Last week was a great week to own nuclear fuel stocks like Cameco (CCJ 3.87%), as the Biden administration announced tenders to buy $3.4 billion worth of nuclear fuel for American atomic power plants.
This week is starting off on a similarly hopeful note for another (potential) beneficiary of administration support for nuclear energy. Rising only modestly on Friday's bullish news, NuScale Power (SMR 4.02%) stock shot up 17.5% through 11:20 a.m. ET today -- on hopes that it will benefit from this program as well.
NYSE: SMR
Key Data Points
What NuScale Power stock does
NuScale Power remains a company in start-up mode. While it often boasts it's "the industry-leading provider of proprietary and innovative advanced small modular reactor (SMR) nuclear technology" and says it's "the first and only SMR to have its design certified by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission," the company doesn't actually operate yet, nor has it actually sold any small modular reactors.
Analysts who follow the stock expect this to happen eventually, and predict NuScale will turn profitable in 2027. But for now, the company is mostly just losing money -- about $0.80 per share last year -- as it develops its technology.
Is NuScale Power stock a buy?
So why are investors buying NuScale stock today? Presumably, in the hopes that U.S. government policy might move that timeline forward a bit. In addition to offering to buy a lot of nuclear fuel last week (to reduce reliance on Russian uranium supplies), the government is also allocating $2.7 billion in government subsidies for the nuclear industry.
In its Q4 earnings report last week, NuScale described its role in this effort, helping to build SMR plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania (and planning to sell 24 modules needed to power those plants), and reaching about the halfway point in a government review of its latest module design for a 77-megawatt nuclear power module.
In short, progress is being made, and there's hope for the future. That said, profits remain distant, and NuScale remains a speculative investment. I don't plan to buy NuScale stock anytime soon.
