'This will shut down soon': Trump shredded as latest SEC filings reveal Truth Social lost $58M in 2023
PALM BEACH, FLORIDA: Truth Social, the social networking platform owned by former President Donald Trump, incurred a significant loss of $58 million in 2023 and experienced a decline in momentum as the year progressed, according to the filings submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The filings also reveal that Truth Social's parent company, Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), generated only $751,000 in advertising revenue during Q4.
View this post on Instagram
This figure represents a decline of over 25 percent from the previous quarter's earnings of more than $1 million, according to a report from the Daily Beast.
Truth Social website and app, which recently went public, had raked in advertising revenue for Trump Media as its only source of revenue, per the SEC filings.
What did SEC filings reveal about Truth Social?
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings on Monday, April 1, unearthed that the majority of Truth Social's expenses are linked to debt.
The company initiated a public offering last week to secure a cash infusion and attract affluent investors to fund a network dominated by former President Donald Trump's daily, often-all-caps rants.
The company's valuation was reported to be over $8 billion, with Trump holding approximately $4.6 billion.
View this post on Instagram
Experts have observed that investing in Truth Social, which trades under Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), is effectively a donation to the 77-year-old MAGA strongman himself.
The share price of the company traded under the stock ticker ‘DJT’, an abbreviation for Trump’s initials, fell 15% following Monday morning’s filing, resulting in a significant decline in the company's market value.
In the aforementioned filing, TMTG issued cautionary statements to potential investors. It particularly listed Donald Trump's growing legal troubles, including the recently imposed $500 million civil verdict against the former POTUS.
View this post on Instagram
It also highlighted his pending criminal cases, the history of his businesses going bankrupt, and the possibility that Trump may abandon his own social network for another, potentially leading to the demise of Truth Social.
“The death, incarceration, or incapacity of President Trump, or discontinuation or limitation of his relationship with TMTG, may negatively impact TMTG’s business,” the company stated.
On February 21, 2022, Donald Trump launched Truth Social, his own social media platform, after being banned from major social networking apps for allegedly inciting the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.
View this post on Instagram
Despite his promise to significantly damage the user base of his competitors, Truth Social does not appear to have gained serious momentum as a prominent social network.
The company has stated in SEC filings that for Truth Social to succeed, it must promptly undergo a transformation to attract “millions” of users who will “regularly” use the platform, as a user base of that scale is required for it to thrive and succeed amongst the competition.
Trump Media & Technology Group has not disclosed Truth Social’s current user numbers, although it is estimated by SimilarWeb that in February it had around 1 million active users.
View this post on Instagram
In comparison, Twitter, now referred to as X, generated roughly $5.2 billion in the year before Elon Musk’s takeover and reportedly still has over 300 million active users.
On its first day of public trading, Truth Social experienced its busiest day of traffic in March, with SimilarWeb estimating that it had 277,000 US visitors.
This number is significantly lower than the 32 million US visitors who logged on to Reddit on that same day, a competitor who recently went public and trades at a lower stock price than TMTG.
View this post on Instagram
Citing 2022 surveys regarding who would really sign up and make use of the website, TMTG claimed in its SEC filings that virtually all of its users are Republicans.
TMTG conceded that its majority-owner is "the subject of numerous legal proceedings, the scope and scale of which are unprecedented for a former President of the United States," but implied that users of Truth Social might switch back to X should former President Trump follow suit or end up in prison.
Internet trashes Trump after his media company spills the beans about Truth Social
People on X ripped into the former President of the United States who did not address Monday's SEC filings that cast doubt over Truth Social's ability to garner more active users or compete with contemporary social media platforms from big tech corporations.
One X user remarked: "This will shut down soon."
Another user said: "Trump's financial empire in a nutshell!"
Another user wrote: "He wants to make America great again, but is not able to run his own company."
He wants to make America great again, but is not able to run his own company.
— Wolfram Schöne (@SchoeneWolfram) April 1, 2024
One user quipped: "Well, investors are buying a part of the white house if Trump is getting elected. Under Trump, the US is up for sale."
Well, investors are buying a part of the white house if Trump is getting elected. Under Trump, the US is up for sale.
— DEexpat (@DEexpat) April 1, 2024
Another X user claimed: "The Pump and Trump is working as planned."
Finally, this user tweeted: "Feeling for the seniors who spend their Social Security on this, worthless Trump bucks, $60 Trump bibles, and donations to a "billionaire's" legal fees when his plan is to eliminate their Social Security and Medicare should he win the Oval in November."
Feeling for the seniors who spend their Social Security on this, worthless Trump bucks, $60 Trump bibles, and donations to a "billionaire's" legal fees when his plan is to eliminate their Social Security and Medicare should he win the Oval in November.
— Nancy B (@nanomedia1) April 1, 2024
This article contains remarks made on the Internet by individual people and organizations. MEAWW cannot confirm them independently and does not support claims or opinions being made online.