It is not normal for companies to conduct their initial public offerings on a Monday. It is also not normal to see the shares surge five-fold on the first day. Don’t bother telling that to Newsmax. The conservative cable news network debuted in NYSE trading on Monday, and the $10.00 per share IPO went sky-high!
Newsmax, Inc. (NYSE: NMAX) priced at $10 for 7.5 million shares of Class B shares. It opened at $14.00 and traded well over $70 after multiple trading halts. At 2:00 pm Eastern Time it had traded 5.66 million shares and was trading at $62.00 per share.
While Newsmax’s audience has grown since the November 2024 election of Donald Trump to his second term, this IPO has been in the works for about 6 months. Newsmax is a pure-play TV network that has seen its own ups and downs over time with the streaming wars eating into cable bundles. It now claims to have a reach of more than 40 million Americans regularly through the Newsmax channel, Newsmax2 (streaming), the Newsmax App, Newsmax+ (streaming), the website Newsmax.com, and publications like Newsmax Magazine.
Newsmax was founded back in 1998 but it has been a cable TV network since 2014. Founder and CEO Christopher Ruddy told CNBC that he saw an opportunity to jump into the mix since Fox News really has no competitor in the center-right media market. Ruddy also said that Newsmax is ranked 4th among U.S. cable news channels, right behind CNN.
While this $75 million capital raise is an impressive IPO by any imagination, Newsmax had previously completed a private preferred offering of $225 million in February 2025. Those investors must be happy with their one-day paper gains.
If you feel like you missed out, perhaps how the IPO was handled had something to do with it. Digital Offering LLC was listed as the lead selling agent for the initial public offering. Had this seen a traditional underwriting it may have been much more covered ahead of time. Then again, the success of this offering, at least on its debut, is going to be hard to argue against.
