Trump’s Media Company Tripled Its Sales. Selling Faster Access to His Posts Led the Way.

For most of its life as a public company, Trump Media has been the stock everyone loved to mock. Not much revenue, big legal bills, a share price that swung on headlines. The company’s latest numbers tell a different story, and the piece doing the heavy lifting is something nobody saw coming a year ago: Wall Street firms and news outlets paying to see President Trump’s Truth Social posts the instant they go up.

The company behind Truth Social said in its third-quarter results that revenue hit $3.0 million for the three months ending Sept. 30. That’s up 205% from $1.0 million in the same stretch last year, more than triple. It also swung to a quarterly profit, Reuters reported, with net income of $409.7 million.

Just as striking is what happened on the cost side. With what the company calls “legacy legal matters now resolved,” its legal fees fell to $2.4 million in the quarter, down from $20.3 million a year earlier.

The product is speed

The growth came mainly from $1.8 million in subscription revenue from two products, the company said. One is Truth+, its streaming TV service. The other is Truth API, which launched Aug. 1 and is the company’s first data licensing product. Trump Media also picked up $0.2 million in management fees from its Truth.Fi investment funds.

Truth API is the interesting one. Reuters describes it as a subscription data feed that gives licensed, low-latency access to publicly available Truth Social posts. In plain English, buyers get the posts faster than everyone else scrolling the app. When the president posts about tariffs, oil or a war, a few seconds can be worth a lot of money to a trading desk.

That’s who’s buying. Reuters reported in October that Bloomberg, Susquehanna International Group and Jump Trading signed up at between $60,000 and $100,000 a month, according to The Independent. The company’s July announcement pitched the service as “real-time” access to posts from “high-ranking Truth Social accounts.”

Think about what that says. Truth Social was built as a place for conservatives who felt shut out of Big Tech. Now the biggest names in finance are paying a premium to get there first, because that’s where the news breaks.

Where the $410 million came from

The profit number needs some context, and the company gives it. Most of the $409.7 million in net income came from what it calls non-cash items, chiefly $496.1 million in gains on digital assets and equity securities. Those gains were partly offset by a $54.0 million loss on derivatives, $11.9 million in interest expense, $9.4 million in stock-based compensation and $4.0 million in investment costs.

Strip that out and the company reported an adjusted loss of $12.3 million on its preferred measure of operating results. For the first nine months of the year, it used $28.4 million in cash to run the business, mostly on the legal expenses it has now put behind it.

What it does have is a cushion. Trump Media closed the quarter with $2.5 billion in total assets, about $2.3 billion of which it counts as financial assets, including cash, investments and digital assets.

“We’ve remained committed to capitalizing on our business fundamentals, and that focus is paying off,” interim CEO Kevin McGurn said in the release. “Revenue grew 205% year-over-year on recurring subscription revenue, our cost structure is inherently leaner, and our balance sheet gives us real flexibility.”

A fusion bet on Dec. 14

The bigger move is still ahead. Trump Media is merging with TAE Technologies, a company working on fusion energy, in a deal Reuters values at $6 billion. The SEC declared the merger paperwork effective on Nov. 5, and shareholders will vote at a special meeting on Dec. 14. The company says it expects to close the deal this quarter, pending shareholder and regulatory approvals.

McGurn pitched it as a two-track future: keep building what he called “independent, uncancellable media technology” while TAE’s work offers “an extraordinary opportunity to advance American energy independence.” In October, TAE drew the last $100 million available under a convertible note from Trump Media.

Warren and Schiff want the SEC to look

Not everyone is cheering the Truth API model. Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Adam Schiff of California wrote to SEC Chairman Paul Atkins in July, The Independent reported, urging the agency to investigate whether the service breaks federal securities laws. They’ve called it an abuse of the president’s office for personal gain. The Washington Post notes the product “has faced legal questions.”

The service sells access to posts that are public. The paid version just shows up faster. Supporters see a smart product. Critics see a president’s words turned into a toll road for traders.

The stock has been rough lately. The Independent reports shares have dropped about 30% since the midterms, touching a record intraday low of $3.80 last Thursday. Shares rose about 1% in after-hours trading after the results came out, according to Reuters.

McGurn’s answer on the earnings call was simple. “While the market was trading on headlines,” he said, “the underlying business didn’t flinch.” The Dec. 14 vote will show whether shareholders agree.