NuScale Power Drops 5% as UBS Cuts to Sell on Timeline and Cash Burn, Oklo Slips

NuScale Power (NYSE:SMR) stock is down 5% to $9.72 in early Friday trading after UBS downgraded shares to Sell from Neutral and cut its price target to $6. The uranium and nuclear complex is close to flat this morning, and that gap points to a company-specific reaction inside the group.

The SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY) is up 0.93% in the same window. The Global X Uranium ETF (NYSEARCA:URA) is down only 0.3%, and Oklo (NYSE:OKLO | OKLO Price Prediction) stock is easing 2% to $38.94 in sympathy with the NuScale Power slide.

The NuScale Power move deepens what has been a difficult stretch for the stock. NuScale Power shares are down 31% year to date (YTD), and today’s slide pushes NuScale Power closer to its 52-week low of $7.21.

Downgrade Cites Timeline and Cash Burn

UBS’s note builds its bear case around three points: a construction timeline the firm estimates at more than five years, the absence of firm customer commitments, and $700 million of cumulative cash burn UBS forecasts across the next three years. Those figures come from UBS models and land at a moment when the NuScale Power income statement is thin.

NuScale Power reported second-quarter revenue of $75,000 and ended the quarter with $1.9 billion in cash and investments. The balance sheet can absorb the burn UBS is worried about, and that liquidity is the counterweight to the timeline concerns UBS raises in the NuScale Power file. The downgrade is also the second analyst action to hit NuScale Power in two sessions, after Piper Sandler initiated coverage across advanced nuclear on Thursday with opposing calls on two developers.

Bull Case Rests on Certification and Cash

NuScale Power’s management has argued the company is ready for commercial deployment once definitive contracts land. On the second-quarter earnings call, NuScale Power CEO John Hopkins said “We are near-term deployable,” and told analysts the company has already negotiated supplier agreements with more than half of its 60-plus supplier relationships. Furthermore, NuScale Power says its long-lead components have been in production for a two-year period.

NuScale Power holds the only U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) design certification in the small modular reactor industry, and it plans to operate on standard low-enriched uranium that is available today from established suppliers. That combination of licensing, fuel and supply chain is what NuScale Power leadership calls commercial readiness, and it’s the argument the UBS note is disputing on timing.

Peers Ease as Sector Holds Up

Oklo stock is the natural peer read, and the smaller decline reflects UBS’s relative argument. The firm’s view is that competing small modular reactor developers reach the construction stage sooner than NuScale Power, which concentrates the pressure at the NuScale Power name inside a group otherwise close to unchanged. Oklo’s own execution narrative around the Aurora reactor at Idaho National Laboratory, plus first criticality at its Groves isotope facility in early August, gives Oklo a separate story from the NuScale Power file.

Oklo also raised its 2026 operating cash-use guidance to a range of $120 million to $150 million from a prior $80 million to $100 million, so cash outflow is a live theme across the peer group. Moreover, Oklo ended its second quarter with $3 billion in cash and marketable securities, which gives Oklo a similar cushion to the one NuScale Power is defending in this UBS note.

What to Watch

NuScale Power’s problem in this note is timing, and timing is what today’s tape reflects. Investors can watch for whether InterOne and the Tennessee Valley Authority reach a definitive power purchase agreement, since NuScale Power’s management has flagged that contract as the next trigger for cash to move from the balance sheet into project work.

NuScale Power shareholders can weigh their exposure against that deployment timeline, since project schedules and customer contracts still drive the thesis. The broader reactor restart trade reaches well beyond the small modular reactor names, and we picked five ways to play it in a free nuclear report here. The next data point that could shift the NuScale Power picture is a signed agreement on either the Tennessee Valley Authority program or the RoPower project in Romania.

Options positioning around NuScale Power could stay active while the stock trades below $10, with both bear positioning and speculative bounces in play. NuScale Power management’s August commentary framed liquidity as the tool for absorbing this kind of gap, so the next scheduled company update is the natural inflection point.

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