How round-ups work

Risk first: buying tiny positions to collect round-up shares can lead brokers to restrict, review or close accounts, and companies can change terms or round at the DTC participant level so you get nothing extra. This is not financial advice. Full risk page.

What is a reverse split?

In a 1-for-10 reverse split, every 10 shares become 1. A holder of 15 shares ends up with 1.5 shares. The company decides what happens to the 0.5.

The three outcomes we track

Rounded up: The filing says fractional shares will be rounded up to the next whole share (or that holders will receive one whole share instead of a fraction).
Cash in lieu: The filing says holders receive cash for the fraction, usually based on a closing price, and sometimes from the transfer agent selling aggregated fractions.
Unclear: We could not find a clear statement, found conflicting statements, or the filing describes something else (rounded down, rounding only for fractions of one-half or more, or fractions sold for the company's benefit). Read the quote.

Participant-level vs. holder-level rounding

Many filings say fractions are rounded up "at the participant level". That means rounding is applied to each DTC participant (your broker's aggregate position), not to each customer. Your broker may then allocate, or not allocate, extra shares to individual accounts. Robinhood's help page, for example, says only beneficial-holder-level round-ups issue round-up shares to individual holders. We flag participant-level language in the row notes when we detect it.

How the data is built

We query SEC EDGAR full-text search for recent 8-K, 6-K and DEF 14A filings (including press-release exhibits) mentioning a reverse split together with "rounded up", "cash in lieu" or fractional-share language.
For each matching document we extract the ratio (e.g. 1-for-20), the effective or split-adjusted trading date, and every sentence about fractional shares.
Sentences are classified with conservative rules. Anything ambiguous or conflicting is labeled unclear. We never fill gaps with guesses.
We show the exact sentence and a link to the filing so you can check it yourself.

See About for the full methodology and known limitations.

Before you act on any row

Open the filing and read the full fractional-share paragraph.
Look for a later 8-K/6-K: companies can change ratios or dates, or abandon the split.
Check your broker's corporate-action policy, and whether it credits round-ups to individual accounts.
Consider taxes, trading costs, and the account-restriction risk.