,” one supporter wrote on Truth, along with a screenshot of an alert about the earnout.
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