NuScale Has No Free Cash Flow, No Dividend, and Almost No Revenue. The 'Get Rich by 2036' Story Is the False Narrative.

I always keep an eye out for irrational false narratives that take the stock market by storm. The latest one wears the ticker SMR and promises that buying NuScale Power right now could make you richer by 2036. That headline sounds like conviction. In my opinion, it is a false narrative wrapped in the word "prediction," designed to sell you a near-zero-revenue company trading at 26.83 times forward 12-month sales because the market is in love with small modular reactors and can't see the balance sheet through the enthusiasm.

Let's start with the numbers that matter - and in my framework, those are always free cash flow and dividend yield first. NuScale has neither. In fact, it has almost no revenue at all. First-quarter 2026 revenue was $565K, down from $13.4 million a year earlier, after work on its Romanian RoPower project wound down. For all of fiscal 2025, revenue was $31.5 million, down from $37.0 million in 2024. The net loss for 2025 was $664.5 million, compared to $348.4 million the prior year. That spike was partly structural - the company recognized $507.4 million in general and administrative expense from a milestone payment arrangement under its Partnership Milestone Agreement with ENTRA1 Energy, its exclusive global commercialization partner. Reported G&A for the year was $609.8 million, including the $507.4 million Milestone Contribution 1 under the ENTRA1 PMA, on $31.5 million of revenue. That is not a business. That is a burn rate with a press release.

The cash position looks cushioned on the surface. NuScale ended the first quarter of 2026 with about $1 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and short- and long-term investments. That was built largely by selling 39.3 million shares through an at-the-market (ATM) program during the fourth quarter of 2025, generating $750 million in gross proceeds. At-the-market offerings are dilutive by design - the company is selling existing shareholders ownership stakes at prevailing prices just to keep the lights on. The stock had traded near $13.33 per share when the $1 billion ATM program launched, and now sits at $8.42. That is not a "valuation reset" worth celebrating. It is what happens when you keep printing shares to fund a company with no operating cash flow, no path to profitability, and no evidence it can ever generate one.

The bull case rests on two pillars: the Tennessee Valley Authority program and the Romania RoPower project. Both are real. Both are years away from producing a single dollar of equipment sales, but the nonbinding arrangement is the TVA/ENTRA1 agreement, not RoPower; RoPower has generated service revenue, though no equipment-sales revenue. ENTRA1 and TVA have a nonbinding collaborative agreement to deploy up to 6 gigawatts of NuScale capacity. A nonbinding agreement is not a contract. It is a statement of intent with no financial penalty for either side if plans change. RoPower's Romanian shareholders approved advancing to the next phase. That is progress on paper - and that revenue is where NuScale's tiny revenue stream came from. But the next phase means financing, permitting, and construction planning, not module deliveries. The stock prices in a future where NuScale is shipping reactors. The evidence does not support that future yet.

The Utah cancellation tells you everything you need to know about the structural risk here. In November 2023, NuScale and Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems terminated the Carbon Free Power Project after construction costs ballooned from $5.3 billion to $9.3 billion, an 80% increase. The project was structured with a customer that lacked nuclear experience, operated in a market with cheap natural gas, and couldn't justify the economics of first-of-a-kind technology. The cancellation was widely framed as a setback, not a condemnation of the entire SMR industry. But for an investor holding NuScale stock, it was a data point: even with the only NRC-approved SMR design in the world, NuScale could not make its first project pencil out. That is not a regulatory problem or a timing problem. It is a fundamental economics problem.

The consensus narrative says NuScale is positioned to benefit from the AI-driven electricity demand surge, the nuclear renaissance, and government tailwinds from the Trump administration's embrace of advanced nuclear. A 6-gigawatt TVA program - if it materializes, which is the critical conditional - would represent a meaningful addition. But the time from nonbinding agreement to first module delivery in nuclear is typically a decade. And NuScale needs to fund its entire operating existence until that day arrives, which means more share dilution or debt issuance.

The valuation tells the same story. NuScale trades at 26.8 times forward 12-month sales, according to Zacks estimates projecting revenue to rise from roughly $36 million in 2026 to $183 million in 2027. That multiple is well above the sub-industry average of 4.4 times sales, the broader sector at 6.7 times, and the S&P 500 at 5.0 times. The stock has fallen 82.9% over the past 12 months and 40% year-to-date, and the narrative spin calls it a "valuation reset" creating a buying opportunity. A valuation reset is only an opportunity if the business can eventually justify the price. NuScale's revenue is measured in hundreds of thousands of dollars per quarter. The market is pricing this stock as if it were already a profitable equipment manufacturer with contracted backlog. It is not. It is a cash-burning engineering firm with regulatory approval and no first-of-a-kind project to call its own.

I am not saying SMRs are a bad idea. Nuclear energy has a role in a decarbonized grid, and NuScale is the only SMR company with U.S. NRC design certification, which is a real competitive moat. But technology leadership and regulatory approval do not equal investability. The structural question is whether a company can generate free cash flow, return capital to shareholders, and compound value - or whether it needs to keep raising equity to survive. NuScale does the latter. The $1 billion ATM offering and the $609.8 million in annual G&A expenses on $31.5 million of revenue make that unmistakably clear.

For the "get rich by 2036" thesis to work, you need NuScale to successfully commercialize its reactors, win binding contracts at scale, manufacture modules profitably, and generate enough cash flow to make today's dilution look like a bargain a decade from now. That is a possible future. It is not a probable one, given the Utah cancellation, the nonbinding nature of its current pipeline, and the structural economics problem of first-of-a-kind nuclear construction. The market is already pricing in a version of that future, at 27 times forward sales on a company earning less than $600,000 in quarterly revenue.

That being the case, I rate NuScale Power as a Sell. The false narrative here is that regulatory approval and nonbinding agreements are the same as commercial viability. They are not. NuScale has no free cash flow, no dividend, no debt but massive dilution, and a track record that includes its flagship project collapsing under cost overruns. The stock is cheaper than it was at $57, but it is not inexpensive. For investors who believe in the long-term case for advanced nuclear, there are established companies in the nuclear supply chain - operators, fuel manufacturers, and engineering firms with actual revenue, actual margins, and actual dividends - that offer exposure to this theme without the existential cash-burn risk. NuScale is a venture bet, not a stock. And venture bets belong in venture portfolios, not in stock market analysis dressed up as 10-year return predictions.