Christopher Ruddy, a rightwing media mogul and longtime friend of Donald Trump, has become a multibillionaire after Newsmax shares continued to surge following its public listing debut on Monday — an unlikely outcome for a lossmaking cable television channel.
Shares in Ruddy’s Newsmax closed 179 per cent higher at $233 on Tuesday. That took the stock’s gains since their NYSE launch to more than 2,200 per cent, in an echo of the “meme stock mania” that gripped US equities markets in 2021.
The conservative TV company, which Ruddy founded in 1998, had a market capitalisation of more than $20bn on Tuesday — despite regulatory filings showing Newsmax lost $72mn on $171mn in revenue last year.