Cameco announces IPO plan for Westinghouse

Announcing the registration ahead of its quarterly results call, Cameco said the number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed stock market offering have not yet been determined, and said the proposed offering would be subject to market and other conditions.

Westinghouse, which supplied the world's first commercial pressurised water reactor (PWR) in 1957 in Shippingport, Pennsylvania, is one of the world's largest nuclear services businesses. A strategic partnership of Cameco Corporation and Brookfield Renewable Partners acquired the company for a total enterprise value of approximately USD8 billion in a transaction completed in 2023: Westinghouse had previously been acquired out of bankruptcy by Brookfield Business Partners in 2018. Currently, Cameco owns a 49% interest and Brookfield owns the remaining 51%.

Speaking during Cameco's results call, CEO Tim Gitzel said the company was "extremely limited" in what it could say under US Securities and Exchange Commission rules about the initial public offering (IPO). Nevertheless, the Westinghouse business segment featured heavily in Cameco's quarterly results call, and its management's discussion and analysis (MDMA) document for the quarter which ended on 30 June.

Westinghouse's technology platform operates across the nuclear power value chain, Cameco said in its quarterly update, with 57% of the global operating fleet of 417 reactors using its technology, making it "one of the most strategically important franchises in the global nuclear power industry" with "growing global opportunities for its technologies". 

The MDMA documents a pipeline of deployment opportunities for 91 potential AP1000 reactors totalling some 105GWe across its global markets. These include: up to 10 units supported through American Nuclear Supply Chain Loans announced by the US Department of Energy earlier this year, with a commercial operation timeframe by the mid-2030s; up to 10 further US units supported through the strategic partnership between Cameco, Brookfield and the US Department of Commerce announced in 2025, for commercial operation by the mid-to-late 2030s; the resumption of the two-unit VC Summer project, for commercial operation by the early-mid 2030s; three units at Lubiatowo-Kopalino in Poland, for operation in the mid-2030s; two units each in Bulgaria (Kozloduy units 7 and 8) and Ukraine (Khmelnitsky units 5 and 6), for commercial operation by the mid-to-late 2030s; 11 units described as "FEED-Stage Projects" (FEED is front-end engineering and design) in the Netherlands, Slovenia, Finland/Sweden, and the USA, with a late-2030s timeframe; and up to 51 units in Canada, India, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, the USA, and "other European countries", with a deployment timeframe of late 2030s-early 2040s.

This list is ordered in terms of how close those opportunities are to final investment decisions, said Dominic Kieran, Global Managing Director of Cameco UK who is also the chair of Westinghouse's Board of Directors. For those countries and projects further down the list, "it's not that we see them as lower probability, it's just that we see them as slightly earlier in the process of getting to final investment decision", said Kiearn. For a "couple" of those, "we are seeing very, very strong recognition of need for nuclear in baseload energy generation", he added.

Economic benefits

The MDMA includes illustrative economics for reactors deployed in the near term versus so-called Nth-of-a-kind deployments - that is, after five deployments of two reactor units located on a single project site for a total of 10 units, and a sustained demand of at least two reactor units per year, is achieved. 

The nuclear construction period - from first nuclear concrete to commercial operation - is estimated as around 66 months per unit for near-term deployments, reducing by 20-30% for Nth-of-a-kind deployments. Meanwhile, the overnight capital costs decrease from USD20-26 billion for near-term deployments to USD14-17 for Nth-of-a-kind.

With a complete reactor design - AP1000s are in operation, Westinghouse is well positioned for the procurement aspects of new projects, and few bottlenecks are perceived around construction, Kieran said, adding that while, "certainly not without risks" the company has been "prudent" in its assessment. 

Cameco President and Chief Operating Officer Grant Isaac spoke to the significance of the US government funding, including the importance of securing long-lead items to support construction projects. A standardised design, sequential construction projects, and "simplifying" projects - not by changing designs but by incorporating lessons learned - is the key to get to Nth-of-a-kind as quickly as possible, he added. "Nobody needs to fear nuclear new build - in fact, we need to embrace it," he said.