Trump Media posts $238 million loss, abandons most new ventures
Trump Media and Technology Group, the company behind Truth Social posted a $238 million second-quarter loss and said it would abandon most of its recent expansion into new businesses to refocus on social media.
The loss for the three months through June was more than 10 times the loss a year earlier, while the per-share loss widened to 86 cents from 8 cents.
New CEO Kevin McGurn said Monday that the company would largely drop efforts to expand into industries such as online betting and cryptocurrency, instead directing resources towards its core social media business.
“We made the disciplined choice to pivot in order to invest more time and resources in our most important initiatives,” McGurn said during an earnings call.
Trump Media shares fell 8 per cent during regular trading and edged lower in after-hours trading following the results.
At the centre of McGurn’s strategy is Truth API, a service that gives Wall Street trading firms early access to posts by prominent Truth Social users. The platform’s most-followed user is President Donald Trump, whose posts on US policy can move financial markets.
The service has drawn criticism from government watchdogs, who have accused Trump Media of creating opportunities for Trump to profit from the presidency. Democrats have also vowed to investigate the service if they take control of Congress in the midterm elections.
McGurn defended the service, saying commercial APIs providing licensed real-time public data are common across the technology, financial information and media industries.
Truth API customers pay between $60,000 and $100,000 a month, and Trump Media has signed 10 customers, most of them high-frequency trading firms, McGurn said. The company expects to expand the service to data centres, news organisations and developers of large language models.
Trump Media will continue pursuing its previously announced nuclear fusion venture and hopes to complete its merger with energy company TAE Technologies by the end of the year, McGurn said.
Much of the second-quarter loss came from unrealised losses on the company’s bitcoin and Cronos cryptocurrency holdings.
Excluding those losses, along with taxes, interest and other items, the company’s operating loss was $164 million, compared with $44 million a year earlier.
Trump Media ended the quarter with more than $400 million in cash and short-term investments, as well as $1.2 billion in bitcoin and related assets. It also has $1 billion in debt from convertible notes that mature in 2028, although lenders can demand repayment in November.
