The social media platform is poised to go public via SPAC at a $6 billion valuation as former President Donald Trump’s supporters pump money into its stock.
What’s actually being traded right now is a small portion of the actual shares that will make up the new merged company. This dollar amount assumes that trump would be able to sell 60% of all stock in the company (which is much more than is available to trading right now), without sending the stock price right into the ground. That’s just not going to happen.
This lockup period prevents him from selling for 6 months to prevent the share price from tanking just after the merger from insider selling, but the board could decide to remove that restriction so he could start offloading shares. Even if they don’t, when we get closer to lockup expiration I’m guessing the shares will likely begin tanking in anticipation of Trump doing this. He’d be dumb not to try and offload shares, the company is insanely overvalued.
More likely, he’ll use the stock as collateral to secure the bond he needs to appeal the New York State fraud fines. Then when he loses the appeal, he can sell the stock he controls, tank the value, and refuse to pay and let the creditors take the now worthless security.
I can’t imagine anyone is smart enough to have $500m to lend, but stupid enough to accept this stock as collateral, especially knowing Trump’s ability to tank it.
The State of New York is not going to take locked up very volatile stock as payment. Neither is any insurance company. They can just refuse it. It’s just an IOU.
Any company could just create whatever shares they needed to pay any fines. Like “oh here is an IOU due in 50 years”. “I promise the money will be available.”
Believe me, someone has tried that before. It’s New York State. They deal with complex financial crimes all the time.
Creditors aren’t dumb, no way they’re going to accept this as a collateral. Even if they did have the ability to sell if needed (they don’t, it’s illiquid at the moment), unwinding $450 million in shares is going to take some time, and the sale itself is large enough it would affect the stock price itself. There’d be no good way of knowing how much stock you’d have to hold in the account to ensure that $450 million in cash could be extracted from it if needed.
This isn’t just some small personal account with a line of credit that the creditor can make a maintenance/margin call on to ensure a certain collateral balance is maintained. This is a substantial percentage of the market cap of one single company with an extremely volatile stock based on near zero fundamentals, in a position that likely can’t be unwound without tanking its own value.
Most likely thing Trump does in reality is work with a bank (who will accept real estate as collateral, unlike the bond companies) to get a letter of credit from a bank, and then bring the letter of credit to the bond company. This whole dog and pony show of “I can’t pay” is probably fake to try and see if he can convince the courts to delay his payment. Unless he truly does have no real equity in his properties like some people say. Or banks really are done with him. Will be interesting to hear what the independent court appointed monitor thinks about all of this. I wouldn’t be surprised though if Monday just before seizures could start Trump’s lawyers are like, jk we put these properties up as collateral like we could have done at any time in actuality, for a letter of credit, and used that to secure a bond. Rather than let NY state take control of them. I hope they do get seized by New York though.
This lockup period prevents him from selling for 6 months to prevent the share price from tanking just after the merger from insider selling, but the board could decide to remove that restriction so he could start offloading shares.
I can’t see why the board would remove the restriction when they likely have stock too. They likely understand the grift and know that they need to get theirs sold off before Trump tanks whatever is left.
What’s actually being traded right now is a small portion of the actual shares that will make up the new merged company. This dollar amount assumes that trump would be able to sell 60% of all stock in the company (which is much more than is available to trading right now), without sending the stock price right into the ground. That’s just not going to happen.
This lockup period prevents him from selling for 6 months to prevent the share price from tanking just after the merger from insider selling, but the board could decide to remove that restriction so he could start offloading shares. Even if they don’t, when we get closer to lockup expiration I’m guessing the shares will likely begin tanking in anticipation of Trump doing this. He’d be dumb not to try and offload shares, the company is insanely overvalued.
More likely, he’ll use the stock as collateral to secure the bond he needs to appeal the New York State fraud fines. Then when he loses the appeal, he can sell the stock he controls, tank the value, and refuse to pay and let the creditors take the now worthless security.
I can’t imagine anyone is smart enough to have $500m to lend, but stupid enough to accept this stock as collateral, especially knowing Trump’s ability to tank it.
The State of New York is not going to take locked up very volatile stock as payment. Neither is any insurance company. They can just refuse it. It’s just an IOU.
Any company could just create whatever shares they needed to pay any fines. Like “oh here is an IOU due in 50 years”. “I promise the money will be available.”
Believe me, someone has tried that before. It’s New York State. They deal with complex financial crimes all the time.
Creditors aren’t dumb, no way they’re going to accept this as a collateral. Even if they did have the ability to sell if needed (they don’t, it’s illiquid at the moment), unwinding $450 million in shares is going to take some time, and the sale itself is large enough it would affect the stock price itself. There’d be no good way of knowing how much stock you’d have to hold in the account to ensure that $450 million in cash could be extracted from it if needed.
This isn’t just some small personal account with a line of credit that the creditor can make a maintenance/margin call on to ensure a certain collateral balance is maintained. This is a substantial percentage of the market cap of one single company with an extremely volatile stock based on near zero fundamentals, in a position that likely can’t be unwound without tanking its own value.
Most likely thing Trump does in reality is work with a bank (who will accept real estate as collateral, unlike the bond companies) to get a letter of credit from a bank, and then bring the letter of credit to the bond company. This whole dog and pony show of “I can’t pay” is probably fake to try and see if he can convince the courts to delay his payment. Unless he truly does have no real equity in his properties like some people say. Or banks really are done with him. Will be interesting to hear what the independent court appointed monitor thinks about all of this. I wouldn’t be surprised though if Monday just before seizures could start Trump’s lawyers are like, jk we put these properties up as collateral like we could have done at any time in actuality, for a letter of credit, and used that to secure a bond. Rather than let NY state take control of them. I hope they do get seized by New York though.
That’s why they were asking for $1billion in liquid assets as collateral for a ~$500 million bond.
But yes, I agree with you.
I can’t see why the board would remove the restriction when they likely have stock too. They likely understand the grift and know that they need to get theirs sold off before Trump tanks whatever is left.
You’re right, a normal board wouldn’t. He appears to be stuffing family members and lackey on the board though. So we’ll have to see what happens.