Donald Trump was fired from Bloomberg’s daily list of the 500 richest billionaires after the share price of his platform Truth Social collapsed.
On Tuesday, the former president was nowhere to be found on the list of the world’s richest people. He was ranked 500th, followed by Bernard Arnault, the CEO of LVMH, the world’s largest luxury goods group, with $223 billion, and John Sall, a businessman and computer software developer.
Trump Media, Truth Social’s parent company, opened trading at $78 and ended the first day at $57.99, putting Trump on the list of the world’s 500 richest people. But by Wednesday morning, the stock was just above $36 – a likely reason for Trump’s removal from the list of richest billionaires.
The company’s shares lost 12 percent on Friday and 8 percent on Monday. USA Today noted.
The stock, which trades under the ticker symbol “DJT,” has now fallen more than 50 percent from its peak late last month. On Tuesday, the stock fell below $35.50 for the first time since the merger of Trump Media and publicly traded shell company Digital World Acquisition Corp. Trading under DJT began on March 26.
When the stock hit the market it was worth $8 billion, but it has since lost billions in value.
Mr. Trump owns 78.75 million shares, or about 60 percent, of Trump Media. Shortly after the company’s IPO, his stake was worth about $6 billion, earning him inclusion in the billionaires index. As of Tuesday, his stake was worth about $3 billion. Mr. Trump will need approval from Trump Media’s board if he wants to sell some of his shares before September.
On Tuesday afternoon Forbes Mr Trump was the 653rd richest person in the world with a net worth of $4.8 billion.
Wall Street initially estimated the value of Trump Media at around $14 billion, but experts say this figure is completely wrong.
“This is a very unusual situation,” Jay Ritter, a finance professor at the University of Florida, told CNN last month. “The stock has almost nothing to do with fundamentals anymore.”
Mr Ritter added that the closest comparison would be so-called meme stocks such as GameStop and AMC, which rose during the pandemic under pressure from retail traders. He said Trump Media was probably worth about $2 a share.
“The underlying business doesn’t seem to be worth much. There’s no sign that it’s going to become a large, highly profitable company,” Ritter told CNN at the time.
“I’m pretty confident the stock price will eventually fall to $2 a share and could even fall below that if the company squanders the money from the merger,” he added.
However, the company’s executives are still well paid, according to SEC filings.
