TD sees one stock as biggest industrial beneficiary of nuclear revival

Flowserve Corporation is one of the best ways to gain exposure to renewed demand for nuclear power, with the pump and valve maker well positioned to serve the growing need to maintain and retrofit existing plants, according to TD Cowen. Flowserve supplies fluid motion controls and instrumentation to nuclear plants, with that side of the business currently accounting for about 5% of total revenue. TD Cowen sees 11% upside for Flowserve with a stock price target of $57. Its shares have already gained more than 25% this year, better than the S & P 500 advance of 20.3%. Nuclear power is emerging as a source of clean, reliable electricity for artificial intelligence data centers. Restarting mothballed plants “seems like a logical way to meet demand,” analysts led by Joe Giordano told clients in a Monday note. FLS YTD mountain Flowserve Corporation YTD Holtec International, for example, plans to restart the Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan in 2025, and Constellation Energy wants to bring Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania back online in 2028. TD Cowen sees a big opportunity servicing nuclear reactors for maintenance, repair, advanced diagnostics and retrofitting. “This is especially pertinent for the U.S. market, given it has the largest amount of existing nuclear reactors in the world,” Giordano told clients. Flowserve has an installed base of 5,000 pumps and 15,000 valves in more than 200 nuclear plants around the world, which “provides a significant opportunity as operators look to revive older plants and extend life of current plants in operation,” Giordano said. Nuclear plants with the equivalent of 85 gigawatts of capacity are in various stages of shutdown across the U.S. and Europe, according to TD Cowen. Bringing 50% of mothballed sites around the world back online would provide Flowserve with a total addressable market of $4 billion, Giordano wrote.