Buy This, Not That: Nuclear’s International Showdown

Shah Gilani|September 24, 2025

Nuclear power is having a moment.

Small modular reactors are the future… uranium demand is soaring… and two stocks – one U.S., one Canadian – have been absolute rockets.

But here’s the thing about rockets…

They eventually come back down to earth.

One uranium stock is up 500% since April. The other “just” 150%.

Which one should you chase? Which one should you avoid? And why does the 500% winner have Shah worried?

Get the full breakdown in this week’s Buy This, Not That.

Click on the image below to watch.

Transcript

Hey, everybody. Shah Gilani here with your weekly BTNT, as in “Buy This, Not That.”

A lot of you have been asking me about nuclear in the country and how fast it’s going to grow. Is it the future? And more importantly, what’s going to fuel it?

Are there uranium plays that can be had? So today, I’m going to pit the two large uranium players in the field against each other.

First up, the biggest is Cameco Corporation (CCJ). Cameco is a Canadian company that has U.S. assets. It has uranium mines in the U.S.

I’m going to compare CCJ against Centrus Energy (LEU). Centrus is based in Maryland.

Right there tells you a little something. You have a Canadian company versus a U.S. company.

So let’s take a look at the charts. I’m going to give you some of the lowdown, and we’re going to take a look at the charts because we’re talking some pretty spectacular stuff here.

So first up is Centrus. Notice this parabolic move of late, but this is pretty impressive too. So back here on April 7, we’re talking a low around $50.

Centrus is up 500% since its April lows.

Now Cameco, which I’ll get to in a second, is up a whopping 150% since its April lows, but Centrus blows it away.

What worries me about Centrus is this parabolic move. First of all, up 500% is nothing to sneeze at unless you look at all these overbought conditions, and the stock just kept climbing higher. It takes a breather here in terms of RSI, gets overbought, but continues higher. And as, of course, the dip here, that’s consolidation.

And then next thing you know, we’re off to the races. We’re overbought again. What worries me about Centrus in terms of the technicals and the fact that it’s up 500% is it still maintains a very high short interest ratio. About 20% of the floating shares of LEU have been shorted.

So every time there’s any good news on anything to do with nuclear or uranium in particular, LEU gets a pop because shorts have to cover. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s certainly done the shareholders a ton of good, and there’s nothing not to like about that.

Now CCJ, on the other hand, the stock looks great from a technical view, but a 150% gain versus a 500% gain is a massive difference.

This is a clearer ascent up here, and it’s smoother. Centrus is a little more speculative in terms of a lot of the numbers, and Cameco, on the other hand, is a lot better in terms of their numbers.

So just to give you an idea, I’m going to start with Cameco here. So Cameco is a $38 billion market cap company, with revenues of around $3.6 billion in revenue.

Profit margins, we’ll call it 15%. So pretty good numbers. The interesting and really solid thing about Cameco is the quarterly revenue growth year over year is 46%.

The quarterly earnings growth year over year is an astounding 700%. Tremendous earnings growth. So I really like Cameco, and I think it’s a better company to own long term. And the reason I say that I like Cameco better is that it’s just more solid to me. You’re not going to have the kind of volatility that Centrus has.

That being said, Centrus’ numbers aren’t bad. So let me pull up some Centrus numbers for you, and then I’m going to tell you why I prefer Cameco, but would recommend also buying some Centrus on a dip because chasing a 500% gain to me, in a market that’s starting to look kind of frothy, can be a dangerous proposition.

So much smaller. Centrus is much smaller than Cameco. It has a $5.5 billion market cap. Its revenue is only $436 million. Profit margin is better at 24%. But what I don’t like about it is quarterly revenue growth year over year is negative 18%.

The quarterly earnings growth year over year is negative 5.5%. So not going the right direction there in terms of revenue growth or earnings growth. But that being said, the stock has just gone through the roof. So that’s what worries me about Centrus.

And, again, I’m going to say it. There’s a lot of short covering going on at Centrus on any good moves. The positive that Centrus has, I think, long term and I just wouldn’t want to chase the stock up here. If this stock comes down here to, you know, $175 somewhere, if it comes down to test $160, this range, I think it’s a buy down here long term.

But Cameco is more of a safer bet, less volatile because it doesn’t have the short positioning that Centrus has. But the thing I do like about Centrus and the reason I would buy it on a dip, again, don’t want to chase it, is they’re into the HALEU, H-A-L-E-U. And HALEU is high assay low enriched uranium. HALEU is what’s powering new reactors and this is the reason I think the primary reason Centrus has done so well.

The new thing in nuclear reactors is these small modular reactors, SMRs.

And the HALEU enriched uranium is what powers these small modular reactors, which everybody seems to think is the future. So that’s why I would like to buy personally some Centrus down here. I missed it down. I mean, this is just a tremendous breakout here, and the stock has gone through the roof.

But to me, it’s more of a speculative play, but buying it down here again, this would be like a 50%. If you get it on a 50% sale from where it is here north of $300, it’s a long-term buy. But as far as CCJ goes, Cameco is the better, sleep-at-night hold. It’s going to continue to go higher.

So there you have it. And as far as your BTNT this week, buy Cameco, not Centrus, but look to speculate in a little bit of Centrus if it falls. But it’s going to have to fall pretty hard. And if it falls that hard, it’ll get scary, which is when I like to buy stocks.

That’s it for this week. Catch you guys next week. Cheers.