The Nasdaq Market website is seen on the day shares of Truth Social and Trump Media & Technology Group begin trading under the ticker symbol “DJT” in New York City, United States, March 26, 2024.
Shannon Stapleton | Reuters
United Atlantic Ventures LLC, a major shareholder of Trump mediahas sold or otherwise gotten rid of nearly 11 million shares of the company's stock, according to a regulatory filing Thursday.
The move left UAV, a partnership of former “The Apprentice” contestants Andrew Litinsky and Wes Moss, owning just 100 shares of Trump Media, which operates the Truth Social app.
UAV was allowed to sell all of its 5.4% stake in outstanding DJT shares after a lock-up agreement barring company insiders from selling expired on September 19.
UAV is the only known insider to have sold shares since last week.
Litinsky and Moss presented the idea of a social media company to former President Donald Trump and co-founded the company with him in 2021. The two later fell out with Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, and have been embroiled in lawsuits with Trump Media over their shares since then.
Trump owns more than 56% of Trump Media shares, which trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol DJT. The stock closed Thursday at $13.98 per share, down about 1%.
CNBC has reached out to Trump Media and an attorney for UAV for comment.
Securities and Exchange Commission filings show that UAV closed on March 25, the day the company announced a merger with blank-check company Digital World Acquisition Corp. concluded, owned 7,525,000 shares of Trump Media stock.
UAV later received an additional 3.44 million shares, which were issued “without additional consideration based on the performance of our common stock,” Trump Media said in a Sept. 5 filing with the SEC.
This meant that UAV owned more than 10.96 million shares.
Thursday's SEC filing does not indicate when UAV sold its shares last week or what price or prices it received for that stock.
But DJT traded at prices between $15.50 and $11.75 per share during that period. This suggests that UAV would have received between $128 million and $170 million for the shares it apparently sold.
Trump Media had warned in a Florida lawsuit that UAV planned to sell “all of its shares as quickly as possible” once the lock-up period expired.
Trump Media stock jumped in its trading debut on the Nasdaq, hitting an intraday high of $79.38 per share and pushing the company's market capitalization to over $10 billion.
But the price of DJT fell quickly.
In recent months, the company suffered a downturn that wiped out more than 80% of the company's value at its post-merger peak. The company's market capitalization is currently less than $2.8 billion.
Analysts view DJT as a meme stock whose wild price swings reflect investor support for Trump, the majority shareholder and Truth Social's main attraction, rather than its business fundamentals.
Trump Media has reported net losses of about $344 million on revenue of less than $2 million in its last two quarterly earnings reports.
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