There's a new stock for the nuclear-power IPO trade, and Wall Street is piling in. Should you?

MW There's a new stock for the nuclear-power IPO trade, and Wall Street is piling in. Should you?

By Tomi Kilgore

Amazon-backed X-Energy saw very strong demand for its IPO, with more shares sold than expected and pricing well above the anticipated range

X-Energy's stock soared out of the gate after the AI-power play's upsized IPO priced well above the expected range. But how a stock starts out doesn't dictate how it will perform over the longer term.

In a sign of strong demand on Wall Street for a way into nuclear power for use in developing artificial intelligence and the data-center build-out, X-Energy's upsized initial public offering priced well above its expected range.

And the stock's bang-up trading open shows that it wasn't only the big institutional money granted early access to the IPO that wanted a piece. The general public did, too.

And why not? Maryland-based X-Energy (XE) is backed by Amazon.com (AMZN), a subsidiary of which owns 65.84 million shares, or 24.9% of the shares outstanding, making it the largest shareholder. And while the company lost $389.8 million in 2025, it did generate $109.1 million in revenue and grant income, and it already has three tentpole customers in tech giant Amazon, chemicals and plastics company Dow $(DOW)$ and U.K.-based energy supply and services company Centrica $(CPYYY)$ (UK:CNA).

But for individual investors, data show that no matter how hot a new stock listing is at the start, it doesn't always translate into gains over the longer term. In fact, if you buy a stock around the closing price on its first day of trading, there's a greater chance that you'll lose money in a year's time than make money, according to a report from Thomas Shipp, head of research at LPL Financial.

Still, the stars seem to be lining up for X-Energy. The AI trade has been reasserting itself recently, and the largest tech companies have announced plans to spend enormous amounts of money on their AI ambitions this year - Amazon actually tops the list - and all that compute needs power.

X-Energy indicated late Thursday that it raised $1.02 billion as it sold 44.25 million shares in its IPO, which priced at $23 a share. The company previously estimated proceeds of approximately $693.84 million, as it looked to sell 42.86 million shares at between $16 and $19 a share.

With a total of 395.25 million shares outstanding, the company was valued at $9.09 billion at the IPO price.

The stock's first trade on the Nasdaq exchange on Friday was at $30.11, or 30.9% above the IPO price. It then pared some of its gains to close 27% above its IPO price.

At current market prices, Amazon's stake in the company is worth $408.2 million more than at the IPO price.

Meanwhile, shares of other companies in the nuclear business were trading mixed, with Oklo $(OKLO)$ falling 7.1%, Constellation Energy (CEG) gaining 7.1% and NuScale Power (SMR) dropping 6%.

LPL's Shipp said that for his analysis on buying a newly minted stock, he looked at about 1,500 IPOs over the past 30 years, using criteria that included only IPOs that raised at least $50 million. For his one-year priced-based return analysis, he started by using the closing price on the first day of trading.

"When we measure the median return of the sample, we get a more realistic picture of the potential outcome, a negative 4.7% return," Shipp wrote in a note to clients.

Breaking that down, Shipp said 53.9% of the sample would have lost money and produced an average loss of 39.2%. The other 46.1% produced an average gain of 68.7%.

When compared against the S&P 500 index SPX, the sample produced a median performance difference of negative 12.5%, Shipp wrote.

One example of a recent hot IPO that hasn't fared very well since is AI power company Fermi $(FRMI)$, which has connections to President Donald Trump. In its IPO, the company sold 30% more shares than expected, and its stock closed its first day on Oct. 1 at $32.53, or 54.9% above its IPO price.

The stock closed Friday at $5.40.

The IPO of cryptocurrency exchange Gemini Space Station $(GEMI)$, founded by the billionaire Winklevoss twins, priced above its expected range, like X-Energy's did. Its shares closed their first day - Sept. 11, 2025 - at $32, or 14.3% above the IPO price. They closed Friday at $4.39.

There have also been success stories. Stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Group's (CRCL) upsized IPO priced above its expected range at $31 and closed its first day on June 5, 2025, at 168.5% above that price, at $83.23. The stock closed Friday 19.7% above that price, at $99.64.

One big IPO on the horizon is Elon Musk's SpaceX, which is looking to raise as much as $75 billion and to be valued at about $1.75 trillion, which would make it the largest IPO on record.

Looking at X-Energy and SpaceX, investors have a decision to make, and based on the range of post-IPO outcomes over the years, it's close to a toss-up.

"The takeaway for investors is not to avoid IPOs altogether, but to approach them thoughtfully," LPL's Shipp wrote. "We suggest investors proceed with any IPO investment with caution and expect to experience a great deal of volatility."

The Renaissance IPO exchange-traded fund IPO has rallied 29.8% over the past 12 months, while the S&P 500 SPX has advanced 30.6%.

-Tomi Kilgore

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April 24, 2026 16:29 ET (20:29 GMT)

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