Donald Trump merger won’t fix his money problems

That’s where the speculation about his shares in the post-merger TMTG comes in.

Trump will hold about 58 per cent of the shares in the expanded company which, even after a 13.7 per cent fall in Digital World’s share price on Friday, were valued at about $US2.9 billion. TMTG shares should start trading, under the ticker “DJT” naturally, later this week.

Given the scale of his financial dilemma and the value of his shareholding, there’s been a lot of discussion about how he could access that value by either selling some of the shares or borrowing against them.

It’s the epitome of a meme stock, one where conventional valuations are irrelevant.

There are obstacles to both courses of action. Within the merger agreement there is a six month “lock up” period preventing major shareholders from selling any of their shares. There’s a similar prohibition against using their shares as collateral within six months of the merger.

It has been suggested that the seven-person post-merger board, with a majority of Trump appointees – Trump himself, Donald Trump Jnr and three members of his former administration – could waive those provisions.

Any sale of Trump’s shares in the near term, however, would risk blowing up a share price that is volatile and vulnerable, exposing the board members to litigation.

The merger brought together a special purposes acquisition company which once had $US300 million of cash in it (it now has about $US60 million of liabilities and a $US18 million fine imposed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission has also eaten into that cash) with a loss-making social media business.

In the first nine months of last year TMTG generated only $US3.3 million of advertising revenue and lost $US49 million. It has almost exhausted its original funding and would have been fortunate to have survived through to the end of this year had the merger not been approved.

While it is possible for a technology company to have a big valuation while losing money – another social media group, Reddit, listed in the US last week and traded on Friday with a valuation of about $US7.3 billion despite never posting a profit – it is almost inconceivable that TMTG, with its paltry revenues, significant losses and its very modest user base, could actually be worth as much as $US5 billion or anything remotely close to that amount.

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The 400,000 or so shareholders in Digital World are predominantly individuals, with a large proportion of them Trump’s MAGA loyalists. It’s the epitome of a meme stock, one where conventional valuations are irrelevant.

That makes using the shares as collateral for a loan rather problematic. No rational lender would regard the share price as a true guide to their worth, given the huge amount of downside risk.

The nature of the shareholder base, and the dizzy levels to which they have driven the share price (albeit, at just under $US37, not as dizzy as the $US175 the shares traded at when, two and a half years ago, the merger was first announced) also works against a sale of any or all of Trump’s shareholding.

Trump is Trump media. It’s his brand and his “truths,” which TMTG has first usage rights to, that represents the business’ major asset and the major drawcard for the MAGA investors. If he were to start selling, it could start a stampede for the exits and an implosion in a share price that is by any normal measure massively inflated.

Trump’s shares might be worth $US2.9 billion on paper but that is very much a paper valuation and one that would, much like his sprawling, complex and (according to the court) also overvalued property portfolio, be very difficult, if not impossible, to turn into hard cash.

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