Prediction: NuScale Power Stock Doesn't Get Halfway Back to Its Old High Before 2029

Getting halfway back to an old high sounds like a modest goal. For NuScale Power (NYSE:SMR), it arguably isn't.

The small modular reactor developer's stock touched a 52-week high of $57.42 last October, and it trades near $10.81 as of this writing, about 81% below that peak. Half of that peak is $28.71, a gain of about 166% from here.

My prediction is that it doesn't happen before the end of 2028. That isn't because the stock can't rally -- it jumped 15% in one session earlier this month with no news from the company.

The problem is that a lasting move to $28.71 needs evidence of what NuScale earns when someone buys its reactors. That evidence doesn't exist yet, and judging by the filings, it probably isn't coming in time.

Image source: Getty Images.

A 53%-a-year climb

To get from $10.81 to $28.71 by the end of 2028, the stock has to climb about 53% a year for roughly 28 months straight. Few stocks can hold that pace for even a single year.

And the bar keeps rising. NuScale's Class A share count grew from 318 million at the end of December to 410 million at June 30. The company raised nearly $1 billion from stock sales in this year's first half, then opened a program on Aug. 11 to sell up to $750 million more.

At the June share count, $28.71 would value NuScale close to $12 billion, versus about $4.4 billion today. In other words, every new share sold lifts that bar a little more.

What could the company show the market between now and then to earn it?

Revenue is moving the wrong way

Right now, not much. NuScale's revenue line for the second quarter of 2026 was $75,000, down 99% year over year from $8.1 million. For the first half, revenue came to $640,000, compared with $21.4 million in 2025's first half.

Most of the older revenue came from licensing and engineering work on a reactor project in Romania. That work was done by late 2025, and nothing comparable has replaced it. There's no net income to fall back on either. Losses are widening year over year -- a $50.1 million loss in the latest quarter, versus $37.6 million a year before.

Of course, NuScale isn't running out of money anytime soon. It is sitting on $1.9 billion of cash and investments as of June 30, enough runway for years of losses at this pace. And the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the company's US460 reactor design in May 2025. But cash and approvals buy time. What a $12 billion valuation eventually needs, I'd argue, is earnings.

A signed deal sends money out first

The evidence the bulls are counting on is a binding power purchase agreement with the Tennessee Valley Authority. NuScale's exclusive commercialization partner, ENTRA1 Energy, is still working toward a definitive agreement with TVA for a program billed as potentially the largest deployment of nuclear power in U.S. history. TVA and ENTRA1 say it could power the equivalent of about 4.5 million homes, with artificial intelligence (AI) data centers pushing electricity demand higher.

A signing could easily move the stock. It would also trigger a bill.

Under the Partnership Milestones Agreement the companies signed in August 2025, NuScale owes ENTRA1 payments as the program advances. The first came due in 2025, when ENTRA1 reached its non-binding agreement covering 72 modules -- a $507.4 million expense, 15% of the total, since paid in full. A binding power purchase agreement triggers the second tranche, worth 35%. An actual module order triggers the final 50%.

Work the disclosed numbers and the full obligation lands near $3.4 billion in total, or about $47 million per module. And the next bill -- about $800 million, covering the 48 modules this stage allows -- lands at exactly the milestone shareholders are cheering for.

What NuScale collects on the other side is less defined. Its filings say the agreement includes a negotiated maximum sale price for each module (a ceiling the company hasn't disclosed), and that ENTRA1 keeps sole and full discretion over whether to buy from NuScale.

Ultimately, even the bull case runs through a long sequence: a signed agreement, then more milestone payments, then a module order and the capped module revenue that follows. Somewhere along that path, NuScale would need to show what it earns on each reactor -- and that it justifies a valuation near $12 billion. Nothing disclosed so far comes close.

Sure, the market paid $57.42 for the growth stock less than a year ago, so arguably it could pay $28.71 again. But that price came before a year of vanishing revenue, and before most of the milestone payments had gone out. I'm not buying shares here, and I don't think the stock sees $28.71 before 2029.

Daniel Sparks and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends NuScale Power. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.