Finance

beats expectations, Group CEO Noel Quinn to retire

Published

11 months ago

April 30, 2024

The HSBC Holding logo is being displayed on a smartphone with HSBC visible in the background in this photo illustration taken in Brussels, Belgium, on February 20, 2024.

Jonathan Raa | Nurphoto | Getty Images

HSBC beat expectations in its first quarter earnings report on Tuesday.

Revenue came in at $20.8 billion, gaining 0.3% from the same period a year ago and compared with the median LSEG forecast for about $16.94 billion.

Pretax profit in the January to March period came in at $12.7 billion compared to the $12.88 billion seen in same period last year but beating the $12.61 billion forecast from analyst estimates compiled by the bank.

Profit after tax income decreased to $10.84 billion — lower than the $11.03 billion seen in the first quarter of 2023.

HSBC has approved a first interim dividend of 10 cents per share, as well as a special dividend of 21 cents per share

The company also announced the retirement of Group CEO Noel Quinn who has been in that position for five years. The bank has started the formal process of searching for his successor, the company said.

This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

Finance

Conservative cable channel Newsmax shares plunge more than 70% after a dizzying 2-day surge

Published

3 hours ago

April 2, 2025

Business Finance News

A Newsmax booth broadcasts as attendees try out the guns on display at the National Rifle Association (NRA) annual convention in Houston, Texas, U.S. May 29, 2022.

Callaghan O’hare | Reuters

Shares of conservative news channel Newsmax plunged more than 70% on Wednesday as its meteoric rise as a new public company proved to be short-lived.

The stock tumbled a whopping 72% in afternoon trading, following a 2,230% surge in Newsmax’s first two days of trading after debuting on the New York Stock Exchange. At one point, the rally gave the company a market capitalization of nearly $30 billion — surpassing the market cap of legacy media companies like Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox Corp.

Newsmax was listed on the NYSE via a so-called Regulation A offering, instead of a traditional IPO. Such an offering allows small companies to raise capital without undergoing the full SEC registration process. The primary focus is to sell to retail investors, in this case It was sold to approximately 30,000 retail investors.

The public offering indeed garnered the attention from retail traders, some of whom touted the stock as the “New GME” in online chatrooms. GME refers to the meme stock GameStop, which made Wall Street history in 2021 by its speculative trading boom.

Newsmax has a small “float,” or shares available for trading. Less than 6% of Newsmax shares, or 7.5 million shares out of a total of 128 million fully diluted shares, are available for public trading.

The conservative TV news outlet has seen its ratings rise with the election of President Donald Trump and other prominent Republicans — although it still falls behind the dominant Fox News. Overall, Newsmax ranks in the top 20 among cable network average viewership in both prime time and daytime, Nielsen said.