The lure of an X audience seems to have proved too much for presidential hopeful Donald Trump, who ended his self-imposed ban on the platform for a conversation with Elon Musk last night.
In 2022, former President Trump said he would not return to the social media site formerly known as Twitter because he didn’t like the way he was treated.
The president had been banned from the site under Twitter’s prior owners in 2021, though Trump insisted he would not return even if Musk purchased the platform and invited him back.
Instead, Trump took refuge on his own platform, Truth Social, and has remained there since. Until last night.
In a glitchy, two-hour conversation with X owner Musk, the pair discussed everything from electric vehicles to Europe trade agreements.
And while traffic to Truth Social is reportedly on the up, Trump’s return to a rival platform may be a further factor contributing to the company’s tanking share price.
Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) fell 5.1% yesterday, to $24.88 a share. At the time of writing, shares were down a further 2.3%, to $24.30, in pre-market trading.
Over the past five days it has sunk 8%, and is down near 39% over the past month—and the last time shares fell below $25 was in April this year.
The fact that Trump’s fans could find him exclusively on Truth Social had been a major boon for the platform.
According to web analytics site Similar Web, Truth Social welcomed 16 million visitors over the past month, an increase of 92% compared to the month prior.
The platform’s draw for these users is clear: Hundreds of thousands of people were searching for Trump’s name along with the Truth Social web address, looking for updates from the White House hopeful.
This is a fact Truth Social is well aware of. Writing in a regulatory filing posted in April, TMTG said its “business plan relies on President Trump bringing his former social media followers to TMTG’s platform.
“To the extent users prefer a platform that is not associated with President Trump…” (for example X, where they might be able to find Trump as well as a host of other figures) “TMTG’s ability to attract users may decrease,” the filing adds.
Fortune contacted TMTG for comment on whether it has lost its point of difference with Trump appearing on X, and whether the White House hopeful will return to Musk’s platform permanently.
But TMTG’s link to Trump, its former chairman, go deeper still.
At an earlier point in the election race, Trump was shooting ahead of his Democratic rival President Joe Biden. Yet since the President stood down and his vice president, Kamala Harris, stepped up to the plate, the polls have begun to swing the other way.
This loss of popularity for the Republican nominee is a going concern for TMTG. It wrote: “The value of TMTG’s brand may diminish if the popularity of President Trump were to suffer.
“Adverse reactions to publicity relating to President Trump, or the loss of his services, could adversely affect TMTG’s revenues, results of operations and its ability to maintain or generate a consumer base.”
Shaky fundamentals
Without Trump, Truth Social may have lost its point of difference: After all, its aim is a return to free speech away from the world of Big Tech, which sounds somewhat similar to the strategy laid out by Musk’s X.
But it also has other problems, namely its finances.
Earlier this month TMTG reported its second quarter results, but skipped an earnings call which could have been an opportunity to varnish analysts with some more positive takes.
Instead, Wall Street was left with a release revealing a net loss of $16.4 million on revenue of $837,000.
While TMTG CEO Devin Nunes was quick to point out the business has $344 million in cash on balance with no debt, it has just entered into an expensive streaming deal which even veterans of the industry are struggling to make pay.
Also putting a dent in the company’s coffers was a $602,000 charge for accounting fees, which included the reauditing of TMTG’s results for 2022 and 2023, and $828,000 for registration fees for filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The reaudited files included the aforementioned April filing to the SEC, and revealed a loss of $58 million in 2023.
