BWX Technologies is the only company cleared to build the reactors that propel American submarines and aircraft carriers. On 3 August it reported a June quarter with revenue of $901.6m, up 18% from a year earlier, the fourth straight quarter of growth between 18% and 29%. Backlog reached $8.4bn, up 40%, on a trailing book-to-bill of 1.7x — for every dollar of work delivered, it booked $1.70 of new orders. Management raised full-year guidance to roughly $3.8bn of revenue and $4.70-$4.80 of adjusted earnings per share, and agreed to sell just over 80% of its medical isotope business to Nordic Capital for up to $800m.

The shares fell after hours, with reporting attributing the reaction to a small revenue miss and higher spending plans. Over the past month BWXT is down about 2%, while seven of the eight other companies that mine, enrich or design nuclear fuel and reactors rose. It is the only one whose numbers unambiguously improved.

The month was four days

Equally weighted, the nine names gained 9.5% over 30 days. They are down 16.5% over 90 days, 23.2% over 180 and 12.6% over twelve months, and every one of them sits between 27% and 82% below its 52-week high. Remove each company's two largest single sessions from the last 21 trading days and the average return flips from +3.9% to -3.4%, with eight of the nine negative.

The same four dates — 21 and 30 July, 3 and 7 August — supplied the best days for essentially every name. The largest, 30 July, was a sector event, not a company one: the Nuclear Regulatory Commission accepted Holtec International's plan to build four small modular reactors totaling 1.36 gigawatts at the retired Oyster Creek site, and data-center operator Crusoe announced a partnership with reactor developer Aalo Atomic. The Global X Uranium ETF did the same thing, up 9.9% over 30 days and down 10.0% over 90. Much of the gain is a round trip out of a late-July drawdown that included three shared down days of 5% or worse.

The commodity gives two answers

The uranium price that appears on screens has gone nowhere. Spot U3O8 was $86.48 per pound on 8 August, against $86.95 at the end of February and a January peak above $101. Contracted prices, which is what producers actually get paid, tell the opposite story: TradeTech's long-term indicator reached $93.00 per pound on 31 March, the highest in more than 18 years. Cameco told its 31 July call that long-term prices are in the mid-90s and tracking toward $100, with market-related contract floors in the high 70s and ceilings near $160.

Cameco: the de-rating is doing its job

Cameco mines and mills uranium and, through its fuel services arm, converts it into reactor fuel. Its June quarter was poor: revenue fell 7.2% to $814.1m, gross margin fell to 21.1% from 29.3%, and net income fell 92% to $25.2m. It holds contracts for more than 28 million pounds of average annual deliveries and left 2026 production guidance unchanged at 19.5-21.5 million pounds.

The stock trades at 165.8x trailing and 59.6x forward earnings. That forward figure is higher than the roughly 56x recorded in this desk's May notes, despite a 13% six-month decline — estimates fell faster than the price. The bull case rests on Westinghouse, 49% owned by Cameco, which has filed to go public; the Department of Energy committed $17.5bn of conditional financing in June for long-lead AP1000 reactor components. Those units enter service in 2033-2034.

Centrus: real backlog, shrinking earnings

Centrus Energy sells separative work units — the measure of enrichment effort — and low-enriched uranium to utilities. Its backlog surged to $4.5bn extending through 2040, with $2.4bn of enrichment work moved from contingent to definitive agreements. It was awarded a $900m firm-fixed-price DOE task order to build commercial high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) capacity at Piketon, Ohio.

The income statement disagrees. Gross margin fell to 28.3% from 34.9% and operating income fell 69%, as enrichment cost of sales rose 36% while volumes fell 23%. Consensus 2026 earnings of $2.56 per share sit 43% below last year's $3.90. Its forward multiple of 74.3x is barely below the 75.8x trailing — the growth is in the contracts, not yet the profits. Centrus is the only one of the nine whose 50-day average has begun to repair against its 200-day, on 12 August.

The four with no revenue

Oklo, designer of the Aurora powerhouse, booked $1.21m of revenue against a $73.2m quarterly operating loss; its Groves isotope reactor reached first criticality in under 11 months from groundbreaking. It holds $3bn of cash against a $7.72bn market value, meaning roughly $4.7bn is being paid for the plan. NuScale Power, the only SMR designer with NRC design certification, saw revenue collapse to $75,000 as engineering work for Romania's RoPower finished; it trades at 0.75x book, the only one of the nine below it, with $1.9bn of cash against $2.80bn of value, and its Tennessee Valley Authority discussions have no signed power contract. Nano Nuclear Energy, 36 employees and four microreactor designs, booked $214,042 of quarterly revenue at 888x forward sales. Lightbridge, a 13-person metallic-fuel developer, has reported zero revenue in each of the last five fiscal years and holds $237.5m of cash against $297m of market value; its HALEU arrangement with Centrus is explicitly non-binding.

The two smaller miners sit in between. Uranium Energy Corp reported no revenue at all in the quarter to 30 April with a $40.8m operating loss, and consensus has fiscal-2026 revenue falling 59% to $26.9m. Energy Fuels, which runs the White Mesa mill in Utah, grew revenue nearly sixfold to $25.1m at a 57.4% gross margin — and still lost $33.4m.

The setup

Where it stands — One company in this group raised guidance and grew backlog 40%; it is the one that fell. Would confirm — BWXT holding book-to-bill above 1.0x with commercial-segment margin recovering toward 14% in 2027. Would invalidate — Backlog growth stalling or 2026 revenue landing below the roughly $3.8bn guided. Watch next — BWXT's third-quarter results, due early November, and the Westinghouse IPO pricing. Valuation — BWXT at 44.6x trailing and 36.5x forward earnings, 4.19x forward sales against roughly 5x in May.