NuScale Power has clocked a 14% gain over the past week and is up 15% in a month — a sharp reversal for a stock that spent much of 2026 being aggressively sold short.
The tension this week is real: short sellers at 21% of the free float are quietly unwinding, call buyers have taken over from put buyers, and borrow conditions have loosened materially — yet nine analysts still hold neutral or sell ratings, and the institutional picture is clouded by a major strategic shareholder dumping stock.
Short interest tells a story of gradual retreat. At 21.2% of the float, the position remains substantial — but it peaked close to 24% in early May and has fallen roughly 10.6% on a shares-short basis over the past week. The retreat accelerated sharply after May 25: an estimated 6.5 million shares were covered in a single session. Borrowing costs have drifted lower too, now around 0.58% — the softest level of the past thirty days. Most telling is the shift in borrow availability. After touching near-zero availability earlier in the year (the 52-week low was 0.017%), the pool has reopened substantially to 143% of short interest — meaning there are now roughly 1.4 shares available to borrow for every share already out on loan. That is a loosening of conditions, not a tightening, and it signals that lenders are returning stock rather than hoarding it.
Options positioning reinforces the constructive shift. The put/call ratio has fallen to 0.49, well below its 20-day average of 0.54 and near the lowest reading of the past year. At 1.6 standard deviations below the mean, the options market is now clearly leaning toward calls. Unusually high options volume was flagged in trade press this week, consistent with elevated call activity. Taken together — short covering, loosening borrow, call-heavy positioning — the derivatives and lending markets are pulling in the same direction.
The Street is more cautious. Consensus sits at hold, with nine analysts at neutral. Citigroup reiterated Sell as recently as May 11, trimming its target further to $7 — well below the current price of $13.95. B. Riley, one of the few bulls, carries a Buy but cut its target from $24 to $19 in late April. UBS and Goldman Sachs both moved to neutral earlier in the year, cutting targets sharply. The mean target across analysts is $15.35, only about 10% above current levels — a tight band that leaves little valuation upside for late buyers. NuScale has no earnings and carries a deeply negative P/E (-24x) and negative EPS yield, reflecting its pre-revenue status. The price-to-book multiple has expanded to 2.6x, up from roughly 2.4x a month ago — the stock is being re-rated on narrative rather than fundamentals.
The two bull and bear cases divide cleanly on one variable: whether regulatory timelines compress or extend. Bulls point to the 6 GW TVA partnership and the ENTRA1 collaboration as proof that commercial agreements are advancing faster than the market expected. Bears counter that nuclear projects face approval delays measured in years, and that cost-competitive renewables are already undercutting the addressable market. NuScale's EPS momentum factor is at the 95th percentile over 30 days — a genuine standout — but that reflects improving analyst estimate revisions, not actual revenue, and the ORTEX short score of 64.6 has slipped from above 67 less than two weeks ago, a mild softening in the bearish signal composite.
The insider picture adds a meaningful overhang. Fluor Corporation, the engineering firm and NuScale's largest strategic shareholder, sold approximately 39.9 million shares across three block trades in April — around $473 million of stock at prices between $11.63 and $12.07. That is a material reduction in a concentrated strategic position, occurring at prices below where the stock trades today. The CEO, CFO, and COO also sold shares in early March, though in far smaller amounts. NuScale separately appointed two new board members this week, described in company filings as supporting "continued growth and leadership" — a signal management is building out governance ahead of what it expects to be an intensifying commercial phase.
Two recent earnings events frame the risk ahead. The Q1 print on May 7 sent the stock down 7.2% the next day and 10.8% over the following week. A separate May 29 announcement triggered a 5.7% one-day gain. The next scheduled event is August 7 — a date that will draw short-side attention as the window for fresh catalysts narrows. What happens between now and then — on the Fluor overhang, the TVA timeline, and whether any new commercial agreements surface — will define whether the current short-cover rally finds buyers to replace the sellers.
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