Trump Media Lost $20 Million–It Gave CEO Devin Nunes $5.9 Million In Stock

Forbes

Trump Media, which lost $20 million last quarter while expanding into new products, including crypto, awarded CEO Devin Nunes $5.9 million in stock on Wednesday, with the shares set to vest over three years, according to an SEC filing.  Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2025/08/09/trump-media-djt-devin-nunes-stock-truth-social-bitcoin-losses/  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  0:00 - Introduction: $20M Loss, $5M CEO Bonus 1:44 - Trump Media's New Strategy: A Bitcoin Treasury 3:56 - How Trump Media Lost $20 Million 5:26 - Who Else Got a Bonus? 6:07 - Is This Typical Corporate Behavior? 7:38 - Trump Media Responds to Our Questions 8:43 - What Does This Bonus Mean for the Future? 9:39 - From Scam to Strategy: The Trumps Go All In on Crypto 11:21 - Are Americans Buying Into Trump's Crypto Push?  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis, a breaking news reporter here at Forbes. Joining me now

00:07is my Forbes colleague, staff writer, Zach Everson. Zach, thanks so much for joining me.

00:12Thanks for having me back, Brittany.

00:14Zach, you and I have talked about Trump media plenty of times before. You're reporting now,

00:18though, that they did lose $20 million last quarter, but no fear, that did not stop them

00:24from giving the CEO millions in stock. What can you tell us?

00:27Well, I would rather be discussing the Taylor Swift new album, since that's the bigger news,

00:32but instead, let's go into Trump media. Yeah, they filed a quarterly report a couple weeks ago

00:38that they lost $20 million in the quarter on just $883,000 in revenue. To give you some perspective,

00:46that is about how much an average mall-based Chick-fil-A brings in in the course of a quarter.

00:52You know, not one of those standalone Chick-fil-As. They do better than that, just one of the malls

00:55ones. So not great, but Devin Nunes, and according to a filing the company made a few

01:01days after that, was given 348,000 restricted stock units. Now, what those are are units that

01:08he can then exchange for shares with the company on a one-to-one ratio, and he needs to be with the

01:14company over the next three years to get all of them. He will get them in equal installments.

01:17So, you know, that was a nice little $4.9 million based on Friday's close for a company that's not

01:25doing all that great on the balance sheet, although it has launched several new products and gone in

01:29some interesting ways in the recent months. That really sounds like a carrot that Trump

01:33media is giving Devin Nunes, right? Stay here for three years at least, then you can cash out on the

01:40stock, make millions. I'm curious if his performance reflects these millions. How has his tenure been

01:46going at Trump media, rather? Is he qualified to be getting this much stock?

01:52You know, when you've got the opportunity to lock up Devin Nunes for the long term,

01:55you take that opportunity. You know, financial numbers haven't been great overall. That's not

02:00uncommon for tech companies, you know, that frequently, or really any startup that will

02:05frequently suffer losses early on in the hopes of making big revenue later. I believe Amazon's a great

02:09example of that. Typically, though, the revenue is substantially better than, you know, $883,000 a

02:15quarter. That said, there have been a lot of changes recently in Trump media. The biggest one

02:21is that it sold about $3.1 billion worth of shares and bonds in a private placement to about 50 big

02:28investors. And then it took that money and invested a lot of it into Bitcoin. So right now, it's essentially

02:34a Bitcoin treasury with a little bit of a social media side business going forward. So

02:39buying a share in Trump media is a way to have some Bitcoin holding. So that's the biggest change

02:45he's made. There have been some smaller ones as well. They launched an iPad app, which they hadn't

02:49previously had. They're coming out with a subscription service for their Truth Plus streaming

02:55platform. That is going global. They're looking at tying in some sort of crypto angle on that.

03:00And they're launching some electronic funds, ETFs rather, that are crypto-based in conjunction

03:06with crypto.com. So there is a lot of stuff going on right there.

03:10You're saying that Trump media performed on par last quarter with a mall Chick-fil-A,

03:17lost $20 million. How did the company lose so much? I know you said that this is typical for

03:23a tech company to lose money.

03:25Right. They've got some legal expenses. You know, they're obviously paying their executives

03:30well. You know, the revenue is really interesting. So a few months ago, I reported an article that we

03:35discussed on new ways to get money to Trump that weren't available during his first term.

03:40And one of the options that we looked at were buying ads in True Social. You know, I thought

03:44that might be a way if you wanted to get some money to Trump, try to get on his good side.

03:49Buying a big ad spread on True Social or on the Truth Plus streaming platform seemed like a way to do it.

03:55As I looked at True Social, though, it didn't seem like many people were taking advantage of that

04:01opportunity. You know, a lot of the ads were just kind of low budget, things geared towards MAGA

04:06supporters, you know, pitching conspiracies and things like that. So it just seems like they're

04:11not getting a ton of ad revenue. And as a result, the revenue is less than a million dollars last

04:16quarter. And Devin Nunes, though, he's doing pretty well. Has anyone else got this type of bonus

04:21this quarter or in recent quarters? Yeah, nobody's doing as well as he is,

04:26which makes sense. He's the CEO. Overall, the stake in the company, a combination of shares

04:31and more restricted stock units is worth about $24.4 million. The company did also issue about

04:38140,000 restricted stock units recently to its CFO, CTO and general counsel. So there were there were

04:45four people there who were awarded some of these restricted stock units. Same thing applies there that

04:49they do need to stay employed with the company to be able to cash those out in the future.

04:53Zach, I'm really curious, is this typical behavior of a company? A company loses $20 million one

04:59quarter, yet rewards its CEO and others a pretty penny? Yeah, you know, I focus mostly on the Trumps

05:07as opposed to industry at large. You certainly see stories, though, about that where companies are

05:12going down the toilet and, you know, somebody is getting a huge payout. That's certainly there in

05:17the news. So it's not totally out of character for some of these companies. You know, what is

05:22interesting here, though, is that it's a company of which Donald Trump is the majority or holds a

05:29plurality of the shares. So Devin Nunes has been a political ally of his back when he was in the House.

05:34So that is a really interesting arrangement there. And I am sure you reached out to Trump Media,

05:41asked if about the criteria of Devin Nunes getting paid this much in stock. I mean,

05:46what did they say to you? Yeah, they highlighted some of the things we discussed earlier, some of

05:50the achievements that it's had in recent months, the subscription service for Truth Plus, filing

05:56registration statements with the FEC to launch a crypto-focused ETF. They also said that it had

06:02its first quarter of positive operating cash flow, but they wouldn't give me any of the specific

06:07criteria that Nunes was supposed to meet. Now, according to the performance plan, which is also

06:12they filed with the SEC, there's about 33 different criteria that the board's compensation committee

06:18can look at when determining a executive's stock award. So it could be anything from like the stock

06:25price, merger achievements, different project completions. So there's really, you know, a wide

06:32variety of things that could be responsible for Nunes to get this. But unless, you know, they want to tell

06:38us, we're not going to know. But this indicates to me that they want Nunes on at least for a couple

06:43more years. Does this indicate to you anything else about the future of Trump media, perhaps the

06:49future of Truth Social? What does that really look like? Yeah, I don't really know if there's a ton that

06:54you can get out of it going forward. I mean, certainly it looks like, yes, they would like Nunes to stay

06:59there. On the other hand, you know, deferred compensation is an easy way to not have to pay

07:04somebody if you decide to get rid of them in the near future. You know, that there's an option that

07:09way, not to say there is anything showing that the company has been displeased with Nunes. So

07:14really don't know if we can make any bigger conclusions about the company's path forward

07:18just based on this payout. And you mentioned before that Trump media is really leaning in and

07:24going all in on crypto. And you and I have talked about this in conversations for the past couple of

07:29months now. Talk to us about that a little more. I mean, are you seeing that even more now?

07:35Yeah, if, you know, there's that famous skit in Portlandia where they talk about putting a bird on

07:43it. It seems like the Trumps have gotten to that, but it's putting crypto on it. Like if they can

07:47figure out a way to combine crypto with any sort of industry they're looking at, you know, any sort of

07:53project, they will gladly go ahead and do that. I think, you know, as we mentioned, they built up this

07:57reserve of Bitcoin that you can now invest in by investing in Truth Social, but also just that they're

08:02tokenizing their streaming platform. You know, Trump has the NFT. There's the meme coin. There's

08:08World Liberty Financial, which has both a stable coin and the you can actually buy into the DeFi

08:16itself now that it's tradable. So there are a lot of options out there and we've discussed all of

08:21those in depth previously. But, you know, from a president who a few years ago basically said

08:25crypto was a scam and it was money out of thin air, they have decided to go all in on crypto.

08:32And the Trumps are going all in on crypto. I saw a recent poll from Emerson College polling

08:36saying more Americans disapprove with President Trump's handling of crypto than there are that

08:42approve. I mean, are Americans going all in on crypto, especially in relation to the Trumps and

08:47Trump media? Some certainly are. You know, we haven't seen a huge jump in the stock price

08:52after Trump media announced its plans to buy that crypto reserve or when it actually did buy it. So

08:59haven't seen a ton of excitement for it there. You know, there's a very small set of people who are

09:05all in on crypto and ecstatic and think it's going to change the world. And there's the majority of

09:10people who are skeptical, if knowledgeable about it at all. There are also some people who are very

09:15into crypto and what it can do, but are not thrilled to see what Trump is doing with it

09:21because they think it's giving it a bad name. You know, I spoke to somebody who worked for an

09:25organization that is pro crypto, but they were afraid, you know, Trump, this was right at the

09:29time when he had that dinner at his D.C. area golf course for the largest holders of his meme coin.

09:34They were afraid that things like that kind of hurt the reputation of crypto.

09:39Well, Zach, per usual, I always appreciate your reporting. Thank you so much for joining me.

09:43Until next time. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

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