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New Delhi
United Atlantic Ventures (UAV), a significant shareholder in Trump Media, has sold nearly 11 million shares in the company, according to a regulatory filing Thursday, weeks after a federal judge cleared the way for the transaction according to a detailed report by CNBC.
The report further stated that the move left UAV an investment partnership of former “Apprentice” contestants Andrew Litinsky and Wes Moss owning just 100 shares in Trump Media, which operates the Truth Social app.
The amount of money UAV got from the stock sales, which occurred within the past week, was not disclosed. But the price range that the DJT i.e., Trump Media shares has traded at during that time which saw unusually heavy trading volume suggests that UAV would have received between $128 million and $170 million for its stock. UAV was allowed to dump its 5.4 per cent stake in Trump Media after a lock-up agreement that barred company insiders from selling expired on September 19.
UAV is the only known insider to sell off shares after that day. Litinsky and Moss had pitched the idea of a social media company to former President Donald Trump, the star of the “Apprentice” show, and co-founded Trump Media with him in 2021.
The CNBC report further stated that the two later fell out with Trump and since then have been embroiled in lawsuits with Trump Media over their shares. Trump owns 114.7 million DJT shares, more than 56 per cent of Trump Media’s stock.
After UAV’s sale of its stake, the only other entity that holds more than 5 per cent of Trump Media shares is ARC Global Investments II LLC, which holds slightly more than 11 million shares. DJT stock closed Thursday at $13.98 per share, a decrease of about 1 per cent.
Trump has no intention to sell
The Republican presidential nominee Trump on September 13 said “I have absolutely no intention of selling” his shares in the company after the lock-up period expired.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings show that UAV owned 7,525,000 shares of Trump Media as of March 25, the day the company completed a merger with the blank-check company Digital World Acquisition Corp., which led to Trump’s company becoming publicly traded.
UAV later was awarded another 3.44 million shares that were issued “for no additional consideration based on the performance of our shares of Common Stock,” Trump Media said in an SEC filing on September 5.
That left UAV owning more than 10.96 million shares. Thursday’s Securities and Exchange Commission filing disclosing UAV’s sale of the vast majority of those shares does not give the dates or prices for the selloff.
Trump Media had warned in a Florida lawsuit that UAV was planning to sell “all of its shares as soon as possible” once the lock-up period expired. UAV’s disclosure of the sale in a 13G filing with the SEC came on the heels of a September 6 ruling by a federal judge in Delaware in UAV’s favor in a lawsuit against a securities transfer agent, Odyssey Transfer, and Trust Company.
That ruling barred Odyssey from interfering with the transfer of UAV’s Trump Media shares to UAV when the lock-up period expired. Odyssey had indicated before the ruling that it would take directions from Trump Media on the transfer of shares, and Trump Media had refused to say if it would allow Odyssey to remove transfer restrictions without preference to any shareholder.
Trump Media share listing and performance
Trump Media stock soared in its trading debut on the Nasdaq, reaching an intraday high of $79.38 per share and sending the company’s market capitalization north of $10 billion. But DJT’s price quickly pulled back.
In recent months it has suffered a downward slide that erased more than 80 per cent of the company’s value at its post-merger peak. The company’s market cap is now below $2.8 billion. Analysts view DJT as a meme stock whose wild price swings were driven more by investors’ support for Trump, the majority shareholder and Truth Social’s main draw, than its business fundamentals. Trump Media has reported net losses of around $344 million on revenues of less than $2 million in its last two quarterly earnings reports.