Trump's social media company to start trading on the Nasdaq on Tuesday

NEW YORK (AP) — Trump Media & Technology Group, whose flagship product is social networking site Truth Social, will begin trading on the Nasdaq stock market on Tuesday.

Shareholders of Digital World Acquisition Corp., a publicly traded shell company, approved a deal to merge with the Trump’s media business in a Friday vote.

Shares of Digital World have been volatile. On Friday the stock slumped 13.7% after the merger was approved. On Monday, it soared 35.2% to $49.95.

Former President Donald Trump is set to own most of the combined company — or nearly 79 million shares, with a value of nearly $4 billion.

Trump won’t be able to cash out his stake in the Palm Beach, Florida-based company immediately, unless the company’s board makes changes to a “lock-up” provision that prevents company insiders from selling newly issued shares for six months.

The former president was in New York Monday attending a hearing on his criminal hush money case. Elsewhere, a New York appeals court reduced to $175 million what he must post in cash or a bond while appealing a $454 million civil fraud ruling..

Truth Social launched in February 2022, one year after Trump was banned from major social platforms including Facebook and X, formerly Twitter, following the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. He’s since been reinstated to both but has stuck with Truth Social. Trump has promoted Truth Social on the platform itself — on Friday he posted “I love Truth Social.”

Trump Media hasn’t so far disclosed Truth Social’s user numbers but now that the company is publicly traded, more information will be disclosed. Research firm Similarweb estimates that it had roughly 5 million active mobile and web users in February. That’s far below TikTok’s more than 2 billion and Facebook’s 3 billion — but still higher than other “alt-tech” rivals like Parler, which has been offline for nearly a year but is planning a comeback, or Gettr, which had less than 2 million visitors in February.

Trump Media lost $49 million in the first nine months of last year, when it brought in just $3.4 million in revenue and had to pay $37.7 million in interest expenses.

The common stock of Trump Media & Technology Group will trade under the ticker symbol “DJT.”

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This story has been updated to correct that the amount of Trump’s bond, not the judgment, in a civil trial was reduced to $175 million.