Dive Brief:
- Phillip Juhan, the CFO of Truth Social owner Trump Media, adopted a plan to sell company shares worth about $13.4 million from this month until December 2025 under Rule 10b5-1 of the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to an SEC filing by the company on Nov. 5.
- Under the SEC rule, a company insider aiming to avert insider trading liability schedules in advance stock trades. Juhan, in coming months, plans to sell 400,000 in Trump Media stock, which closed Monday at $33.41 in regular trading.
- Juhan in August sold approximately $1.9 million in company shares which were remitted back to the company “solely to cover withholding payments to applicable taxing authorities,” according to a securities filing.
Dive Insight:
Three days after winning the Nov. 5 presidential election, Trump sought to puncture rumors that he aimed to sell Trump Media shares.
“There are fake, untrue and probably illegal rumors and/or statements made by, perhaps, market manipulators or short sellers, that I am interested in selling shares of Truth,” Trump said on Truth Social. “I have no intention of selling,” Trump said in capital letters.
“I hereby request that the people who have set off these fake rumors or statements, and who may have done so in the past, be immediately investigated by the appropriate authorities,” Trump said on Nov. 8.
Trump Media stock has see-sawed since election day, prompting a Nasdaq trading halt today and several last week, as traders seeking a windfall from the election results jumped in and out of the market.
As its majority shareholder racked up votes on election day, Trump Media reported a third-quarter net loss of $19.2 million on revenue of about $1 million.
Like Juhan, Trump Media executives — including CEO Devin Nunes, chief operating officer Andrew Northwall and general counsel Scott Glabe — sold company shares earlier this year to cover withholding payments, CFO Dive reported.
The sales came after the company’s audit committee approved the repurchasing of “an aggregate of 128,138 shares of the Company’s common stock from certain executive employees,” at a share price of $22.7, according to an SEC filing.
News of the repurchase program came prior to the end of a six-month period barring Trump from selling his shares in the Sarasota, Florida-based Trump company.
Trump, Juhan and CEO Nunes were among the executives who were barred from selling their common stock in the company for six months after its launch in March with the merger with a special purpose acquisition company, according to CNBC.
