Fervo Energy, a Houston driller that fractures hot rock the way shale producers fracture oil-bearing rock, told investors on 12 August what its first commercial power plant will actually earn. The answer, for 2027, was $60m to $80m. Management attributed the wide range to curtailments on the transmission lines leaving its Cape Station site in Utah, after the line's operator added another asset to the network — a queueing problem on somebody else's wires, not a failure of the rock. The shares fell 16.6% that day on a quarterly net loss of $55.9m, or -$0.38 a share against estimates nearer -$0.09.

That single session is the hinge of a month that looks, from a distance, like a broad flight from unbuilt electricity. It isn't.

The one with the contracts fell hardest

Three small companies now sell investors the same promise — firm power for artificial-intelligence data centers, delivered before the grid can. They are not the same business. Fervo owns 658 MW under binding power purchase agreements representing a $7.2bn revenue backlog, half of it to hyperscalers, and has mechanically completed two of the three 33-MW blocks that make up Cape Station Phase I, targeting first power this quarter. Oklo, the Santa Clara developer of 15-to-75 MW sodium-cooled Aurora fission plants backed by OpenAI's Sam Altman, has an order book near 14,100 MW built on a master agreement with data-center landlord Switch and letters of intent its own filings warn are contingent and non-binding. Fermi, a 35-employee Amarillo landowner classified as a specialty real-estate trust, is assembling a 4.8 GW power-and-data-center campus and had no binding customer at all until 10 August.

Since 22 July, Fervo is down 39.0%, Fermi 9.5% and Oklo 4.7%. Fervo alone accounts for roughly three-quarters of the decline in the three. The ranking on enterprise value per contracted megawatt runs precisely backwards to the price action: Fervo's $2.8bn of enterprise value against 658 MW is about $4.2m per contracted megawatt; Fermi's is roughly $17m; Oklo's contracted denominator is zero.

What each one actually published

Oklo's quarter was its best of the year. Its Groves isotope reactor in Texas reached first criticality inside eleven months of groundbreaking, the first privately funded reactor to do so on greenfield land, and the Idaho Aurora plant kept its 2028 start-up. It disclosed $3.0bn of cash and securities. It also raised 2026 operating cash use to $120–150m from $80–100m and capital spending to $400–500m, booked $1.21m of revenue against a $73.2m operating loss, and grew its diluted share count 25.8% year over year funding at-the-market issuance. Consensus has it earning $10.5m of revenue in 2027 and losing money every year through 2030. At 2,404x forward sales, the de-rating has arithmetic behind it.

Fermi went the other way on news: a 15-year binding lease with TensorWave covering 222 MW for about $6.5bn, plus a $431m convertible at 5.00%. That is under 5% of planned capacity, and the investment-grade guarantor behind it was still unnamed on the earnings call. Fermi held $91.7m of cash at 30 June; its own benchmarks of $3–4m per MW for power and $10–12m per MW for the data center imply $8–10bn to build the 640 MW it wants live by late 2027. Its share count rose 75.4% in a year.

Fervo, meanwhile, raised its 2030 capacity target to 1.1 GW from 1.0 GW on the same call, holds $2.1bn of cash — 43% of its market value — and trades at 1.79x book, the cheapest of the three on assets. Baird cut its target to $35 from $50 while keeping an Outperform rating; Jefferies and Bank of America upgraded to Buy on lower targets.

The revenue-bearing control refuses to cooperate

If this were a de-rating of nuclear-adjacent power generally, the companies with operating assets would have fallen too. Cameco, the Canadian uranium miner and fuel-services group, rose 10.3% over the same 30 days despite a quarter in which revenue fell 7.2% to $814m and net income dropped 92% on a missing Westinghouse payment. Explorer NexGen rose 12.3%, enricher Centrus 2.6%, reactor designer NuScale 7.3%.

The exception is BWX Technologies, sole supplier of naval nuclear propulsion components to the US Navy, which fell 10.2% while growing revenue 18.0% to $901.6m and lifting backlog 40% to $8.4bn. At 33.2x forward earnings it is the only anchored multiple in this article, and it fell anyway — a reminder that when long-bond yields hit a 19-year high on 18 August, with the 30-year at 5.34%, everything sold to the AI build-out trades as one basket. That move amplified rather than caused: Fervo was already down 23.1% before its earnings.

On the trend, Oklo's 50-day average has sat below its 200-day since 11 June and Fervo's crossed below on 29 July. Fermi's repaired to neutral on 28 July and has held. The company with the worst balance sheet has the best-behaved chart.

The setup

Where it stands — The only developer with binding contracted megawatts trades at the lowest price-to-book of the three, on guidance the market read as a downgrade. Would confirm — Cape Station Phase I delivers first power in Q4 2026 and 2027 revenue lands at or above $80m. Would invalidate — Further curtailment pushes 2027 revenue below $60m, or Fervo raises equity below book value. Watch next — Fermi must name the investment-grade guarantor behind the TensorWave lease; Oklo's Aurora-INL start-up remains dated 2028. Valuation — Fervo 1.79x book and 837x forward sales; Oklo 2.24x book and 2,404x forward sales; Fermi 3.69x book.