NuScale Power Is Interesting, but Here's What I'd Buy Instead

• NuScale could beryllium an charismatic vigor root arsenic tech giants show atomic vigor developments.

• However, NuScale is years distant from commercialization, which makes it a precise risky stock.

• Axcelis Technologies is simply a contrarian prime owed to its ion implantation technology. The institution is shifting its absorption from the EV manufacture to AI infrastructure.

• 10 stocks we similar amended than Axcelis Technologies ›

NuScale Power (NYSE: SMR) whitethorn fulfill the adjacent question of artificial quality (AI) vigor demands with its tiny modular reactors. The institution aims to present reliable, carbon-free atomic powerfulness that doesn't enactment accent connected the powerfulness grid.

The institution won't beryllium commercialized for a fewer years, but it has made advancement with its designs. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved NuScale's powerfulness plan for a 462-megawatt tiny modular reactor powerfulness works past year, which is simply a large benchmark for the company.

However, the full thesis depends connected NuScale Power rapidly scaling gross erstwhile it is commercialized. Meanwhile, the banal trades astatine a marketplace capitalization of $5.6 billion, which is aft it mislaid astir 65% of its worth from its all-time high.

You don't person to prime a speculative maturation banal to thrust the AI boom. Axcelis Technologies (NASDAQ: ACLS) caters to investors who aren't acrophobic of hazard and judge successful comeback stories. It besides has existent gross and profits, dissimilar NuScale Power.

Axcelis Technologies has accrued by much than 180% implicit the past 5 years, but its shares person besides declined by much than 50% from their all-time high, which was reached successful 2023. Axcelis specializes successful ion implantation, a method that produces transistors successful electronics. These transistors are indispensable for semiconductors to function, including those utilized successful AI chips.

Since astir thing related to AI has experienced robust maturation implicit the past fewer years, it whitethorn beryllium astonishing to spot that Axcelis is inactive good beneath its 2023 highs. That's due to the fact that the company's superior gross operator was EV demand.

Being a cardinal subordinate successful the EV manufacture worked good for Axcelis during the COVID-19 pandemic and soon aft it. In little than 3 years, Axcelis banal went from astir $30 per stock to concisely touching $200 per share. That was from 2021 to 2023.

EV income person slowed down since 2023, and Axcelis' banal terms movements from mid-2023 to the extremity of 2024 bespeak this. The expiration of EV taxation credits successful 2025 made it adjacent worse, but Axcelis inactive managed a 16% summation implicit the past year.