Wendy’s shares extended their rally for a second day on Thursday, as retail traders continued piling into the heavily shorted fast-food chain.

Shares surged another 12% in premarket after a 25.7% gain in the previous session, their biggest advance since June 2021. The rally appeared largely disconnected from company fundamentals and instead reflected a burst of social-media enthusiasm that has transformed Wendy’s into the latest meme-stock favorite.

“Reddit crowd hijacks stock,” Don Bilson, head of event-driven research at Gordon Haskett, wrote in a note.

“GameStop is inarguably the OG of meme stocks. It earned that distinction during Covid and credit for this is owed to the army of apes that get their marching orders from Reddit’s WallStreetBets thread,” Bilson said. “This army happens to be on the move again this morning outside of Columbus, Ohio. That is where Wendy’s makes its home and its stock.”

The rally began Wednesday after Wendy’s announced the appointment of former Potbelly executive Steven Cirulis as chief financial officer and chief strategy officer.

Traders on Reddit forums increasingly portrayed Wendy’s as a company worth “saving” after years of stock-market underperformance. One widely shared WallStreetBets post titled “We need to save Wendy’s” and urged fellow traders to rally behind the restaurant chain.

One Reddit user posted a screenshot showing a roughly $350,000 position in Wendy’s stock under the headline “$WEN to the moon – 350K YOLO,” drawing hundreds of comments and upvotes from fellow traders. Another post featured a meme image encouraging investors to “pump those numbers up,” joking that buying only one meal’s worth of Wendy’s stock amounted to “rookie numbers.”

The online chatter helped propel Wendy’s into the most-discussed stocks on Reddit trading forums, according to data compiled by Swaggy Stocks.

— CNBC’s Alex Harring and Michael Bloom contributed reporting.