NuScale Power (NYSE: SMR) has endured a difficult start to 2026, with shares falling roughly 40% since January, yet at least one prominent Wall Street analyst believes a significant recovery lies ahead.
George Gianarikas, a veteran analyst at Canaccord Genuity, has issued a bullish call on NuScale, projecting 195% upside from the stock’s current deflated price level.
Gianarikas is not alone in his optimism, as three additional analysts tracked by TipRanks.com also believe NuScale stock carries at least 100% upside potential over the next 12 months.
The analyst’s confidence is not rooted in any single catalyst but rather a combination of factors he believes are aligning to benefit NuScale’s business and stock price simultaneously.
Among the most compelling near-term opportunities is NuScale’s partnership with ENTRA1 and TVA, which aims to build a 6-gigawatt small modular reactor facility somewhere on the eastern United States.
The project represents NuScale’s clearest path to getting one of its SMR nuclear systems into commercial operation, a milestone the company has long been working toward.
NuScale’s CEO expects to sign a power purchasing agreement by the end of 2026, which would formally commit the utility to purchasing power from NuScale’s facility, potentially for decades.
Gianarikas is also optimistic about NuScale’s Romanian SMR project, which recently received critical approval from Romanian regulators, providing a fresh round of investor excitement around the international program.
The Romanian project has faced several costly delays over the years, and some estimates suggest it will not reach commercial viability until 2033 or 2034, a timeline that tempers near-term expectations.
Analysts and investors will need to account for the fact that Gianarikas’ bullish price target relies not only on NuScale’s current valuation but also on aggressive assumptions about the company’s long-term growth trajectory.
NuScale operates in the small modular reactor space, a sector widely regarded as carrying a substantial long-term growth runway as governments and utilities seek low-carbon baseload power solutions.
The combination of domestic partnership momentum, international regulatory progress, and the broader energy transition narrative gives Gianarikas reason to argue that NuScale’s business could reasonably support an elevated terminal growth rate in valuation models.
Investors who are considering the stock will need to weigh near-term execution risks, including the timeline uncertainties in Romania, against what bulls describe as a transformational commercial opportunity still unfolding.
