NEW YORK — The U.S. president’s media company posted a massive loss in the second quarter and announced plans to ditch new business lines and refocus as a forum for users to post their views. Trump Media & Technology, the company behind the Truth Social platform, said Monday that it lost US$238 million in the three months through June as it branched into businesses unrelated to media, including crypto. That was more than 10 times the loss from a year earlier. The per share loss widened to 86 cents from 8 cents. In a conference call after the earnings release, the new chief executive, Kevin McGurn, said a yearlong effort to expand by branching into several new industries including online betting and crypto would now be largely abandoned as he refocuses the business on its social media mission. “We made the disciplined choice to pivot in order to invest more time and resources in our most important initiatives,” McGurn said. “We will say no to things or change course as warranted.” Trump Media stock fell slightly in after-hours trading following the earnings report. The stock had fallen eight per cent in regular trading. Key to McGurn’s plan is a service called Truth API that offers early access to Wall Street trading firms to top posters on the Truth Social platform. That includes the user with most followers, President Donald Trump, who often moves markets by breaking major U.S policy shifts on the site. Trump Media has been attacked by good government watchdogs from the start of Trump’s second term as a vehicle for him to profit off the presidency. The new service has only heightened those concerns, with Democrats vowing to investigate the paid service if they get control of Congress in the midterms. McGurn has dismissed such concerns, noting that other companies sell special, fast access to traders. “Providing licensed real-time public data through commercial APIs is a well-established business practice across the technology, financial information and media industries,” he said. “This is no different.” One previously announced new venture, nuclear fusion, will continue. McGurn said Trump Media hopes to close a previously announced merger with energy company TAE Technologies by the end of the year. “We continue to believe it’s the single most important driver of long-term value for this company,” McGurn said of the fusion business. Much of the damage last quarter was due to unrealized paper losses from the falling values of Trump Media’s holdings of bitcoin and a crypto token called Cronos. Excluding those paper losses as well as taxes, interest and other items, so-called operating losses still increased, but much less than the unadjusted results — a $164 million loss from a $44 million loss a year earlier. The new Truth API service is charging $60,000 to $100,000 a month, McGurn said, adding that Trump Media has already signed up 10 customers, mostly so-called high frequency trading firms that buy and sell in milliseconds “We’re in the early innings,” said McGurn, noting that the potential market was much bigger than traders, including data center companies, news organizations and developers of large language models. Ten customers translates into a big new revenue source for Trump Media, possibly bringing in between $7 million to $12 million a year, or roughly two to three times the company’s entire revenue last year. In the second quarter, Trump Media posted $1.7 billion in revenue, more than double from a year earlier. The company has $1 billion in debt from special convertible notes that doesn’t come due until 2028, but the lenders have an option to demand they be cashed out in November, a possible hit to finances though the company appeared to have ample cash. At the end of the quarter, Trump Media had more than $400 million in cash and short term investments. It also had $1.2 billion in bitcoin and bitcoin-related assets. Bernard Condon, The Associated Press
