Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he arrives at Trump Tower on the day of his trial on charges he falsified business records to conceal a 2016 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels, New York, U.S. April 19, 2024.
Eduardo Muñoz | Reuters
former president donald trump received Increase holdings by 36 million shares Trump Media Technology Group Friday, according to a new disclosure filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday.
The shares were part of a contractual “earnings bonus” agreed to by Trump’s eponymous media company shortly before it went public in March.
At Tuesday’s closing price of $49.93, Trump’s newly vested shares are worth about $1.8 billion, although he is not allowed to sell them until a six-month lockup period expires.
The additional shares bring Trump’s total stake in the newly public company to 114,750,000. At Tuesday’s closing price, its book value was more than $5.7 billion.
Trump’s windfall comes as Trump Media’s stock price surged 50% in the past seven days after falling sharply for weeks following its March 26 Nasdaq debut.
The shares were transferred to Trump as a reward for keeping the stock price above $17.50 for 20 consecutive trading days.
The contract initially established three benchmarks over 36 months, with each award of 9 million shares. But the stock price was never in serious risk of missing out on any of the shares, so all three tranches (36 million shares total) were awarded at the same time.
When CNBC contacted Trump Media last week, its representatives declined to confirm or deny that Trump would receive the stock, but Tuesday’s brief filing served as confirmation.
The former president, already the largest shareholder in the company that owns the Truth Social app, a social media platform created to host Trump and his supporters, was arrested after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack. Twitter and Facebook are banned from the Capitol.
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