Truth Social’s value falls to near-record low after Trump’s X conversation with Elon Musk

Donald Trump’s return to X for his much-anticipated chat with Elon Musk on Monday didn’t help boost the value of the former president’s social media company.

Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social, fell 3% on Tuesday morning to trade at $24.07, to remain above an all-time low of $22.50 since public release at the end of March.

The decline followed a 5% decline on the eve of Trump’s return to the platform formerly known as Twitter, which he used to successfully run for the GOP nomination and the White House in 2016.

Trump Media’s share price hit a high of $66 shortly after its IPO, but has been in freefall in recent weeks.

Last week, TMTG released its second quarter earnings results, showing that the company incurred a net loss of $16.4 million while generating revenue of $837,000.

Truth Social was launched after Trump’s X account, @realDonaldTrump, was blocked following the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol.

In the last month, Truth Social has seen its user base grow to 16 million visitors – a 92% increase over the previous month, according to web analytics site Similar Web.

Musk-owned X has more than 200 million daily users, according to data.

Trump’s return to the X for the friendly two-hour chat with the tycoon was hampered by technical problems that delayed the 8pm start of the event by more than 40 minutes.

Musk, who has supported Trump, blamed the difficulties on a distributed denial-of-service attack, in which a server or network is flooded with traffic in an attempt to shut it down, though his claim could not be verified.

The interview followed a series of posts by Trump on X, only the second time he has used the platform since his account was reinstated last year.

An SEC filing from TMTG noted that Trump “is generally required to make every social media post on Truth Social and cannot make the same post on another social media site for six hours.”

Musk, who has supported Trump, started an outside spending group super PAC to support his campaign.