GrabAGun Digital Holdings, an online firearms store backed by Donald Trump Jr., did not have the stock market debut that he and other shareholders had hoped for. Instead, its shares fell 23% Thursday on their first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
The stock, which trades under the ticker PEW, was down again about 1.23% in premarket trading on Friday as of this writing.
The president’s eldest son had started Wednesday with a triumphant tone. Donald Trump Jr. rang the NYSE’s opening bell as people chanted “USA,” just one day after fellow shareholders had approved GrabAGun’s merger with Colombier Acquisition Corp. II, a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. He was joined by the SPAC’s CEO, Omeed Malik.
Trump Jr., who owns 300,000 shares of GrabAGun, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), trumpeted the market debut of a firm that trades in firearms.
In an interview with Fox Business, he stated, “To be able to come back to the New York Stock Exchange and actually take a gun company public feels like such a vindication of all the insanity, all of the ‘woke’ nonsense that we’ve been watching and facing for the last decade in America.”
GrabAGun raised $179 million in gross proceeds from the merger, according to the company. Malik and Trump Jr. are both also connected to 1789 Capital, as president and a partner, respectively.
The decision to merge with a SPAC is an interesting one. Markets experienced a SPAC boom during the early pandemic years, but their bubble has long since burst. In its place is a long list of failed SPAC mergers and—in some cases—lessons learned by companies like BuzzFeed, Virgin Galactic, and 23andMe.
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