(Bloomberg) — The former contestants on Donald Trump’s TV show The Apprentice who co-founded his media startup wasted no time offloading millions of shares in the company after restrictions that prevented selling were lifted.
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Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss’s United Atlantic Ventures sold more than 7.5 million Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. shares within a week after a lock-up agreement expired last week, according to a regulatory filing on Thursday. The stake would have been worth at least $88 million, based on the lowest price where shares have traded during regular hours since the restrictions were lifted.
The sales likely made a nice payout for the pair who helped co-found Trump Media, which owns the X-lookalike social media platform Truth Social, even though the restrictions preventing them from cashing in the stock for nearly six months theoretically cost them hundreds of millions of dollars.
The former president and current Republican nominee has insisted he has no plans on selling shares and has apparently kept that pledge through Tuesday, the earliest day such a move would have been disclosed. His current stake of nearly 115 million shares is worth $1.6 billion, though the rules around him turning the position into cash limit how quickly any sale could happen.
Investors anticipated that Litinsky and Moss would offload stock, and are also braced for a flurry of sales from Patrick Orlando, whose fund, ARC Global Investments II LLC, sponsored the special-purpose acquisition company that merged with Trump Media to take it public. There have been no filings indicating Orlando has sold shares.
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