7 Key Takeaways From The Donald Trump SPAC Deal

Former President Donald Trump has been no stranger to owning businesses throughout his life and he has a new business venture going public via SPAC merger.

Here are the key details from the merger between Digital World Acquisition DWAC and Trump Media & Technology Group.

1. Company Valuation: The SPAC merger between DWAC and Trump Media & Technology Group gives the company an initial enterprise value of $875 million. A potential additional earnout of $825 million could be added to take the company’s value to $1.7 billion.

2. Financial Projections: Differing from many SPAC deals, the presentation for the DWAC merger doesn't contain any financial projections. Some SPAC mergers predict revenue and earnings out as far as five or 10 years. The 22-slide deck from the companies contains no mention of revenue or earnings in the future.

3. Building A Platform: Trump Media & Technology Group has a mission to “create a rival to the liberal media consortium and fight back against the ‘Big Tech’ companies in Silicon Valley.”

The company’s first product TRUTH Social is available for pre-order on the Apple Inc AAPL iOS store. TRUTH will launch in beta in November 2021 and has planned a national rollout in the first quarter of 2022.

4. Taking On Tech Giants: Listed in the company’s presentation are Trump Media & Technology Group’s plans to take on some of the largest technology companies.

TRUTH Social plans to take on Twitter TWTR and Facebook FB. TMTG+ is a media division that plans to take on Netflix NFLX and the Walt Disney Co DIS. TMTG News will take on CNN and iHeartMedia IHRT. In the long term, the company is also planning to take on cloud divisions of Amazon.com Inc AMZN, Microsoft MSFT and Alphabet GOOGGOOGL.

Related Link: How Trump's Stock Market Return Compares To Obama, Bush And Other Past Presidents

5. Going Back To Social: One of the most popular accounts on Twitter prior to being banned was Donald Trump. Based on the press release, it seems Trump will use TRUTH as his go-to communication tool.

“I am excited to send out my first TRUTH on TRUTH Social very soon,” Trump said.

On Twitter, Trump had over 89 million followers. The company is betting on his large following joining the new platform.

6. SPAC Rumor Hint: Back in March, Fox Business reported Trump explored using a SPAC to take a business public. At the time, Benzinga speculated Trump could use a merger to bring an existing social media network public or build his own.

Trump advisor Jason Miller told Fox News Trump plans on “returning to social media in probably about two or three months here with his own platform" at the time.

7. A Top Trender: The announcement of the SPAC deal for Trump’s company was a trending topic on social media. On Twitter Wednesday night, Trump, TRUTH Social and SPAC were all trending topics. On Thursday, DWAC is the number one trending ticker on Stocktwits.

DWAC Price Action: Shares are up 174% to $27.28 at press time.

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia.