WHLR Stock: Wheeler Real Estate Investment Trust Nearly Doubles After Reverse Split

Wheeler Real Estate Investment Trust, Inc. (NASDAQ: WHLR) has suddenly jumped from obscurity into the “what on earth is this?” corner of the stock market.

On Friday, December 5, 2025, WHLR stock nearly doubled in a single trading session, capping off a wild week that included yet another reverse stock split, fresh SEC filings, and a wave of algorithm-driven forecasts that don’t all agree on where the stock goes next. ^[1]

This article pulls together the latest news, filings, and forecasts as of December 6, 2025, to help investors understand what’s driving WHLR and what risks are hiding under the hood.

WHLR stock just had a near-100% day

On December 5, WHLR became one of the most volatile names on the Nasdaq:

The stock jumped from about $3.24 to $6.41, a 97.8% gain in one day, according to several price trackers. ^[2]
Intraday, WHLR traded between roughly $5.03 and $6.85, with some trader-focused sites capturing an even wider range as liquidity sloshed around. ^[3]
Volume exploded to around 88 million shares, compared with an average daily volume of roughly 200–220 thousand shares. ^[4]
At the new price, market capitalization is only about $2–4 million, depending on the data source and share count used. ^[5]

RTTNews, relayed via Nasdaq, framed the move bluntly: WHLR stock “rocketed” more than 76% to about $5.67 in early afternoon trading, on no new company press release. ^[6]

Trader-oriented outlets like StocksToTrade and Timothy Sykes’ platform highlighted WHLR as a momentum and micro-float play, noting a float estimate around 264,000 shares, which is tiny by listed-company standards and helps explain the violent intraday swings. ^[7]

Crucially, Wheeler itself did not issue any fresh operational news on December 5. The last official corporate communication was the November 6, 2025 press release announcing third‑quarter 2025 results. ^[8]

So the price spike looks driven mainly by speculative trading, short‑term momentum strategies, and a very small effective float, rather than a sudden change in the underlying business.

What Wheeler REIT actually does

Underneath the meme-like chart, WHLR is still a very real business.

Wheeler Real Estate Investment Trust is a small, highly leveraged equity REIT focused on grocery‑anchored shopping centers and necessity retail in secondary and tertiary markets across the Mid‑Atlantic, Southeast and Northeast United States. Tenants include chains such as Food Lion, Kroger, Home Depot, Harbor Freight Tools, TJ Maxx, Burlington, Ross Dress for Less, fiveBelow, Dollar Tree, and Planet Fitness. ^[9]

Depending on the source and the exact reporting date, the portfolio is:

Roughly 75–79 properties,
Mainly retail shopping centers,
Totaling around 8 million square feet of gross leasable area, plus a small number of undeveloped land parcels. ^[10]

So at the real-estate level, this is a fairly typical small shopping‑center REIT. Where things get unusual is the capital structure.

Q3 2025 results: decent operations, messy capital structure

Wheeler’s Q3 2025 Form 10‑Q, filed November 6, provides the best window into the fundamentals behind the fireworks. ^[11]

Revenue and operations

For the three months ended September 30, 2025 (all figures in thousands of dollars):

Rental revenues: $23,706 (vs. $24,336 in Q3 2024)
Other revenues: $115 (vs. $456)
Total revenue:$23,821 vs. $24,792 a year earlier ^[12]

On the expense side:

Property operations: $7,819 (down from $8,488)
Depreciation & amortization: $5,612 (down from $6,241)
Total operating expenses:$18,325 vs. $17,981 in Q3 2024 ^[13]

The REIT also recorded impairment charges and small gains/losses on property sales, resulting in:

Operating income: about $5.5 million, versus $13.9 million in the prior‑year quarter, which had been boosted by a large gain on property disposals. ^[14]

The Q3 2025 supplemental presentation shows that same‑center revenue actually increased, while expenses fell meaningfully at properties the company has sold, suggesting underlying operations are not in freefall. ^[15]

Net income and FFO: boosted by non‑cash items

Below the operating line, things get more complicated:

Net income (loss):
- Q3 2025: $13.0 million profit
- Q3 2024: $30.6 million loss ^[16]
Net income attributable to common shareholders:
- Q3 2025: $8.9 million
- Q3 2024: $(35.7) million ^[17]

But a big part of this swing comes from non‑cash changes in the fair value of derivative liabilities and other capital‑structure items—not a sudden explosion in rent checks. The 10‑Q shows a $14.99 million positive swing from derivative revaluation in the quarter alone. ^[18]

Using the REIT industry’s preferred metric, Funds From Operations (FFO):

FFO in Q3 2025: about $21.1 million, versus negative $30.3 million a year earlier. ^[19]

This looks great on paper, but again, the improvement is interwoven with gains on preferred stock redemptions, property sales, and derivative changes, not just rent growth.

Balance sheet and cash flow

The Q3 10‑Q also underscores how leveraged Wheeler remains:

Total liabilities: about $533 million
Shareholders’ deficit: approximately $(3.9) million, i.e., negative equity attributable to common shareholders ^[20]
Cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash: around $56.9 million at September 30, 2025 ^[21]

For the first nine months of 2025, the company generated:

Net cash provided by operating activities: about $18.8 million ^[22]

Third‑party data aggregators arrive at similar conclusions, showing TTM revenue around $100–103 million and an enormous debt‑to‑equity ratio (over 800x), alongside a strong current ratio and modest interest coverage. ^[23]

Summed up: the real estate is functioning, and the company is generating significant cash from operations, but the liability stack and financial engineering dominate the story.

Serial reverse stock splits: staying listed, but at a cost

Wheeler has become a poster child for serial reverse stock splits, a tactic often used by small‑cap companies to boost per‑share price and remain in compliance with Nasdaq’s minimum bid rules.

The latest 1‑for‑2 reverse split

The most recent move:

A 1‑for‑2 reverse stock split of WHLR common shares
Effective 5:00 p.m. Eastern on November 28, 2025 (reflected in trading from early December) ^[24]
Reduced common shares outstanding from around 1.38 million to roughly 690,000 ^[25]

Nasdaq Trader’s corporate action notice confirms the split and a new CUSIP for post‑split shares. ^[26]

A whole series of splits

This was not the first reverse split:

Wheeler’s investor site lists reverse splits in August 2023 and multiple dates in 2024 (May, June, September, November). ^[27]
A June 2024 8‑K even warned that if the company’s cumulative reverse split ratio exceeded 250‑to‑1 over two years, Nasdaq could issue an immediate delisting determination with no grace period to regain compliance. ^[28]
A later prospectus supplement notes that shareholders approved monthly reverse stock splits from August 21, 2025 to December 31, 2026, effectively pre‑authorizing more consolidation if needed. ^[29]

This places Wheeler squarely inside a broader market trend: Reuters recently reported that reverse splits across small‑cap stocks hit record levels in 2025, reflecting rising financial stress at tiny companies fighting to stay listed. ^[30]

For existing common shareholders, repeated reverse splits combined with continued share issuance can be devastating: your percentage ownership and economic claim shrink over time, even if the quote price occasionally spikes.

Preferred stock, convertible notes and the December 1 exchange

On top of common equity, Wheeler has a complex stack of preferred stock and convertible notes:

Series B Convertible Preferred (WHLRP)
Series D Cumulative Convertible Preferred (WHLRD)
7.00% Subordinated Convertible Notes due 2031 (WHLRL) ^[31]

Monthly Series D redemptions

For years, Wheeler has been running a monthly redemption program for its Series D preferred stock. The Series D section of the IR site shows nine separate monthly updates for 2025 alone, with redemptions generally settled in common stock. ^[32]

An Investing.com summary of a recent Form 8‑K provides a snapshot as of November 5, 2025:

Conversion price on the 7% notes was cut from about $3.59 to $1.74 per share, meaning each $25 note now converts into roughly 14.35 common shares.
For the 26th monthly redemption date, Wheeler redeemed 11,425 Series D shares, issuing about 152,703 common shares at an effective price slightly above $42 per preferred share (including unpaid dividends).
Cumulatively, the company had redeemed 1,746,481 Series D shares, issuing roughly 575,000 common shares in settlement.
As of that date, there were about 1,380,640 common shares and 1,601,444 Series D shares outstanding. ^[33]

This is classic liability‑to‑equity swapping: preferred and notes come down over time, but common share count and potential dilution go up.

December 1, 2025 preferred‑for‑common exchange

The most recent capital move landed this week:

On December 1, 2025, Wheeler agreed to issue 56,000 new common shares to an unaffiliated investor.
In exchange, the investor surrendered 4,000 Series D and 8,000 Series B preferred shares.
The preferred shares were retired and cancelled; Wheeler received no cash; the issuance relied on the Section 3(a)(9) exemption for exchanges with existing securityholders. ^[34]

This transaction further reduces the preferred overhang, but once again increases the common share float, adding fuel for volatile trading days like December 5.

How models and services are forecasting WHLR now

Because mainstream Wall Street coverage of WHLR is thin or distorted by split history, much of the “forecast” conversation comes from quant and AI‑driven services.

CoinCodex: short‑term bullish signals, modest downside expected

Crypto‑style forecasting site CoinCodex tracks WHLR with a battery of technical indicators:

For December 6–10, 2025, it projects WHLR trading around $5.49–$5.57, implying roughly –13% downside versus the latest price. ^[35]
Its one‑year price prediction is about $5.43, a –2.6% projected return from here. ^[36]
Yet its indicator dashboard labels sentiment as “bullish”, with 26 technical indicators flashing positive and none negative at the time of writing. ^[37]

CoinCodex explicitly warns that these are trend‑based technical forecasts, not fundamental valuations.

Stockscan: long‑term models see heavy downside

Another modelling site, Stockscan, extrapolates WHLR’s earnings history into far‑future price paths:

2026 average target: about $3.49 (roughly –45% vs. $6.41).
2027 average target: about $1.13 (around –82%).
2030 average target: roughly $2.29, a –64% drop from $6.41. ^[38]

Despite some slightly confusing wording on the page, the numbers themselves skew clearly negative over the medium term.

Intellectia: pattern-matching and seasonal stats

Intellectia, another pattern‑based platform, reported earlier in 2025 that:

As of June 15, 2025, its pattern‑matching algorithm expected about a 27.27% move over the following month, based on similarity to another stock’s trading history. ^[39]
Its “win‑rate by month” tool suggests June historically has the highest probability of positive returns for WHLR, around 64%, while October is weakest. ^[40]
As of December 6, 2025, it describes WHLR’s moving‑average trend as marginally bullish, but notes only 2 positive vs. 2 negative signals, i.e., not a strong consensus. ^[41]

Other services: strong‑sell AI scores, broken targets

A grab‑bag of other data sources adds color, but also confusion:

Danelfin AI assigns WHLR an AI score of 1/10 (Strong Sell), arguing its probability of beating the market over three months is far below that of the average U.S. stock. At the same time, it cites an average one‑year analyst target around $5 with roughly +54% “upside”, highlighting how fragile those target numbers are in a high‑split name. ^[42]
Some major financial portals show absurd price targets in the tens of millions of dollars per share, clearly artifacts of pre‑split data not adjusted for the cumulative split ratio. These figures are not economically meaningful and should be ignored. ^[43]
Technical‑signal site StockInvest.us upgraded WHLR to a short‑term “buy candidate” after the December 5 spike, but emphatically notes “big movements” and a 36% intraday swing between high and low, underscoring the risk for traders trying to time entries. ^[44]

The meta‑takeaway: models don’t agree on direction, but many of them either:

Expect some degree of price erosion over time, or
Flag WHLR as a short‑term trading vehicle, not a classic income REIT.

How WHLR fits into the REIT and small‑cap landscape

Sector‑wide REIT commentary can help put Wheeler’s drama into context.

A recent “State of REITs” overview noted that U.S. REITs as a group were modestly negative year‑to‑date through early Q4 2025, with average total returns around –1.7%, but many high‑quality names still maintained access to cheap capital and relatively stable dividends. ^[45]
By contrast, small‑cap and micro‑cap stocks—especially those reliant on serial equity issuance and reverse splits—have seen severe valuation compression. Reuters highlighted that nearly 80% of the record number of reverse‑split companies in 2025 had market caps below $250 million. ^[46]

Wheeler, with a sub‑$10 million market cap, a stack of preferred stock, convertible notes and serial reverse splits, fits squarely into the high‑risk tail of both the REIT universe and the broader equity market.

Key risks for WHLR investors

Putting all the pieces together, several risks stand out for anyone eyeing WHLR after its monster move:

Extreme volatility and micro‑float
A float measured in a few hundred thousand shares plus heavy day‑trader attention is a recipe for huge intraday swings and occasional short squeezes. That can cut both ways.
Serial dilution and reverse splits
The company is repeatedly issuing common stock to redeem preferreds and convertible notes, while also reverse‑splitting the shares to stay above Nasdaq’s minimum bid price. The long‑term pattern has been value transfer away from old common holders.
Complex capital structure and high leverage
Liabilities north of $500 million, negative common equity, and ongoing capital‑structure engineering mean that equity is the shock absorber if real estate values or financing terms turn against Wheeler. ^[47]
Regulatory and listing risk
Wheeler has already acknowledged that cumulative reverse splits can run afoul of Nasdaq rules. While it remains listed today, the margin for error is small, and any further price collapse could re‑ignite delisting pressure. ^[48]
Model risk and bad data
Many price targets and forecasts you’ll see online are garbled by the reverse‑split history. Apparent “million‑dollar” price targets or huge upside percentages often reflect bad normalization, not genuine analyst conviction. ^[49]

None of this means WHLR must collapse; it just means that common equity here behaves more like an option on the capital structure than a plain‑vanilla income REIT holding.

Investor takeaways for December 2025

As of December 6, 2025, here’s the condensed picture:

Business: A small, focused grocery‑anchored shopping‑center REIT with roughly 8 million square feet of necessity retail in the Eastern U.S. ^[50]
Operations: Q3 2025 showed steady rental income, improved same‑property performance and positive cash flow, but results are dominated by non‑cash gains and capital‑structure moves. ^[51]
Capital structure: Highly leveraged, with recurring exchanges of preferred stock and notes into common shares, and authorization for ongoing reverse splits through at least 2026. ^[52]
Stock behavior: Micro‑cap, ultra‑volatile, tiny float, and now up nearly 100% in one day—exactly the kind of setup that attracts momentum traders and squeezes, but rarely suits conservative income investors. ^[53]
Forecasts: Algorithmic models mostly expect mild to significant downside over 1–5+ years, even as some short‑term technical dashboards flash “bullish” after the spike. ^[54]

For speculators, WHLR is essentially a leveraged bet on continued trading mania and successful balance‑sheet surgery. For long‑term investors, it’s a case study in how reverse splits, serial dilution and complex financing can turn a real‑estate company into a high‑risk financial engineering puzzle.

Either way, this is not a “set it and forget it” grocery‑anchored REIT. Any position in WHLR probably belongs in the high‑risk, speculative slice of a portfolio—if at all—and requires close tracking of SEC filings, redemption notices, and further reverse‑split actions rather than just watching the yield.