The Nuclear Stock Everyone's Talking About -- But Almost No One Is Pricing in Its Income Potential

Centrus Energy (NYSE: LEU) is 1 of the fewer U.S. companies licensed to merchantability low-enriched uranium (LEU), the substance utilized successful astir commercialized atomic reactors. It's besides the lone publically listed U.S. institution that produces high-assay, low-enriched uranium (HALEU) for precocious atomic reactors. That makes it a linchpin of the atomic vigor market.

Over the past 3 years, Centrus' banal surged astir 500% arsenic much countries restarted their atomic projects. Many of those projects had been paused aft the Fukushima catastrophe successful 2011, but the improvement of much precocious reactors, the maturation of the power-hungry unreality and AI markets, and caller planetary decarbonization initiatives each restarted the stagnant industry.

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Centrus has attracted important attraction from growth-oriented investors, but astir nary 1 has considered its imaginable to go a high-yield dividend stock. Let's spot wherefore Centrus could support increasing and commencement paying recurring dividends.

Centrus transformed its full concern exemplary implicit the past 13 years. It antecedently enriched its ain LEU connected a commercialized standard astatine its U.S. plants, but unopen down those facilities successful 2013 due to the fact that it became cheaper to import enriched uranium than to run aging U.S. facilities.

That aforesaid year, the "Megatons to Megawatts" programme -- a U.S.-Russia woody that allowed enriched weapons materials from dismantled Russian warheads to beryllium downblended into LEU and sold -- besides ended, cutting it disconnected from its inexpensive proviso of overseas LEU. Those jarring changes, on with the Fukushima disaster's interaction connected the broader atomic vigor market, led to a 90% diminution successful gross from $1.86 cardinal successful 2012 to $193 cardinal successful 2018.

After shrinking its halfway business, Centrus became a middleman that purchased ample quantities of overseas LEU and resold it to home inferior companies. It besides began enriching its ain HALEU successful constricted amounts for precocious reactors nether small-scale authorities contracts.

From 2018 to 2024, Centrus' gross much than doubled to $442 cardinal arsenic its streamlined operations flourished amid a warming atomic market. From 2024 to 2027, analysts expect its gross and EPS to turn astatine CAGRs of 7% and 2%, respectively.

If Centrus pays retired conscionable fractional of its projected 2026 EPS of $4.01 successful dividends, it would springiness it a slim guardant output of 0.8%. It could proceed to rise that dividend if the atomic market's betterment becomes a "supercycle" lasting much than a fewer years.