Success of Trump Stock Triggers 'Earnout' Clause, 45 Lands $1.8 Billion Windfall
CORRECTION, May 3, 2024: The Bloomberg Billionaires Index lists former President Donald Trump as having a total fortune of $8.18 billion. An earlier version of this article included a different figure.
Former President Donald Trump has added almost $2 billion to his total fortune, according to recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
That filing — a Schedule 13D form filed by Trump himself — said that the former president and presumptive Republican presidential nominee was eligible to receive an additional 36 million shares of common stock in Trump Media & Technology Group, the company that owns the Truth Social social media platform.
Trump received the additional stock as a result of meeting the criteria of three separate “earnout” provisions in the original merger agreement between Trump’s company and Digital World Acquisition Corp. when the companies merged in March.
Those provisions said that Trump would receive 13.5 million additional shares of common stock if the stock price stayed at or above $12.50 per share. He’d earn another 13.5 million shares if it stayed at or above $15 per share, and an additional 9 million if it remained at $17.50 per share or better.
However, in order to qualify for the earnout shares, the stock had to remain at or above those prices for a minimum of 20 trading days during any period of 30 trading days after the merger.
Trump earned the additional shares in the minimum possible amount of time.
“Tuesday, April 23 marked the 20th trading day for Trump Media, and the stock has not traded below that $17.50 level at any point during that timeframe,” CNN reported Friday.
The stock price has been somewhat volatile, but never went lower than $22.84, a number it hit on April 16. Since then, it has more than doubled, and was sitting around $47 Friday morning.
“Even though Trump Media plunged since late March, it never came close to breaching levels that would have threatened this bonus,” CNN noted.
At a $47 price per share, Trump’s new holdings were worth nearly $1.7 billion to his net worth.
Of course, that’s not the same thing as having an additional $1.7 billion in cash to draw on.
For one thing, the shares are subject to a lock-up agreement that prevents Trump — and other insiders — from selling the stock for six months after the March of the merger.
Moreover, if Trump were to attempt to sell a significant portion of his stock in the company, that would likely drive the stock price lower, making it harder for him to realize the current price for all of his shares.
The Bloomberg Billionaires Index lists Trump in 314th place with a total fortune of $8.18 billion.
Most of that amount, roughly $5.7 billion according to CBS News, is tied up in Trump Media, which trades under the ticker symbol DJT, the former president’s initials.
Trump now owns nearly 65 percent of the company, after the earnout share bonus, CBS reported, with a total of 114.75 million shares.
Trump is not only the largest shareholder of the company, according to CNN, but also the company’s chairman — and Truth Social’s most popular user.
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