By The Financial District
Sep 28, 20222 min
DWAC, the blank-check company set to take Trump Media and Technology Group public, changed its address to a Miami UPS Store in a filing Friday. As of Friday, DWAC had lost $138.5 million of its $1 billion in private financing, Jack Stebbins reported for CNBC.
Photo Insert: The merger delay comes as Trump Media and DWAC are the subjects of a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) probe into whether alleged discussions between the two companies prior to the merger violated securities laws.
The change from a Miami office building to a UPS address came with DWAC’s regulatory filing on Friday disclosing that some investors pulled out tens of millions of dollars. The company said it had lost $138.5 million of the $1 billion in financing from private investors in public equity, also known as PIPE, to fund Trump Media after the merger.
The contractual obligation for those investors to contribute to former President Donald Trump’s media company after the deal had expired last Tuesday, allowing them to pull their funding.
One of the former private investors told CNBC that it pulled financing from DWAC because of the many legal obstacles facing the company.
The investor, who declined to be named due to the sensitive nature of the matter, was also underwhelmed by the popularity of Trump Media’s Truth Social app as measured by Donald Trump’s follower counts. Trump had more than 80 million followers on Twitter.
On Truth Social, which he founded after he was banned from Twitter following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, he has 4.1 million. The app is also currently barred from the Google Play store.
After DWAC failed to garner enough shareholder support to extend its deal deadline earlier this month, CEO Patrick Orlando contributed $2.8 million from his company Arc Global Investments II to push back the deadline to December.
The merger delay comes as Trump Media and DWAC are the subjects of a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) probe into whether alleged discussions between the two companies prior to the merger violated securities laws.