Advanced nuclear developer NuScale Power Corp.'s net losses continued to mount in the second quarter of 2024 and revenues came in under $1 million. But executives maintained their confidence that small modular reactor technology can help to meet growing electricity demand, particularly from large-load customers such as datacenters.
"Our readiness for deployment is far more advanced than our [small module reactor (SMR)] technology peers, and the gap continues to widen," NuScale President and CEO John Hopkins said on an Aug. 8 earnings call. "We are the only SMR technology with design certification from the [US Nuclear Regulatory Commission] while our SMR competitors remain early in the process."
NuScale is pursuing an uprate to its standard module design — to 77 MW — and Hopkins said he expects a decision from the NRC on its application by mid-2025.
"We believe the 77-MW NuScale power module supports an even more comprehensive range of customers," he said.
Conversations with large-scale customers such as datacenters and other large industry are advancing, Hopkins said, without sharing specifics.
"We have the technology, we have the capacity to execute," Hopkins said. "These particular industries, they need 24/7 clean energy. They just don't necessarily want to own the nuclear asset."
What those customers would prefer, he said, are build-own transfers or build-own models where the customer provides a long-term power purchase agreement and a developer helps bring financing.
"These are pretty complicated transactions and they just take time," Hopkins told analysts of potential projects with datacenters or other large customers. "We're in almost daily, if not weekly, communications trying to drive closer to some of these projects. We're as anxious as you are."
Hopkins said NuScale is seeing significant interest in its technology from central eastern Europe, driven by energy security and climate concerns.
"We're pretty bullish on what we're seeing in the market overall," he said.
Guidance still lacking
NuScale ended the second quarter with cash and equivalents of $136 million, $5.1 million of which is restricted, and no debt, compared to $147.1 million in the first quarter of 2024.
CFO Robert Ramsey Hamady said NuScale's overall cash position was "virtually unchanged" in the second quarter.
NuScale reported just under $1 million in revenue in the quarter, compared with $5.8 million a year ago. It posted a second-quarter net loss of $74.4 million, up from a net loss of $29.7 million in the same period of 2023.
The second-quarter 2024 net loss included a non-cash expense of $36.7 million related to the "fair value of warrants outstanding," according to the company's earnings release. In the prior-year period, the company reported non-cash income of $7.2 million related to the fair value of its warrants.
NuScale also reported an operating loss of $41.9 million in the second quarter of 2024 compared with an operating loss of $56.1 million in the second quarter of 2023. The year-over-year reduction reflects the company's cost-cutting efforts, executives said.
Hamady acknowledged that NuScale is still not providing guidance on earnings, but said the company hopes to resume those reports "once we have a couple more projects in the pocket."
Mystery investor emerges
Parent company and majority investor Fluor Corp., which holds a 51% stake in NuScale, said its ownership in the company may decrease as an unnamed strategic investor takes a stake in the SMR developer.
Fluor spun off NuScale as an independent publicly traded company in 2022 through a merger of NuScale into a special purpose acquisition company.
In an Aug. 2 earnings call, Fluor Chairman and CEO David Constable said the company may have news about a "strategic investor" for NuScale around the end of the year. Such an investment in NuScale would potentially take Fluor's stake in the SMR company below 50%, he said.
"We're still working with our strategic investor. I think everything I've just said about how positive things are shaping up [in the market for SMRs], that is definitely going to get the investment, I think, over the goal line here," Constable said.
Romania project advances
NuScale has sought to move forward on potential sites for its reactor. Following the collapse of a US project last year, the company pursued another opportunity in Romania with support from the US and Romanian governments.
Flour on July 29 announced a contract with RoPower Nuclear SA that will use NuScale technology at a former coal plant in Doicesti, Romania. Phase 1 of engineering and design was completed in the fourth quarter of 2023.
The plant is planned to include six SMRs using NuScale technology and is expected to produce up to 462 MW.
Over the next 12 months, executives said they expect additional revenue from Fluor for NuScale's continued contributions toward the project.
A joint project between NuScale and Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems to build the first commercial US SMR power plant in November 2023 was scrapped after failing to identify enough buyers to take a share of the output from the planned 462-MW plant. The first unit of the now-canceled UAMPS Carbon Free Power Project was set to enter service in Idaho Falls, Idaho, by 2029.
That left NuScale with one other major contract, with Standard Power, which describes itself as providing "digital infrastructure as a service" to data processing companies like blockchain miners and datacenter developers. NuScale's contract with Standard Power is valued at about $37 billion and plans include two proposed plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania with a combined 1,848 MWe of capacity.
SEC inquiry
Since then, NuScale has shared updates on projects in development in South Korea and Romania, but has not shared substantive updates on US projects other than to say it is in discussions with potential customers and that the Standard Power deal remains ongoing.
Following the cancelation of its Idaho project, NuScale challenged claims it was facing bankruptcy, though it now faces several class-action lawsuits claiming it misled shareholders about the UAMPS project. The company has repeatedly referred to claims in the lawsuit as "false and misleading," and Hopkins has called speculation about the NuScale technology's commercial feasibility "irresponsible."
In an Aug. 2 Form 8-K filing, NuScale said the US Securities and Exchange Commission had requested additional information relating to its employment, severance and confidentiality agreements after an initial voluntary request in December 2023.
