Only 2 of These 5 Nuclear Stocks Sell Fuel Today. Here's What the Market Pays for the Other 3.

Five stocks carry most of the market's nuclear enthusiasm: Cameco (NYSE: CCJ), Centrus Energy (NYSE: LEU), Oklo (NYSE: OKLO), NuScale Power (NYSE: SMR), and Nano Nuclear Energy (NASDAQ: 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 about 77% below its own, and Nano Nuclear about 70% down from its peak. Even Cameco, arguably the steadiest of the five, sits about 29% below its high.

But the sell-off hasn't changed what the three developers are. They remain pre-commercial companies whose combined market value still runs to about $12 billion.

So what is the market actually paying for?

Image source: Getty Images.

The two that sell fuel today

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, to me, 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's the fuel most advanced reactor designs, including Oklo's, are counting on.

In other words, 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, and Centrus at close to 8 times.

The three selling a timeline

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 -- 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 doesn't have yet is a commercial power plant, and 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. However, its 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, hasn't recorded revenue at all. The company ended March with $568.7 million in cash and short-term investments, and its lead microreactor project is still working toward a construction permit.

Cash and timelines

Add it up, and the market is mostly paying for cash and timelines. The three developers hold billions of dollars between them, and 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 artificial intelligence (AI) workloads.

That can work out well. A developer that reaches commercial operation could grow into its valuation. However, 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.

Sure, the demand side of the argument hasn't gone anywhere, and the developers' cash piles could keep them building for years to come. But cash and demand don't tell you which design wins, or when.

So if I wanted nuclear exposure today, I'd start with the two companies that already sell fuel: Cameco and Centrus.

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