DJT (52.9% owned by the other DJT) reported Q3 earnings yesterday. It lost $19.2 million on $1 million of revenue. That revenue is down 6% year over year. Somehow the social media outlet owned by the most prolific presidential candidate to ever use social media only sold $1 million worth of ads in the quarter (makes you wonder how the Chinese Bible business, NFT, watch, and others are going).
It doesn't matter, of course, the stock is up 5% as I write.
What makes DJT a $7 billion dollar company? I don't think it is the $1 million of revenue. And it certainly is not the $19 million of loses.
It is obviously a meme stock. So, there is that.
But also it should presumably be able to sell more ads in the next four years, too. If Trump is using it as president, don't they have to sign up more users and be able to sell more ads as a result?
You can also make a case that it exists to curry favor. Maybe someone offers to monetize Trumps holdings by buying the company for $8 or $10 billion, or whatever. Or maybe someone not quite as rich buys a percent or two so they can say, "Hey, me and you Mr. President. Oh, and I have this other thing I need to talk to you about". And maybe a bunch of rich, but not dynastically rich, people follow suit pushing the stock even higher.
Or maybe DJT should merge with Twitter. The Twitter transaction, in a vacuum, has not worked well for Musk. But part of that is it is no longer publicly traded. Taking Twitter private misses out on the greatest source of Musk's wealth, the ability to meme the hell out of his stock. Look at Tesla today. It is up 15% as I type. That is not based on the fundamentals. Nothing about Tesla has changed today.
As a publicly traded company it would not matter what Musk paid for Twitter, because he can always sell more overpriced stock to a willing public. By merging with DJT they can take this to the moon, and not need SpaceX to do it.