Stock for Trump Media and Technology Group, the parent company behind Donald Trump's Truth Social platform, hasn't been faring so well in recent weeks, though everyone has been waiting to see what happened Friday, when lockup restrictions barring the former president and other investors from selling their shares in the company end. Now that the big day is finally here, it's not good news for TMTG: The AP reports that shares fell nearly 7% at the opening bell to a record low of $13.73, meaning the company that Trump owns a nearly 60% stake in is now worth less than $3 billion.
The Wall Street Journal notes that's a 75% drop from the end of March, when Trump Media went public and shares, which trade under the stock ticker initials "DJT," hit a high of nearly $80. Trump and others who'd pumped money into the firm were then forced to wait out what the AP calls a "standard" lockup period that's put in place for major stakeholders after companies go public. The Journal reports the stock's significant plummet is the "second-worst performance over that time period among 2,057 US exchange-listed companies with a current market value of $2 billion or greater."
Friday's development puts Trump's current holdings in TMTG at about $1.6 billion, from a high of around $6.2 billion just a few months ago. CNN calls it a "major moment" for the company, now that the selling can begin, but Trump himself doesn't appear to be jumping to dump his shares—at least not right now. "No, I'm not selling," he told reporters last week. "No, I love it." It likely wouldn't be a good idea to get rid of most of it anyway, experts say, since it would hurt the share price. "He's smarter than that," says Baylor University finance professor Michael Stegemoller. "It would not go well for the share price—or him." (More Trump Media and Technology Group stories.)
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