New York
NCS
—
In the weeks earlier than final fall’s election, shares of Trump Media & Technology Group spiked as traders bet Donald Trump would return to the White House and make Truth Social the platform for presidential communications.
Those wagers proved prophetic – if not profitable.
Voters did return Trump to the White House and Truth Social is now the means the commander-in-chief pronounces the whole lot from main navy strikes to new fronts in the commerce warfare.
And but, many who personal shares in the firm with the ticker image “DJT” are sitting on sizable losses.
Despite Trump’s victory, Trump Media shares have misplaced nearly half their worth (48%) since Election Day, badly trailing the S&P 500’s 5% achieve over that span. If you take a look at simply the time since Trump took workplace, Trump Media shares are down much more (56%).
The struggles of Trump Media replicate the undeniable fact that a lot of this stock’s rise was primarily based on hype and momentum, not the underlying well being of the enterprise.
Even although its share worth is deeply in the purple this yr, Trump Media remains to be valued at about $5 billion. That’s nothing to sneeze at – nearly equaling the worth of Macy’s and Wendy’s mixed.
And but Trump Media’s fundamentals stay fairly modest.
The proprietor of Truth Social generated just $821,000 in revenue throughout the first three months of 2025. Trump Media misplaced $32 million in the first quarter.
“By conventional measures, this stock is quite expensive. It’s a money-losing company with negligible revenue,” mentioned Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers. “However, this stock has always defied conventional valuation metrics.”
In an effort to revive the share worth, Trump Media has pushed into cryptocurrencies and promised to purchase again huge quantities of its personal stock.
Its most important product, a social media platform catering to conservatives, has but to take off in the mainstream despite the fact that it’s the go-to place to attempt to perceive what the strongest particular person on the planet is considering and doing.
The excellent news for Truth Social is that each day energetic customers for its app have greater than doubled (+106%) over the previous yr to 359,000 in May, in accordance with Simlarweb information shared with NCS.
The dangerous information is Truth Social stays tiny. Not solely are its each day energetic customers dwarfed by X’s (previously Twitter) 131.9 million, its tally extensively trails Threads (112.9 million) and Reddit (66.2 million), in accordance with Similarweb.
Even Bluesky, which launched in 2023 as a rival to Twitter, has 10 instances the each day energetic customers as Truth Social.
Trump Media responded with a press release that accused NCS of “politically motivated drivel disparaging Trump Media, a company with $3 billion in liquid assets.”
But Truth Social nonetheless has solely a small piece of the social media universe.
“Truth Social’s audience has been growing since Trump was inaugurated, but it is still a small player,” mentioned David F. Carr, editor of insights information & analysis at Similarweb.
Carr famous that Truth Social app utilization hit a document on Saturday, after Trump used the social media platform to announce the US navy strikes on three nuclear websites in Iran.
“But even on that peak day, web traffic and app usage were less than 1% of what X attracted. Bluesky also had millions of more web visitors and app users,” Carr mentioned.
Even some Trump Media buyers are skeptical about Truth Social.
“I don’t see that as a growth area – and I don’t think they do either,” mentioned Matthew Tuttle, CEO of Tuttle Capital Management and a shareholder in Trump Media. “That’s why they’re going whole hog into crypto.”
Indeed, Trump Media is utilizing certainly one of its actual strengths – loads of money – to go headfirst into crypto.
Trump Media just lately filed paperwork searching for regulatory approval to launch an change traded fund (ETF) that might put money into bitcoin and one other cryptocurrency referred to as Ethereum.
The transfer got here after Trump Media amassed a $2.5 billion warfare chest to purchase bitcoin, creating what it described as certainly one of the greatest bitcoin treasuries of any public firm.
However, current Trump Media shareholders’ stakes have been watered down as a result of the firm bought stock to boost cash for that push into shopping for crypto.
The strikes have alarmed ethics watchdogs as a result of Trump was elected with sturdy help from the crypto trade after he reversed his earlier criticism of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.
Trump has stored guarantees to promote crypto, together with by launching a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and tapping crypto-friendly regulators.
After successful election in November, Trump transferred his dominant stake in Trump Media to a revocable belief. Yet Trump is the sole beneficiary of the belief and it’s run by certainly one of his sons, Donald Trump Jr.
Trump Media Chairman and CEO Devin Nunes has hailed his firm’s push into crypto and monetary know-how.
“We aim to continue rapidly transforming Trump Media into an indispensable company for the expanding customer base of the Patriot Economy,” Nunes mentioned in a statement earlier this month.
However, buyers stay skeptical.
“Does the Trump name on an ETF get people to buy it? The jury is out,” Tuttle mentioned. “They’re getting into crypto treasury, along with 60 other companies, kind of copying MicroStrategy’s playbook.”
MicroStrategy pioneered the strategy of scooping up cryptocurrencies and storing them on company steadiness sheets. While GameStop, Trump Media and others are actually following swimsuit, Tuttle famous that MicroStrategy is the just one being rewarded by buyers proper now.
In a bid to breathe new elevate into Trump Media’s share worth, the firm introduced plans this week to buy back up to $400 million of its personal shares.
“It seems like a move to keep the stock propped up,” mentioned Interactive’s Sosnick.
Nunes, the Trump Media CEO, mentioned in a press release this week that the buyback quantities to a “vote of confidence” in the firm, its stock and strategic plans. Nunes added that Trump Media’s $3 billion in money offers it flexibility to take actions to “support strong shareholder returns.”
But it’s considerably stunning to see an organization that went public barely a yr in the past turning to stock buybacks.
Then once more, a lot of the Trump Media story since its launch in 2021 has been uncommon.
“If the whole bitcoin ETF thing doesn’t work and the market doesn’t reward crazy multiples for bitcoin treasury, there isn’t a lot of there there,” mentioned Tuttle, the shareholder.
But Tuttle isn’t prepared to surrender on his guess but, particularly provided that Trump’s time in the White House nonetheless has three-and-a-half years left.
“I would never bet against him,” Tuttle mentioned. “Every time I think he’s done, he comes out stronger than before.”