Newsmax is poised for significant growth and is already a major media player, Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Monday morning.
“I’m running Newsmax, which is not far behind CNN at about $200 million a year in revenues and expenses,” Ruddy said.
He noted that at the same time “CNN’s spending billions and billions, so there must be tremendous fat in all these companies.”
Ruddy also said Newsmax is reaching through its cable channel and streaming Newsmax2 network about 30% of Fox News’ audience — and has done so with a relatively small amount of capital for a media enterprise.
Newsmax Inc.’s common shares were officially listed on the New York Stock Exchange Monday morning with live trading beginning just before 11 a.m. Eastern time under the symbol NMAX.
Shares in Newsmax skyrocketed, with the company hitting over $50 a share just an hour after trading, up from the $10 a share IPO price.
“We’re going out with a market cap of $1.2 billion, but we don’t see ourselves as a value stock. We see ourselves as a growth stock, so those multiples are going to be a lot higher,” Ruddy said.
Notably, Newsmax is one of the fastest growing news media companies in the U.S.
Last year a Reuters Institute study found Newsmax was a top 12 U.S. news brand.
“In fact, we’re the number four cable news channel in the United States, right behind CNN; we’re number seven of all cable channels based on Nielsen’s coverage rating,” Ruddy told CNBC.
“I think it’s a pretty big achievement for a 10-year-old new cable company,” he said.
Newsmax originated in the digital space in 1998 as Newsmax.com and launched a cable news channel in 2014.
Newsmax is the only digital media property to become a successful cable channel.
“Everybody said, ‘Don’t do it; you’ll never get on cable systems; you’ll never get a license fee,'” Ruddy recalled.
“Today we’re on every cable major cable system. We get license fees from everybody.”
Ruddy said that as a new growth stock, Newsmax has already had exponential success in expanding even as the cable TV market has been consolidating due to cord cutting.
“We’ve had 300% revenue growth over the past five years,” he said. “We’re up almost 30% in revenue last year.”
Asked by CNBC as to his capital plans for Newsmax, Ruddy said he sees three areas of significant growth.
“We have the cable channel. We’re still building that and growing that and programing,” Ruddy said.
“We have the Newsmax2, our streaming channel. It’s reaching about 15 million people regularly.
“We have the plus service, which we are going to see as a competitor to Netflix for family-friendly news and entertainment.”
In its IPO, Newsmax has raised $75 million for the sale of 7.5 million shares of class B common stock at $10 a share. The successful IPO came on the heels of a Preferred share offering that closed in February after raising $225 million for the company.
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