Nuclear energy service company Holtec (HNUC.US) joins the industry's IPO boom to seize power shortages in AI data centers

The Zhitong Finance App learned that Holtec Nuclear Corp. (HNUC.US) has submitted an initial public offering (IPO) application to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, becoming the latest company in the nuclear energy sector to take advantage of the growing power demand from data centers to go public.

According to the company's filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, the nuclear energy supplier, headquartered in Camden, New Jersey, achieved revenue of US$165.3 million and net profit of US$17.8 million in the three months ending March 31; compared with revenue of US$177.7 million and net profit of US$25.4 million for the same period last year.

Holtec was founded in 1986. Its main business is to manufacture giant steel-concrete containers for storing high-risk nuclear waste. It is also a major US company responsible for decommissioning and shutting down reactors, including the Indian Point nuclear power plant north of New York City.

However, as demand for nuclear energy continues to rise in recent years, the company is actively adjusting its strategic focus. In 2022, Holtec bought the Palisades nuclear power plant in Michigan when it was closed, and the original plan was to decommission it. But almost immediately after the acquisition was completed, calls for the reactor to restart began to rise one after another — one of the earliest signs of growing demand for zero-carbon electricity from reactors. Today, the company is close to putting this nuclear plant back into operation. At the same time, Holtec is also developing its own reactor technology and plans to deploy the first batch of units at the same plant site.

In December 2023, Holtec's small modular reactor project received a $400 million grant from the US Department of Energy. The company aims to have these reactors officially put into operation in the early 2030s.

According to the documents, the company's shares are held by two trust funds controlled by founder and CEO Krishna Singh.

The IPO comes at a time when the nuclear energy sector is receiving widespread attention from artificial intelligence (AI) computing power data center operators. X-Energy (XE.US) was listed in April of this year. The stock price rose on the first day, but since then it has dropped 31% from the issue price. Since small modular reactors have yet to be commercialized in the US, some nuclear energy stocks have already recovered, and the market is waiting for technological progress.

Holtec's offering was led by J.P. Morgan Chase, Guggenheim Securities, Goldman Sachs Group, Citigroup, and Bank of America. The company expects its shares to be traded on the NASDAQ exchange under the ticker symbol “HNUC.”