Trump Media shares climb after Biden’s faltering show in first presidential debate

(Reuters) -Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group rose more than 6% on Friday after President Joe Biden’s faltering performance against Republican rival Donald Trump at the first 2024 U.S. presidential debate.

Biden’s allies scrambled to contain the fallout from his shaky performance after he struggled to stem a barrage of attacks and false claims from Trump.

Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG), which owns Trump’s social media platform Truth Social, was last up 5.5% at $38.62, while software developer Phunware, which worked on Trump’s 2020 election campaign app, climbed 1.6% to $6.4.

Shares of video-sharing platform Rumble, popular with conservatives, edged up 1.4% to $5.80.

“We will see these movements linked increasingly to how the election expectations evolve around Trump … markets are happy to have one indicator to look to in order to price in all this,” Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote Bank, said.

“Fundamentally speaking, there is nothing much behind the Trump Media & Technology Group. The moves that we see are mostly speculative.”

The company reported revenue of $770,500 for the March quarter and an adjusted operating loss of $12.1 million. It was last valued at $6.7 billion.

TMTG’s shares have more than doubled this year as Trump gained momentum in his bid to become the Republican candidate in the election. The stock came under pressure earlier this month after a jury found Trump guilty of falsifying documents to cover up a payment to silence a porn star.

Trump owned 64.9% of TMTG as of June 10, which is worth about $4.2 billion as of last close, according to LSEG data.

Meanwhile, prison operators Geo Group (NYSE:) and CoreCivic (NYSE:) climbed 4.9% and 2.9%, respectively, on expectations of a tighter crackdown on illegal immigration.

Trump said during the debate that Biden had failed to secure the southern U.S. border.