Oh, is this a lesson analogous to Saylor (#1350852) and the Sailor bois:
Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. is an extremely successful company at something. Not media or technology: TMTG’s revenue from its various businesses (mostly Truth Social, plus some financial services stuff) is on the order of $4 million a year, roughly as much as a top Substack newsletter; for this it spends well over $100 million a year and paid its chief executive officer almost $47 million in 2024. If you just look at it as a business, spending $100 million a year to make $4 million a year is not a big success.
(apparently most of those expenses are in "non-cash" and the CEO's salary mostly in stock. The bitcoin treasury companies definitely play in similar leagues #1232905)
"But TMTG is, or at least has been, extremely successful at selling stock."
for various reasons, a lot of people want to associate themselves with Trump by buying shares in his public company or his other money-making endeavors. And so TMTG was able to go public (via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company) at a high valuation and raise money from big investors, and as of yesterday its stock market capitalization was about $3 billion.
A neat 750x revenue(!). Beautiful valuation... so clearly, what are the buyers getting?
TRULY:
"That time is definitively over and I feel like a dinosaur even mentioning it. Now, everyone understands that selling stock at a high valuation is a separate and valuable skill."
Business is one thing, and stock price is another thing, and sure there are mechanisms to link them, but those mechanisms are not perfect or universal, and there are just some companies whose thing is having a high stock price.
So yes, predictably Trump Media wants to merge with a fusion-developing company -- you know, the nuclear energy types:
Here is TMTG’s press release announcing the deal: “Deal to combine TMTG’s access to significant capital and TAE’s leading fusion technology.”
There's also a fantastic rehypothecation-plus-fraud story about a now-bankrupt company selling cars and consumer loans, collateralizing either against financing. Financialization is a mess. (#1350985, #1291642 etc)
Now, if (1) you never make payments but (2) some guy with a spreadsheet is pretending that you make payments in order to use your loan as collateral, what happens to your balance? I mean! Anything the guy wants; it’s just an entry in a spreadsheet.
....aaaand:
there were arguably no great options here, but a particularly bad option is (1) telling your employee to do fraud and then (2) berating him for not doing the fraud well enough (3) on a recorded phone call.
nonpaywalled: https://newsletterhunt.com/emails/213236
