The parent company of Hong Kong tabloid Apple Daily, Next Daily Limited (NDL), saw its stock price soar after its founder, media tycoon Jimmy Lai, was arrested under the city's controversial national security law.

NDL's stock price rose by more than 1,100 percent in two days, reported Bloomberg, after the police raided Apple Daily's headquarters on Aug. 10. Lai is the owner of both NDL and Apple Daily.

Allegedly a result of supporters in Hong Kong

The price surge of the stock was allegedly due to supporters protesting the arrest and the raid. To show their support for Lai, his supporters bought shares of his company.

Bloomberg reported that the head of research at finance firm Core Pacific-Yamaichi, Castor Yang, said: "There are a huge number of retail investors buying. If you just look at the bid-ask price and the size of single trades, most are super small.”

The sudden financial backing of the company was a result of calls from democracy supporters, according to Hong Kong Free Press.

A Facebook page that goes by the alias of "Henry Porter Babel" — which has over 39,000 followers — wrote in a post that he had bought 300,000 shares of Next Digital at the price of HK$0.077 (S$0.014).

Former Apple Daily finance columnist Stanley Wong — whose Facebook page under the alias "Muddy Dirty Water" has 129,000 followers — wrote in a post that he bought 1.22 million shares at HK$0.078 (S$0.014) each, an outlay of S$17,080.

According to HKFP, he wrote that the purchase was "irrational", but he was willing to take the risk to support Lai.

Other Hong Kong media companies like Most Kwai Chung Limited and iCable Communications Limited also saw a significant surge in their stock prices.

Next Digital Limited said in an announcement that "it is not aware of any reasons for these price and volume movements".

Mass buying papers

Shortly after the arrest and raid, supporters of the tabloid also rushed out to buy the paper in bulk.

According to HKFP, Apple Daily printed 550,000 copies of its Tuesday paper, 200,000 more than its initial print.

Some supporters started lining up as early as 2am to buy the paper, reported the Guardian.

Apple Daily told their readers to buy a copy of the newspaper, and upload a picture of it to their social media platforms with the hashtags "#SupportAppleDaily" and "#WeNeedApple Daily", reported HKFP.

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Top image from Getty