Digital World Acquisition Shares Skyrocket After Ron DeSantis Withdraws From 2024 Presidential Candidate

JAKARTA - Digital World Acquisition (DWAC) stock, a blank check company that will bring former US President Donald Trump's social media platform to the stock market, surged to its highest level in 19 months on Monday 22 January. This is because Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ended his 2024 presidential candidacy in the Republican Party.

The shares rose 55% to 41 US dollars (Rp 642,000), hitting their highest level since June 2022, after DeSantis on Sunday, January 21, halted its campaign just two days before the important New Hampshire main election. DeSantis also provided support to Trump over another Republican potential candidate, Nikki Haley.

Digital World now has more than doubled in the last five trading sessions as the former president gains momentum in his bid to become a Republican candidate in the US general election in November.

Shares of the video-sharing platform Rumble, which is popular among conservatives, jumped 33% to 4.77 US dollars (Rp74.6 thousand) on Monday 22 January, after announcing partnerships with media firm Barstool Sports. software developer Phunware, employed by Trump's re-nomination campaign in 2020 to build mobile apps, jumped 40% to 36 cents.

Digital World is still down more than half of the levels seen in March 2022 after the merger of the company with Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent of Trump's Truth Social social media platform, faced various delays since it was announced in October 2021.

Digital World Acquisition said last month that it hoped to finish the merger with TMTG as soon as possible in the first quarter.

Following Monday's spike, the market value of the Digital World Acquisition reached 1.5 billion US dollars (Rp 23.4 trillion), while Rumble was worth 1.3 billion US dollars (Rp 20.3 trillion), and Phunware was worth 121 million US dollars (Rp 1.8 trillion).

Trump vowed to be exclusive using Truth Social after being banned by Twitter after his supporters' attacks on January 6, 2021 on the US Capitol. However, he returned to X.com, which was previously Twitter, last August after his ban was lifted by the new owner, Elon Musk.