Oklo Reports Friday Morning With Virtually No Revenue to Report. The Stock Trades 78% Below Its High.

Oklo (NYSE: OKLO) posts its second-quarter results Friday morning, Aug. 7, before the market opens, with a conference call to follow at 8:30 a.m. ET. Because the advanced-nuclear developer generates essentially no revenue yet, the report will be judged on four things instead: cash burn, reactor timelines, regulatory progress, and customer commitments.

The stock could use a good report. As of this writing, shares change hands around $43, down about 78% from the 52-week high of $193.84 -- even though the company just delivered its biggest milestone yet.

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What to watch Friday

The reactor update arrived early. On Thursday, Oklo said its Groves Isotope Test Reactor in Lockhart, Texas, reached first criticality (a controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction) less than a year after groundbreaking. The Department of Energy had authorized the start-up in late July, following a readiness review, and Groves is the first reactor in the DOE's Reactor Pilot Program to reach the milestone on private land. The facility is designed to anchor Oklo's planned isotope-production business, which the company expects to serve healthcare, industrial, and national security customers.

That timeline is the bull case in miniature. Oklo went from an empty site to a working test reactor in under a year. On Friday's call, listen for when Oklo expects commercial isotope production to begin, and whether Groves' progress carries over to the company's Aurora powerhouses -- the small commercial power plants Oklo ultimately intends to make its living from.

Then there's the money. Oklo ended March with about $2.5 billion in cash and marketable securities, a total that grew by more than $1 billion during the first quarter thanks to about $1.2 billion raised from financing. Its net loss for that quarter was $33.1 million, or 19 cents per share, and its operations consumed just $17.9 million in cash during the period. In fact, interest and dividends on that cash pile brought in $21.3 million last quarter, offsetting a chunk of the operating loss. At that pace, the balance sheet funds years of building. Friday's report updates the burn rate -- for a pre-revenue company, that number matters more than any per-share loss figure.

Customer commitments round out the list. Data center power demand is the main reason this growth stock once traded near $194, and any new agreements for Oklo's planned commercial plants would do more for the shares than anything in the financial statements.

The stock's 78% drawdown shows how far expectations have already fallen. There is less hype left in the price now, but the market is also no longer paying for promises. Until revenue exists, the burn rate and the timelines are the numbers that matter.

Daniel Sparks and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.