Newsmax Stock Soars After Hot Initial Public Offering

Media company Newsmax is on a major bull run following its initial public offering on March 31.

As of early afternoon on April 1, shares of Boca Raton, Florida-based Newsmax Inc. were trading for about $180.75 per share. Trading on the New York Stock Exchange opened on Monday morning at $10 a share. At that price, the company’s market capitalization exceeded $16.1 billion.

Founded as a news website in 1998 by Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy, the company now runs an eponymous cable news network; Newsmax2, an online streaming news network; the Newsmax App, a mobile application; Newsmax Magazine, a print publication; and a streaming news and on-demand entertainment service called Newsmax Plus.

In a March 31 appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Ruddy said the company’s cable news channel, founded in 2014, is the fourth largest in the U.S. behind Warner Bros. Discovery Inc.’s CNN. The network, he said, is the seventh most-watched cable channel in the country, according to Nielsen metrics.

Peter Andersen, founder of Andersen Capital Management, said the offering was perfectly timed for the company given the current “volatility in the political arena.”

“This was a demonstration that there are more conservative investors than probably the market had anticipated,” Andersen said.

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In its marketing materials, Newsmax says its programming and publications reach “more than 40 million Americans regularly. Mainstream media organizations like the Associated Press and Reuters label Newsmax a ”conservative news outlet.”

In his appearance, Ruddy said the company’s revenue has grown significantly over the past five years. In addition, he said he sees high growth potential in the online Newsmax2, and wants Newsmax Plus to be “a competitor to Netflix for family-friendly news and entertainment.”

“We don’t see ourselves as a value stock,” Ruddy said in a CNBC interview. “We see ourselves as a growth stock.”

Ruddy, according to disclosure forms filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 28, indirectly owns about 39.2 million shares of Newsmax’s stock, or 30.6 percent of the company’s stock at the time through his trust, the Christopher Ruddy Revocable Trust.

The same disclosure forms listed Thomas Peterffy, the manager of Conyers Investments LLC and the founder of Interactive Brokers, as a major stockholder, too. As of March 28, Peterffy indirectly owned about 23 million shares of Newsmax stock by way of Conyers Investments LLC.

Newsmax has attempted to go public before, according to Commission records. In February 2002, Ruddy began to file paperwork to be listed as Newsmax Media Inc., but the company withdrew its request in May 2003.

The current offering process began in June 2024. In a Feb. 7 offering statement filed with the Commission, Newsmax said it had total assets of about $68.9 million and total liabilities of about $142.3 million.

As a business, Newsmax lost tens of millions of dollars in both 2024 and 2023, according to an annual report it filed with the Commission on March 31. In 2023, the company said it made a net loss of about $41.8 million, the report said. In 2024, that loss grew to about $72.2 million.

In September 2024, the annual report said, Newsmax entered into a $40 million settlement agreement with Smartmatic to close a 2021 suit filed by the voting machine maker related to how the outlet covered the 2020 presidential election. The filing said the settlement and associated legal fees amounted to a $76.9 million impact on the company.

The same report said the company is “vigorously defending” itself in a suit filed by Dominion Voting Systems Corporation Inc. in August 2021 over the company’s coverage of the same election. Dominion is seeking as much as $1.6 billion in damages.

“An unfavorable outcome in the matter could have a material adverse effect on the company’s financial position,” the Newsmax filing said.

Reuters contributed to this report.