Trump Media’s Stock Price Is Falling Even Faster Than His Poll Numbers
Donald Trump’s media corporation told investors on Friday that it is considering spinning off his Truth Social platform into its own company—a move that comes after years of struggling to make money from the business. The president founded Trump Media and Technology Group in 2021, portraying it as a giant-killer that would one day displace the major social media platforms, streaming platforms like Netflix, and Amazon’s AWS web hosting platform—all of which the then-former president declared to be too woke.
So far, the company has achieved none of those things and has instead bounced from investment idea to investment idea—stockpiling Bitcoin, launching MAGA-themed financial products, and even announcing plans to merge with a fusion energy company and beginning to build power plants. This month, the company’s share price has flirted with all-time lows.
Trump’s company is expected to announce it’s fourth quarter earnings soon. Judging from the numbers it produced through the first three quarters of last year, the results could be unimpressive. In September, Trump Media said that it had pulled in only about $2.6 million in revenue in the first nine months of the year. And this time last year, the company reported losing $400.9 million in 2024—it attributed those losses in part to difficulties in going public that it blamed on the Biden administration. Meanwhile, the company reported just $3.6 million in revenue for all of 2024. For context, a well-run McDonald’s franchise averages a roughly similar level of revenue.
These numbers are not totally surprising. The company’s core product—Truth Social—is almost entirely reliant on one super-user: the president. To say the platform is rarely used besides Trump’s postings is an understatement. Last May, the platform reportedly had just 359,000 active users. For comparison, X has roughly 600 million active users. Left-leaning social media startup BlueSky, often derided for its relatively small user base, has around 3.5 million active users.
Trump Media and Technology Group doesn’t have much else in the way of products, which is not the way things were supposed to go. When it launched in 2021, the founders imagined the company would have $1.8 billion in revenue by this point and 69 million active users on Truth Social. They also envisioned a streaming service to rival Netflix and Amazon Prime. The streaming platform does exist, but Truth+ hardly compares to its competitors. The content selection is anemic and largely consists of videos that are available for free elsewhere—the most-watched list on the platform recently included an Elon Musk hagiography and a documentary about the Illuminati, both of which are available on YouTube. In the original investment pitch, the streaming business was supposed to have more than 32 million users by now.
With the original plans seemingly not materializing, the company has attempted other strategies. Earlier this year, it announced it would begin accumulating bitcoin, in an attempt to build a “bitcoin treasury”—essentially tying part of the company’s value to the then-increasing value of bitcoin. After purchasing more than 11,000 bitcoins for a total of $1.2 billion in September, the company initially saw its investment pay off. The price of bitcoin rose, and the company’s stockpile at one point was worth roughly $173 million more than what it had paid. But the price of bitcoin began collapsing in the fall. Trump Media sold off some of its bitcoin in late December; the rest is now worth about $658 million—a loss of roughly $428 million.
Trump still owns approximately 59 percent the company—a stake worth about $1.63 billion. But on paper, at least, those shares were once worth a whole lot more. The company began its life on the stock market in 2021 with a share price of $10 but quickly soared to nearly $100, before falling precipitously. It rebounded to above $60 in March 2024, as Trump was campaigning for president. It is currently languishing below $11 per share, and briefly dipped under $10 several times in the past week.
So an investor who bought Trump Media when it launched and has hung onto the shares since then has, at best, broken even. Unless, that is, they were able to purchase shares at a discount. Trump received his shares for free, meaning that as long as the shares are worth anything, he’ll make a profit.