NuScale shares fall 83% as quarterly revenue drops to $75,000

NuScale Power's shares have fallen 83 percent from their October peak of $57.42 to about $9.50, as the small modular reactor developer's second-quarter revenue collapsed to $75,000 from $8.1 million a year earlier — a 99 percent decline.

"The question for offtakers is no longer whether to go with nuclear — it is which technology can actually deliver, and when," CEO John Hopkins said in the company's second-quarter release.

The revenue drop traces to the completion of Fluor's front-end engineering design Phase 2 work on the RoPower project in Romania, which ended in late 2025. NuScale reported a $47.5 million net loss attributable to Class A shareholders for the quarter, and it filed Aug. 11 to sell up to $750 million in new stock through an at-the-market program — roughly 18 percent of its current market capitalization.

The company holds $1.9 billion in cash with no debt, giving it roughly 2.5 years of runway at its current burn rate. But the stock's slide reflects a market that has lost patience with a pre-revenue company whose two lead opportunities — a Tennessee Valley Authority power purchase agreement and Romania's RoPower project — remain unsigned.

The gap between approval and orders

NuScale holds the only small modular reactor design certification issued by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and it received approval for an updated design in May 2025. The company says it has built a supply chain of more than 60 partners, with over 30 supply agreements executed, and Doosan Enerbility has been producing heavy forgings for power modules for two years. Framatome is completing fuel design work, and Paragon was awarded a contract this quarter to finalize safety instrumentation and control systems.

But the financials describe a company still waiting for its market to arrive. First-half revenue totaled $640,000. The weighted-average Class A share count nearly tripled year over year to about 365 million shares, and the accumulated deficit stands at $824.4 million. Operating cash burn reached $372.9 million in the first half, which management attributes to technology readiness, design maturity and supply-chain preparation.

The last U.S. nuclear boom offers a cautionary precedent. By mid-2009, utilities had filed applications for 26 new reactors at 17 sites. Only two were completed — Georgia's Vogtle Units 3 and 4, originally estimated at $14 billion and expected in service by 2016-2017, entered commercial operation in 2023 and 2024 at a final cost above $30 billion, roughly seven years late. The failure mode was not the technology but the delivery — the years and billions between an application and a working plant.

Two deals, both pending

Neither of NuScale's two lead opportunities has reached a signed order. The Tennessee Valley Authority is in discussions with ENTRA1 Energy, NuScale's commercialization partner, toward a definitive power purchase agreement the company says could become the largest nuclear deployment program in U.S. history. In Romania, the six-module RoPower project at Doicesti is still working through conditions attached to a shareholder vote.

The company's $1.9 billion cash position — about $4.42 per share against a market cap near $4.1 billion — means insolvency is not a near-term risk. But the $750 million ATM filing means every rally from here has a seller standing behind it, and the share count could rise from 429.7 million to roughly 508 million if fully drawn. That is the same dilution mechanism that has already pushed the weighted-average Class A share count from about 133 million a year ago to 365 million.

NuScale's bull case rests on a single binary event: a signed, financed commercial order. The TVA discussions are the closest path to that outcome, and management says it is ready to begin construction and operating license work immediately once a PPA is finalized. The company's 77-megawatt modules, deployable in configurations up to 12 per plant, target the AI data-center power demand that has made nuclear the most discussed energy source in Washington since the 1970s. Until a contract arrives, the stock trades as a long-dated option on the first commercial SMR order in the United States, funded by a cash pile being consumed at roughly $750 million a year.

The contrast with peers is stark. Oklo, which reported its first revenue of $1.2 million against a $48.5 million loss, is down 42 percent year to date. Constellation Energy, which operates 21 reactors and generates billions in revenue, trades at a fraction of the speculative premium NuScale still commands. The gap between NuScale's $4.1 billion market value and its $10.7 million trailing revenue is the market's bet that the orders eventually come — a bet that has already cost investors 83 percent of their money since October. For investors sizing the position, the question is not whether NuScale has a viable technology — it is whether the market's patience outlasts the company's cash burn.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.