Photo: Eduardo Munoz (Reuters)
Former President Donald Trump could pocket more than $1 billion in paper wealth by the end of the day Tuesday.
Trump stands to earn 36 million earnout shares of Trump Media & Technology Group if its dollar volume-weighted average price (DVWAP) — the average share price for a period of time, weighted by volume of shares — is at least $12.50 for a minimum of 20 trading days within any 30 trading day period, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing last week.
The clock began on those 30 days when Trump Media, the company behind the former president’s social media site Truth Social, went public. It debuted on the Nasdaq under the ticker DJT on March 26 after completing its merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC.
The 20th trading day is Tuesday and, so long as the shares don’t dip below $12.50, Trump could earn those 36 million shares at the end of the day. Trump Media stock closed at $36.38 per share on Friday, bringing the potential value of the earnout shares to $1.3 billion. Trump owned 78.75 million, or approximately 57.6%, of the outstanding shares of Trump Media when it debuted on the public markets.
Trump Media closed out last week with a market capitalization of $4.97 billion. The stock was down 1.8% in Monday morning trading, to $35.73 per share.
In its first trading week, Trump Media stock hit a high of $79.38 per share, giving the company a more than $8 billion market cap. But the shares began to nosedive over the course of several weeks following the disclosures of multi-million dollar losses from operations in 2023, the registered resale of substantially all of its outstanding securities, and the announcement of its own live TV streaming platform.
Trump Media stock rebounded toward the end of last week and the company recovered more than $1 billion in market value.
This article originally appeared on Quartz.