Nuclear Stocks: Two Sell Fuel, Three Sell a Construction Timeline

Five stocks carry most of the market's nuclear enthusiasm: Cameco (CCJ), Centrus Energy (LEU), Oklo (OKLO), NuScale Power (SMR), and Nano Nuclear Energy (NNE). Only two of them sell nuclear fuel today. The other three sell something different – a construction timeline.

These growth stocks have repriced hard this year. NuScale trades about 83% below its 52-week high as of this writing. Oklo sits about 77% below its own. Nano Nuclear is about 70% down from its peak. Even Cameco, the steadiest of the five, is roughly 29% below its high.

The sell-off has not changed what the three developers are. They remain pre-commercial companies whose combined market value still runs to about $12 billion.

Cameco is the closest thing the group has to an ordinary business. The uranium giant booked about $2.5 billion in revenue over the trailing 12 months and carries a market value of about $41 billion. The company's second-quarter results came in below last year's, with difficult spring road conditions in northern Saskatchewan and temporary disruptions at two of its operations weighing on uranium production. Management still raised its full-year outlook for realized uranium prices and revenue, pointing to improving market conditions. It even pays a small dividend, with a yield under 1%.

Centrus is smaller but more interesting for the advanced-reactor story. The company sells enriched uranium to nuclear utilities, generating about $474 million in trailing-12-month revenue against a market value of about $3.6 billion. It also operates America's first facility licensed to produce high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU). That is the fuel most advanced reactor designs, including Oklo's, are counting on.

Whatever happens to the reactor developers, these two get paid when nuclear fuel changes hands. The market prices them accordingly. Cameco trades at about 17 times trailing sales. Centrus trades at close to 8 times.

Oklo, NuScale, and Nano Nuclear are a different kind of company. Their combined market value is about $12 billion. Their combined revenue over the past 12 months is roughly $12 million. That is about a thousand dollars of market value for every dollar of sales.

Oklo, the largest of the three at about $7.9 billion, showed Friday what pre-commercial looks like in practice. The advanced-reactor developer reported $1.2 million of second-quarter revenue, up from zero a year earlier. Its net loss widened to $48.5 million from $33.1 million in the first quarter, putting the first-half loss at $81.6 million. The spending is ramping, not pulling back, as construction moves ahead.

The other side of Oklo's report is the balance sheet. The company holds about $3 billion in cash and marketable securities, a war chest that can fund years of reactor construction. What Oklo does not have yet is a commercial power plant. Its Aurora powerhouses remain in development.

NuScale has traveled further down the regulatory road. Its small modular reactor design was the first of its kind the Nuclear Regulatory Commission certified. Sales remain tiny: about $10.7 million over the trailing 12 months against a $3.5 billion market value.

Nano Nuclear, at about $1 billion, has not recorded revenue at all. The company ended March with $568.7 million in cash and short-term investments. Its lead microreactor project is still working toward a construction permit.

Add it up, and the market is mostly paying for cash and timelines. The three developers hold billions of dollars between them. Each owns a schedule of milestones – regulatory approvals, test reactors, first commercial deployments – that investors hope converts into revenue over the next decade. The buyers everyone expects are data centers running AI workloads.

That can work out well. A developer that reaches commercial operation could grow into its valuation. First-of-a-kind nuclear projects tend to run late, and a company with no revenue has nothing to fall back on when its schedule slips. The drawdowns across the group show how quickly the market can reprice a timeline it once paid up for.

The demand side of the argument has not gone anywhere. The developers' cash piles could keep them building for years to come. Cash and demand do not tell you which design wins, or when.

For nuclear exposure today, the analysis suggests starting with the two companies that already sell fuel: Cameco and Centrus. Cameco carries an Alpha Score of 55/100 (Mixed) on AlphaScala's proprietary model, reflecting its steady revenue base against valuation concerns.