Centrus Energy (NYSE: LEU) is one of the few U.S. companies authorized to sell low-enriched uranium (LEU), the most common fuel for commercial nuclear reactors. It’s also the only public U.S. company that sells high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) for next-gen reactors.
Those advantages make Centrus a bellwether of the nuclear energy market, which is benefiting from the expansion of the power-hungry cloud, industrial automation, and AI markets. But could they help Centrus deliver millionaire-making gains over the next few decades?
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Centrus will shrink before it grows again
Centrus shut down its domestic LEU enrichment plants 13 years ago when it became cheaper to import LEU from overseas and resell it to U.S. utilities. But over the past few years, the sanctions against Russia and the U.S. government’s push toward energy independence have driven Centrus to start producing HALEU in the U.S. and to restart its LEU operations in Ohio.
Centrus ended its latest quarter with a backlog of $4.5 billion, which is 9.5 times its projected 2026 revenue, but analysts expect its annual revenue and net income to decline from 2025 to 2028. The main issue is that the U.S. will fully ban Russian uranium imports by 2028, before Centrus can fully restart its domestic LEU operations at a commercial scale.
Centrus should eventually overcome these growing pains and start converting its backlog into revenue, but it isn’t cheap at 40 times next year’s earnings. While Centrus will remain a linchpin of the nuclear market, I doubt it will mint many new millionaires within the next few years.
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