Donald Trump poised to make billions from media start-up’s meme-stock status

The former US president’s nascent media enterprise, Trump Media & Technology Group, reportedly plans to go public via a special purpose acquisition company

Retail investors were sent into a frenzy by the news, and the stock gain drove the implied value of the new venture to more than US$8.2 billion

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Former US President Donald Trump. Photo: Reuters

Published: 10:13pm, 23 Oct 2021Updated: 10:13pm, 23 Oct 2021

Donald Trump’s sagging fortune is suddenly poised to get a massive boost from meme-stock mania.

News earlier this week that the former US president’s nascent media enterprise, Trump Media & Technology Group, is planning to go public via a special purpose acquisition company has sent retail investors into a frenzy, even with few details released. The stock gain drove the implied value of the new venture to more than US$8.2 billion.

Based on figures from press releases and filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission, it appears Trump will own more than 50 per cent of the combined company. At its current value, that would make him the richest he has ever been, up from his estimated net worth now of US$2.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

In the roller-coaster world of Reddit-fuelled trading and grandiose SPAC hype, those gains are hardly firm. But the money betting on a Trump media conglomerate marks a sharp turnaround for a post-presidency that has not been kind to the billionaire’s business empire.

His Washington hotel, which was first put on the market in 2019, is still for sale, while the flagship midtown Manhattan tower that bears his name has growing vacancies. This summer, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization was charged with tax fraud. Trump’s net worth has declined by about US$500 million since he entered the White House, with the pandemic and fallout from January’s Capitol riot delivering added blows to his business interests.

Now comes the arrival of the social-media outlet that Trump, the leader in polls for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 2024, has been teasing at for some time. There are many reasons to be sceptical of the valuation. It will be months before the new venture publicly releases its first product, a social-media platform called Truth Social. And there are already technical issues. On Thursday, the Truth Social page was hacked to make it appear that Trump shared a photo of a defecating pig.