TMTG: Trump’s stock tumbles again after Truth Social announces it’s getting into

New York
CNN
 — 

Investors in Trump Media & Technology Group’s stock are throwing in the towel.

Shares of TMTG (DJT) tumbled 14% Tuesday after closing 18% lower Monday. Driving the stock lower Tuesday: The company’s premier product, Truth Social, announced a major expansion into streaming, a notoriously cost-intensive business in which media behemoths like Disney have struggled to turn a profit.

TMTG’s stock, majority-owned by former President Donald Trump, is down more than 70% from the all-time high it set on March 26, the day after it merged with a blank-check acquisition company to go public. Although the company is still worth billions of dollars, it is struggling to make money and desperate for cash. Experts have warned investors to be careful if they choose to trade the stock, because the company doesn’t have the fundamentals to back up its sky-high valuation.

Trump Media lost $58 million in 2023 and made just $4.1 million in revenue. So, it announced Monday it would sell 21.5 million more shares to the public to raise cash — even though that would dilute the value for existing shareholders.

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The streaming initiative didn’t give investors any reason to get enthused about the company. Truth Social said it spent the past six months testing its web, iPhone and iPad apps for live TV streaming, and it hopes to launch a content delivery network to stand up streaming apps for phones and tablets — and eventually smart TVs.

Truth Social suggested its streaming network could host live news, religious programing and family-friendly shows, movies and documentaries that “has been cancelled, is at risk of cancellation, or is being suppressed on other platforms and services.”

“With our streaming content, we aim to provide a permanent home for high-quality news and entertainment that face discrimination by other channels and content delivery services,” said TMTG CEO Devin Nunes, a former Republican congressman for California in a statement. “There is a lot of great content that simply can’t find an audience for unjust reasons, and we want to let these creators know they’ll soon have a guaranteed platform where they won’t be cancelled.”

Truth Social’s latest push sounds similar to Elon Musk’s X, which claims to be the streaming platform that best defends free speech. But X has hundreds of millions of active users — hundreds of times Truth Social’s audience — and has still struggled to attract advertisers after Musk reshaped the business, allowing hate speech and conspiracy theories to run rampant on the platform.

Trump’s association with the brand appears to be the primary reason for its sky-high valuation. That helped turn shares into a meme stock — that is, the company doesn’t trade on its fundamentals so much as it trades on emotional responses.

Trump added billions of dollars to his net worth after TMTG’s merger with the blank check company in late March. But his shares’ value has plunged from a peak of $5.2 billion to about $1.8 billion. Trump’s net worth fell roughly $300 million Tuesday from the stock’s plunge.