Next Daily Limited (NDL), the parent company of Hong Kong tabloid Apple Daily, saw its stock price soar 1,100 per cent.

This comes after its founder, media tycoon Jimmy Lai, was arrested under the city's new controversial national security law.

The surge in share price came after the police raided the Apple Daily headquarters on Monday, Aug. 10.

Lai is the owner of both NDL and Apple Daily.

Mass buying papers

Shortly after the arrest and raid, supporters of the tabloid 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 "#WeNeedAppleDaily", reported HKFP.

Stock price surged

Along with the frenzy buying of Apple Daily newspapers was the bulk purchase of the parent company's shares to keep the company afloat.

NDL's stock price rose by more than 1,100 percent in two days, reported Bloomberg.

Retail investors shelling out for stocks

The stock price surge could be attributed to pro-democracy supporters in Hong Kong buying shares of the company as a protest against the arrest and raid, and to show support for Lai.

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, "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", which 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".

Related story:

Top image from Getty