Newsmax

Newsmax (NMAX -1.68%) and The New York Times Company (NYT -1.05%) represent two opposite ends of the political spectrum in the media, and they’re also two of the few pure-play news media stocks available for investors.

While some might think of the news media as a dying industry, the response to Newsmax’s initial public offering (IPO), which faded soon after, and the success of The New York Times’ digital transformation, shows otherwise.

Let’s take a closer at these two stocks to determine which is the better buy today.

Image source: Getty Images.

Business model: Newsmax vs. New York Times

NewsMax is a diversified media company, best known for its Newsmax linear cable channel.

Today, more than 40 million Americans watch, read, and listen to Newsmax. Newsmax has grown over time to become the fourth-largest with 21 million regular viewers.

The company’s broadcasting assets include two streaming channels, Newsmax and World at War, and Newsmax2, a free streaming channel. Additionally, Newsmax Radio offers a syndicated radio and several podcasts. Newsmax also has a digital arm that includes online advertising and specialized subscription newsletters, and it has a publishing subsidiary, Humanix Publishing, which has published around 100 titles. Additionally, it owns Medix Health, which sells 22 nutraceutical products, and Crown Atlantic Insurance, an insurance agency that sells annuities, life insurance, and other insurance offerings.

That collection of businesses makes Newsmax different from other media companies. While the vast majority of its revenue comes from cable subscription fees and ad revenue, the company also makes money from selling nutrition and insurance products, as well as books that it can advertise on its programming.

The New York Times may be the best example of a traditional newspaper that transitioned to the digital era. While the transition hasn’t always been smooth, the Times now makes the vast majority of its revenue from digital subscriptions and ad revenue, though digital ads have not been as lucrative as print ads.

After selling assets like The Boston Globe, the Times has sought to add complementary news products to the core New York Times newspaper, including sports through The Athletic, games such as Wordle, Cooking, and Wirecutter, a product review site. Overall, the Times continues to set the news agenda in the country, giving it outsize influence over the media landscape, despite the relatively small size of the company, which currently has a market cap of $9.5 billion, even as it trades at an all-time high.

Financials: Newsmax vs. The New York Times

Newsmax is still small. In the second quarter, the company reported $46.4 million in revenue, up 18.4% from the quarter a year ago. Broadcast revenue growth was particularly impressive at 28.5% to $38 million.

However, the company reported a loss on an adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) basis of $3.8 million, down from a profit of $1.9 million.

The New York Times also delivered solid growth in the second quarter with revenue up 9.7% to $685.9 million, while total subscribers were up 10% to 11.9 million. Its adjusted operating profit rose from $104.7 million to $133.8 million, giving it an operating profit margin of near 20%. Adjusted earnings per share was up $0.45 to $0.58.

Valuation: Newsmax vs. The New York Times

Newsmax currently has a market cap of $1.15 billion. It is not profitable, and analysts expect it to continue to report a loss at least through 2026. Newsmax currently trades at a price-to-sales ratio of 9.

The New York Times, on the other hand, is solidly profitable and trades at a lower price-to-sales ratio of 3.6. On a price-to-earnings ratio, the stock trades at a multiple of 30. The New York Times also offers a dividend yield of 1.2%.

What’s the better buy?

While Newsmax attracted some attention when it went public earlier this year, it’s still losing money and is more expensive on a P/S basis than The New York Times.

The Times, meanwhile, is delivering solid revenue growth and strong and expanding profit margins. It’s the better buy of the two.

A federal judge has rejected Newsmax’s lawsuit alleging Fox News violated U.S. antitrust laws by squeezing out rival conservative news networks.

The court’s decision came two days after the case was filed.

However, U.S. District Court Judge Aileen M. Cannon said she would give Newsmax a do-over. The Boca Raton, Fla.-based network has until Thursday to refile its lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch’s media company and top-rated cable news network to comply with judicial style.

In her two-page ruling on Friday, Cannon said Newsmax’s lawyers inappropriately tried to build their case by stringing together allegations to compound their effect.

“We understand this is just a technical matter and our law firm is refiling,” Newsmax said in a statement.

Newsmax sued Fox News and its parent Fox Corp. on Wednesday, accusing Murdoch’s television company of anticompetitive behavior to maintain its “unlawful monopolization of the right-leaning pay TV news market.”

Lawyers for Newsmax alleged Fox used its market clout to discourage pay-TV distributors from carrying or promoting Newsmax and other rival conservative news outlets. Newsmax claimed Fox News resorts to intimidation campaigns, including by pressuring guests not to appear on Newsmax.

“But for Fox’s anticompetitive behavior, Newsmax would have achieved greater pay TV distribution, seen its audience and ratings grow sooner, gained earlier ‘critical mass’ for major advertisers and become, overall, a more valuable media property,” Newsmax said in its lawsuit.

Fox News scoffed at the allegations.

“Newsmax cannot sue their way out of their own competitive failures in the marketplace to chase headlines simply because they can’t attract viewers,” the company said in a statement.

Murdoch’s company declined further comment on Friday.

The Trump-appointed judge wrote that Newsmax’s lawsuit was structured as a “shotgun pleading” — a complaint that contains “multiple counts where each count adopts the allegations of all preceding counts.”

Should Newsmax try again, it must untangle its arguments.

“Each count must identify the particular legal basis for liability and contain specific factual allegations that support each cause of action within each count,” Cannon wrote.

Sept. 3 (UPI) — Florida-based Newsmax Broadcasting accuses Fox News and its owner of anti-competitive behavior to monopolize “right-leaning” news in a federal lawsuit filed on Wednesday.

The lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for Southern Florida names Fox Corp. and New News Network as defendants and accuses them of violating the Sherman Act, the Florida Antitrust Act and the Florida Deceptive & Unfair Trade Practices Act.

The “Fox Corporation has long engaged in an exclusionary scheme to increase and maintain its dominance in the market for U.S. right-leaning pay TV news, resulting in suppression of competition in that market that harms consumers, competition and Newsmax Broadcasting,” Newsmax says.

Fox News Network “operates the Fox News Channel — the cable news network with the highest viewership in the United States,” Newsmax officials argue.

“Fox’s control over this must-have news channel gives it significant market power and leverage to impose onerous demands on distributors of its content,” the federal lawsuit says.

Newsmax claims Fox News uses at least three anti-competitive tactics to thwart competition within its market niche.

The network allegedly requires cable and streaming providers to not carry other right-leaning news channels, such as Newsmax.

Newsmax also says the Fox Corp. “imposes financial penalties on distributors” if they carry Newsmax of others by requiring them to carry and pay “high fees” for “little-watched channels like Fox Business.”

The Fox Corp. also allegedly “inserts a suite of other contractual barriers” that prevent Newsmax and others from competing with Fox News, Newsmax says.

Newsmax seeks a court ruling that affirms Fox News engages in illegal anti-competitive behavior and a financial penalty that is equal to three times the amount of damages sustained by Newsmax, plus interest and legal costs.

Newsmax also seeks a permanent injunction “prohibiting Fox’s exclusionary agreements” and any future exclusionary acts.

Fox News Media officials denied engaging in any illegal and anti-competitive acts in a statement shared with UPI.

“Newsmax cannot sue their way out of their own competitive failures in the marketplace to chase headlines simply because they can’t attract viewers,” Fox News Media said.

Nielsen Media Research data shows Newsmax was carried by 84% of television news distribution services in August, while Fox News was carried by about 94%.

Newsmax’s distribution ranked ahead of CNBC, 75%, and slightly behind MSNBC, 86%, according to Nielsen.

CNN and NewsNation each were carried by 92% of cable and streaming television service providers.

Underdog conservative channel Newsmax is challenging Rupert Murdoch’s dominant Fox News in court.

Newsmax sued Fox News parent firm Fox Corp. Wednesday, accusing Murdoch’s television company of anti-competitive behavior designed to squeeze rivals to maintain its “unlawful monopolization of the Right-leaning Pay TV News Market.”

Fox has “engaged in an exclusionary scheme to increase and maintain its dominance in the market … resulting in suppression of competition in that market that harms consumers, competition and Newsmax Broadcasting,” the Boca Raton, Fla., firm said in its federal lawsuit filed in Miami.

Politically conservative news is big business, and Murdoch has mined that lucrative niche since launching Fox News in 1996 with network architect Roger Ailes. Newsmax launched as an alternative nearly two decades later, in 2014. By that time, Fox News was well established as the go-to outlet for Republicans and other political conservatives.

In its 31-page complaint, Newsmax accused Fox of using its market clout to discourage pay-TV distributors from carrying or promoting Newsmax and other rival conservative news outlets. Fox allegedly imposed “financial penalties on distributors if they carry Newsmax” in basic cable packages, and other obstacles, including charging higher fees or requiring carriage of “little-watched channels like Fox Business,” according to the lawsuit.

“But for Fox’s anticompetitive behavior, Newsmax would have achieved greater pay TV distribution, seen its audience and ratings grow sooner, gained earlier ‘critical mass’ for major advertisers and become, overall, a more valuable media property,” Newsmax said in its lawsuit.

Newsmax became a publicly traded company earlier this year. It raised $75 million through its initial public offering, but its stock, which entered the market at about $83 a share, closed Wednesday down nearly 1% to $13.86.

Fox News scoffed at the lawsuit.

“Newsmax cannot sue their way out of their own competitive failures in the marketplace to chase headlines simply because they can’t attract viewers,” the network said in a statement.

Newsmax, in its complaint, argued that Fox throws its weight around when striking deals with digital media platforms, including Hulu + Live TV, DirecTV+, Sling TV and YouTube TV, which now make up about 30% of the pay-TV market. As a result, some pay-TV providers have little incentive to carry or promote Newsmax, the lawsuit alleges.

Fox’s commanding position has allowed the company to extract “supra-competitive carriage fees,” according to Newsmax. Fox charges pay-TV distributors nearly $2.20 per subscriber per month to carry Fox News. That’s double CNN’s fees and about six times MSNBC’s carriage fee, Newsmax said.

“These inflated costs have been or likely will be passed on to consumers,” Newsmax said in a statement.

Fox News consistently beats CNN and MSNBC in the Nielsen ratings. It was the No. 1 traditional TV network overall in July, beating ABC, NBC and CBS, according to Nielsen.

Newsmax also alleged Fox News resorts to intimidation campaigns, including pressuring guests not to appear on Newsmax. “It also hired private investigators targeting Newsmax executives to damage the company’s credibility,” according to a Newsmax statement.

Newsmax, in its lawsuit, contends the market is not the universe of cable news channels, including CNN and MSNBC. Instead, it contends the politically conservative news space is a market unto itself, controlled almost entirely by Fox.

“Right-leaning pay TV news has been a cornerstone of American television, drawing tens of millions of viewers who identify with, or prefer, right-leaning perspectives on politics, current events, and cultural debates,” the Newsmax lawsuit said.

“A large segment of consumers of political news and media seeks news, commentary, and analysis that aligns with or speaks to their political viewpoints,” the lawsuit said. “These right-leaning viewers treat other right-leaning news channels as their next best substitute — and do not consider left-leaning news outlets as adequate substitutes for right-leaning news channels.”

Newsmax is seeking a jury trial and unspecified financial damages. It also wants a judge to declare Fox’s conduct unlawful under the Sherman Act and Florida’s anti-competition laws and prevent Fox from striking exclusionary contracts.

“This lawsuit is about restoring fairness to the market and ensuring that Americans have real choice in the news they watch,” Newsmax Chief Executive Christopher Ruddy said in a statement.

The media sector offers some distinctly different investment options. Newsmax (NMAX -1.47%) entered the stock market as recently as March 2025, and the largely digital provider of conservative news coverage has only one quarterly earnings report under its belt. By contrast, The New York Times Company (NYT 0.77%) was founded in 1851 and entered the public stock market 56 years ago.

You can look at this matchup as a political struggle, but I’m more interested in their business models. Which media stock operates from the stronger financial foundation, setting shareholders up for better long-term returns?

Newsmax and The New York Times, by the numbers

Both companies recently published their results for the period ending on June 30, 2025. Let’s see how they stack up.

Newsmax posted strong top-line growth. Its second-quarter sales rose 18.4% year over year, landing at $46.4 million. The company reached 26 million cable news viewers in this quarter.

With $198 million of cash equivalents and no long-term debt to speak of, Newsmax’s balance sheet looks robust at first glance. However, its bottom-line profits are consistently negative, and the cash balance was built on $426.6 million of additional paid-in capital — financial backing provided by founder Christopher Ruddy and the stock offering in March.

Investors should watch how this shareholder-backed company manages its return on equity in the long run. It’s a negative number for now, even if you back out a $68.4 million legal expense from Newsmax’s expenses.

New York Times saw a slower 9.7% revenue increase in the same reporting period, as expected from a more mature company. Revenue landed at $685.9 million, with 51% coming from digital-only subscription sales. Net income rose 26.6% to $82.9 million, while free cash flow fell 30% year over year to $72.6 million.

New York Times’ cash balance stood at $951.5 million by the end of June. Like Newsmax, this company doesn’t carry any long-term debt. Once again, return on equity is an important financial metric to watch, with the current value perched at 17.1%.

Long story short, The New York Times is an older and larger business with slower growth but robust profits. The return-on-equity figures weigh heavily in the larger company’s favor at this point, due to Newsmax’s unprofitable operations.

Image source: Getty Images.

The stock performance scorecard

That brings me over from financial statements to the stocks themselves.

Newsmax shares are trading 94% below their all-time high, which was set amid the frenzied market action on the IPO date. Skipping ahead to calmer times, the three-month return as of August 26 is a negative 29.7%.

Profit-based valuation metrics don’t make sense for this stock yet, and Newsmax hasn’t reported a full year of revenue figures, so it’s hard to pin a reasonable market value on the stock. For what it’s worth, Newsmax trades at 18.5x the company’s book value and 10x its net cash balance.

New York Times investors pocketed a 7.8% total return in the last three months and a market-beating 92.5% in three years. Neither a market darling nor a bargain, the stock trades at a modest 30.7x trailing earnings and 21.3x free cash flow.

It’s a mixed bag if you compare the two stocks on the metrics that actually apply to Newsmax. The New York Times stock trades at 5x book value and 18x its cash reserves.

Boring beats volatile in this media matchup

Newsmax is still finding its bearings on the public market. The stock has been volatile in the first few months, and the company’s main revenue source is the unpredictable flow of advertising sales.

The New York Times has been around forever and runs a more robust business model with more subscription revenue than ad sales. The stock isn’t exactly cheap, but its valuation isn’t terribly lofty, either.

For better or worse, many people might pick either one of these stocks to match their political leanings. That’s fine, as long as you keep the investment on the small side.

Emotional investing is rarely a recipe for strong returns. If you turn down the adrenaline spigot, The New York Times looks like a modestly priced value stock, while Newsmax seems too hot to handle in 2025.

Like most Americans, including White House reporters apparently, I’ve tuned out Donald Trump’s incessant Big Lie that he won the 2020 presidential election — “by a lot.” That means his nonsense about rigged voting and Democrats’ cheating goes mostly unchallenged, and he continues to undermine faith in U.S. elections. After all, it’s not like anyone can shut him up.

Still, it’s time to quit tuning out. Whether a reporter on the beat or a citizen in conversation anywhere, pay attention and push back against Trump’s un-American blather. Because in recent days the power-drunk president has in various ways telegraphed that his Big Lie isn’t just about a past election but a pretext for what he could do to disrupt the next one, the 2026 midterm elections for Congress.

Other 2020 election liars are paying a big price, literally. Just this week, right-wing Newsmax agreed to pay $67 million to Dominion Voting Systems, on top of $40 million in March to Smartmatic, to settle defamation lawsuits based on Newsmax’s false reporting (echoing Trump) that the companies rigged voting machines for Joe Biden. Newsmax’s penalty is of course dwarfed by the $787 million that Fox News paid to Dominion in 2023; in a pending trial, Smartmatic seeks $2.7 billion from Fox.

All the while, the president of the United States continues to spout the same slop, all but immune to legal action, as he sets the stage for 2026.

On Friday, after Trump’s bro-fest summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the war in Ukraine, Trump happily recounted to Fox’s Sean Hannity in Alaska that the two presidents digressed to discuss the 2020 U.S. election and — what do you know? — Putin, the KGB-trained master manipulator and well-known arbiter of honest elections (not) supposedly assured Trump that, yes, he actually won big but the election was rigged against him.

As an aside here, recall that Hannity and other Fox network stars privately trashed Trump’s 2020 election lie, according to filings in the Dominion lawsuit, and that Hannity testified under oath: “I did not believe it for one second.” Yet in Anchorage, Hannity nodded along as Trump told him that Putin said Trump won in 2020 “by so much,“ but “your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting. … It’s impossible to have mail-in voting and have honest elections.”

Assuming Putin said what Trump claims, the Russian was playing to Trump’s longstanding, groundless gripes not only against the 2020 election but against voting by mail, which Democratic voters use much more than Republicans do. And Trump, ever the Kremlin’s useful idiot, took his cue: First thing on Monday morning, he declared in a long, error-filled and much-capitalized social media diatribe that he’d “lead a movement” to ban mail ballots and voting machines.

Trump repeated Putin’s falsehood that the United States is “the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting. All others gave it up because of the MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD ENCOUNTERED.” But in fact, dozens of countries use mail ballots and, as with other forms of voting, research, along with the courts, has found that fraud is vanishingly rare.

The president’s stance on mail ballots is like his position on a ceasefire in Ukraine: He was for it before he was against it (and he was for both things before getting ensnared in Putin’s web on Friday). In 2024, bending to Republican officials’ pleadings that he drop his opposition to mail ballots, Trump urged supporters to vote by mail — as he typically, and hypocritically, does — and even recorded a video promotion.

Now that Trump is back to opposing mail ballots, in Monday morning’s social media rant he yet again contradicted the plain words of the Constitution to claim powers he doesn’t have, that he can order states to get rid of mail ballots and voting machines. “Remember, the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes,” he wrote. “They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them.”

Here’s the Constitution on that: “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.”

It’s just more proof that both times Trump took the oath of office to uphold the Constitution and “see that the laws are faithfully executed,” he lied then, too.

The president has since repeated that he, with Republican allies, will “do everything possible” to end mail ballots. And he’s saying the quiet part out loud: Without mail-in voting, he told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, “you’re not gonna have many Democrats get elected. That’s bigger than anything having to do with redistricting.”

There you have it. Trump’s “movement” against mail ballots, along with his push for red states to redraw congressional district lines to elect more Republicans, is all part of how he’s trying rig elections in 2026, in what is expected to be a bad year for his party given his unpopularity. And it’s all predicated on the Big Lie about nonexistent Democratic election cheating.

There are other warning signs: Trump’s military takeover of the District of Columbia. (Every day brings another announcement of a Republican governor sending National Guard troops.) His occupation of Los Angeles. Repeated threats to send troops to other big, blue cities. All on specious grounds and over the objections of elected local and state leaders.

It’s wholly imaginable, then, that on trumped-up claims (pun absolutely intended) about potential election fraud, Trump would militarize Democratic vote-heavy cities in time for next year’s elections. At a minimum, that would surely intimidate some would-be voters. At worst, well, I don’t even want to speculate about the worst.

When Trump entered presidential politics a decade ago, it took a while for journalists to get comfortable applying the L-word: Liar. But he earned it. Now he’s all but inviting us to expand the nomenclature to include autocrat, dictator or even the F-bomb, fascist.

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Newsmax has paid $27m so far, and will pay $20m in 2026 and $20m in 2027 to technology firm Dominion Voting Systems.

The right-wing network Newsmax will pay $67m to a voting technology firm over outright false claims it made about United States President Donald Trump‘s 2020 election loss.

The settlement of the defamation case brought by Dominion Voting Systems was announced in a filing by Newsmax on Monday with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Under the settlement agreement, Newsmax said it had paid Dominion $27m on Friday and would pay $20m in 2026 and the final $20m in 2027.

The Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News settled a similar defamation lawsuit with Dominion in 2023 for the larger sum of $787.5m.

The settlement came as Trump vowed in a social media post on Monday to eliminate mail-in ballots and voting machines such as those supplied by Dominion and other companies. But it was unclear how the Republican president could achieve that.

Dominion filed a defamation suit against Newsmax in 2021 over false claims that its voting technology was used to rig the 2020 US presidential election, in which Democrat Joe Biden defeated Trump. Dominion sought $1.6bn in damages.

In a statement, Newsmax said it had agreed to settle because it did not believe it would receive a fair trial.

Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis had ruled earlier that Newsmax defamed Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems by airing false information about the company and its equipment. But Davis said he would leave it to a jury to eventually decide whether that was done with malice, and, if so, how much Dominion deserved from Newsmax in damages.

“The pattern of judicial rulings that consistently denied Newsmax due process left the Company to believe it would not receive a fair trial,” Newsmax said. “Faced with these rulings and other constraints, Newsmax chose to settle the case.”

“Newsmax has always maintained that its reporting was not defamatory and that its coverage was consistent with accepted journalistic standards,” the company said.

“We stand by our coverage as fair, balanced, and conducted within professional standards of journalism,” it added.

However, internal correspondence from Newsmax officials shows they knew Trump’s claims of electoral fraud were baseless.

Davis also handled the Dominion-Fox News case, and made a similar ruling that the network repeated numerous lies by Trump’s allies about his 2020 loss despite internal communications showing Fox officials knew the claims were false.

Though Trump has insisted his fraud claims are real, there’s no evidence to prove they were, and the lawsuits in the Fox and Newsmax cases show how some of the president’s biggest supporters knew they were false at the time. Trump’s then-attorney general, William Barr, said there was no evidence of widespread fraud.

Trump and his backers lost dozens of lawsuits alleging fraud, some before Trump-appointed judges. Numerous recounts, reviews and audits of the election results, including some run by Republicans, turned up no signs of significant wrongdoing or error and affirmed Biden’s win.

Newsmax will pay $67 million to settle a defamation suit filed by Dominion Voting Systems over false claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election that aired on the right wing news channel.

The network announced the settlement with the voting equipment maker Monday, but did not apologize for its reporting.

“Newsmax believed it was critically important for the American people to hear both sides of the election disputes that arose in 2020,” the company said in a statement. “We stand by our coverage as fair, balanced, and conducted within professional standards of journalism.”

Earlier this year, Delaware Court Judge Eric Davis ruled that Newsmax made defamatory statements about Dominion in its reporting on President Trump’s allegations that the company was involved in rigging the 2020 presidential election to favor Joe Biden.

He was ready to send the case to a jury that would have determined if Newsmax acted with malice and whether any damages should be awarded to Dominion.

Newsmax was among the channels presenting false claims by President Trump’s allies and supporters that Dominion, a provider of vote-counting machines and software, was created in Venezuela to rig elections for leader Hugo Chavez and that it has the ability to switch votes.

“We are pleased to have settled this matter,” a Dominion representative said in a statement.

Fox News settled a similar case with Dominiion in April 2023 for $787.5 million after it aired incorrect election claims.

Newsmax previously settled a defamation suit filed by Smartmatic, another voting equipment company that has sued right wing outlets over their reporting on Trump’s false claims. The terms of the settlement were confidential.

In that case, Davis also ruled that false statements were made, but ruled that Smartmatic had to prove the actual financial damage of Newsmax’s actions.

Smartmatic is in litigation with Fox News, looking for $2.7 billion in damages. If the case isn’t settled, it will go trial in New York next year.

Fox News has argued that there is no evidence Smartmatic has lost any business due to its reporting. The network argued that reporting on Trump’s false claims was newsworthy and protected under the 1st amendment.