Wall Street has good reason to be bullish on U.S.-based nuclear stocks, especially as the Trump administration has aggressively pushed to ramp up the launch of new reactors across the country in order to meet the substantial energy needs of AI data centers.
For small-modular reactor (SMR) startup Oklo (OKLO) – whose former board member Chris Wright is now the U.S. Secretary of Energy steering the administration’s nuclear strategy – the government’s embrace of nuclear power has been especially beneficial.
The company’s stock has soared almost 425% for the year, and it was the only publicly traded company to make the Department of Energy’s (DOE) cut last month for President Trump’s Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program.
However, the bullish surge in Oklo’s shares has been based on potential, not production. The company doesn’t have finalized power purchase agreements with any customers – and it's not expected to launch its first SMR until 2030.
This means that investors are going to have to wait several years for Oklo to be a revenue-generating company – something that isn’t lost on Goldman Sachs analyst Brian Lee, who initiated coverage last week on Oklo with a Neutral rating and a $117 price target.
“Over the past year, OKLO has been a catalyst-driven stock, and while we see a path for continued near-term catalysts, we believe the company needs to secure finalized customer agreements," Lee wrote.
Oklo’s stock sank 7.2% on Friday and plunged 18.2% for the week.
Exec team unloads millions in OKLO shares
The share price was also hit by a substantial insider stock dump: Oklo CEO Jacob Dwitte sold off $3 million of stock in the form of a gift last week, Michael Klein unloaded $6.7 million of shares, while CFO Craig Bealmear sold $9.4 million of his shares two weeks ago, according to data from Verity.
Oklo did not comment on the insider activity, but investors could take such a massive selloff as showing concerns from the executive team about the company’s near-term performance.
While Lee acknowledged that “Oklo has secured one of the largest backlogs among its small modular reactor peers, with a pipeline of deals totaling more than 14 GW," it is the lack of customer agreements that has him cautious on the stock.
“Uniquely, Oklo is pursuing an own-and-operate model, which provides more operational control but at much greater financial risks and with considerable capital intensity, while also leveraging technology that relies on High-Assay Low Enriched Uranium (HALEU) as a fuel source - a key bottleneck across the broader industry,” Lee added.
While Oklo’s first SMR is still several years away, the company broke ground last week on its first Aurora Powerhouse at the Idaho National Laboratory. Called the Aurora-INL, it is a sodium-cooled fast reactor that uses metal fuel – and was one of three projects awarded to Oklo under the government’s Reactor Pilot Program.
“This opportunity positions us to build our first plant more quickly,” DeWitte said in a statement. “We have been working with the Department of Energy and the Idaho National Laboratory since 2019 to bring this plant into existence, and this marks a new chapter of building.”
Despite the Neutral rating, Goldman anticipates Oklo’s market cap will keep growing as Lee expects “a catalyst-rich backdrop (e.g., NRC licensing, a potential power purchase agreement/customer announcement) to support elevated valuation levels for the stock in the near-to-medium term."
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