A brutal 90-day selloff has cut Centrus Energy (NYSE: LEU) shares nearly in half, yet the company continues landing contracts that underscore its unique position in America’s advanced nuclear supply chain.
The stock closed most recently at $103.78, reflecting a 45.4% decline over the past three months and a 13.5% retreat in just the last 30 days alone.
That collapse in price stands in sharp contrast to a flurry of positive operational headlines, leaving investors to weigh whether the market has overcorrected or finally priced in risks it previously ignored.
Chief among the recent developments is a set of multi-year supply agreements with Oklo Inc., under which Centrus will provide high-assay low-enriched uranium, commonly known as HALEU, to fuel Oklo’s reactors.
Those contracts carry unusual financial backing, with prepayments funded by Meta underwriting the arrangement and tying Centrus directly to Oklo’s ambitious 1.2 gigawatt power campus planned for Ohio.
HALEU remains a genuine bottleneck in the advanced nuclear sector, and Centrus currently represents the most direct avenue for public-market investors seeking exposure to domestic U.S. enrichment capacity.
Proponents of the stock argue that AI-driven electricity demand is accelerating the timeline for next-generation reactor deployment, making LEU’s enrichment capabilities increasingly strategic.
One community analyst, CentryResearch, writing on the Simply Wall St platform, pegged fair value at roughly $190 per share, a figure that 45 investors in that community have endorsed, implying the stock is approximately 45% undervalued at current levels.
The bull case, however, runs headlong into an earnings multiple that skeptics find difficult to justify, with LEU currently trading at a price-to-earnings ratio of 28.1 times.
That figure exceeds the peer group average of 24.6 times and dwarfs the broader U.S. Oil and Gas sector’s multiple of 11.1 times, while the stock’s calculated fair ratio sits at just 7.8 times.
The gap between where the stock trades on an earnings basis and where bulls say it should trade on a discounted-value basis represents the central tension in the LEU investment debate right now.
Beyond valuation, the company has also filed a Shelf Registration and released a recent earnings update, moves that together contributed to the cautious sentiment following what had been a remarkable multi-year run.
For context, despite the recent punishment, LEU’s three-year total shareholder return still stands at 97.6%, a reminder of just how far the stock climbed before this correction began.
The downside scenario centers on two specific threats: a slowdown or withdrawal of government support for HALEU development, and the possibility that competing enrichment capacity emerges faster than the market currently anticipates.
Either of those outcomes could erode the bottleneck premium investors have historically assigned to Centrus, potentially pushing valuations much closer to that 7.8 times fair ratio than the $190 bull target.
