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You Understand Now, Why You Came This Way

Brazil’s October 25 runoff puts Bolsonaro’s likely victory at the center of a bullish regional-stock case; Golar LNG (GLNG) also reports fresh news.

From X

@StableBread

Fajasy on X

How did a boiler maker founded in 1867 become the Navy’s reactor supplier? BWX Technologies’ $BWXT history runs through two spin-offs and a decade of acquisitions: → 1867: George Babcock and Stephen Wilcox found Babcock & Wilcox (B&W) to make steam boilers. → 1953-1955: B&W builds components for the USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine. → 1978: J. Ray McDermott, an offshore engineering firm, buys B&W. → 2008: B&W buys Nuclear Fuel Services, the Erwin, Tennessee plant behind the Navy’s fuel. → 2010: B&W spins off from McDermott as a standalone public company. → 2015: B&W spins off its boiler business as Babcock & Wilcox Enterprises $BW and renames itself BWX Technologies, keeping the naval and other nuclear businesses. → 2016-2020: Buys GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy Canada (fuel for CANDU, Canada’s heavy-water reactor design, 2016), Nordion’s medical isotope business (2018), and nuclear parts maker Laker Energy (2020), building out the Canadian commercial business. → 2022: Wins Project Pele, the Pentagon’s prototype transportable microreactor. → 2025: Buys the Aerojet Ordnance Tennessee (A.O.T.) unit of L3Harris $LHX for ~$100M in January and closes the Kinectrics deal (a Toronto-based nuclear engineering and testing firm, ~US$525M including assumed liabilities) in May. → 2026: Closes its purchase of Precision Components Group (PCG), a U.S. maker of heat exchangers and other heavy components, for ~$200M on July 1. Most recently, on August 3, Nordic Capital, a private equity firm, agreed to buy just over 80% of $BWXT’s medical isotope business for $750M plus up to $50M more. $BWXT wasn’t looking to sell until Nordic reached out, CEO Rex Geveden said on the Q2 call the same day. CFO Mike Fitzgerald said on the same call that the medical business should bring in $130M of 2026 revenue, at a margin “modestly accretive” to the 13% $BWXT expects from its commercial segment. Nordic’s $750M for just over 80% implies ~$0.9B for 100%, or ~7x revenue. At a ~14% margin, that’s ~50x EBITDA, more than double the 22.5x EBITDA $BWXT trades at. So $BWXT is selling a small side business at a premium to focus on what it calls its core businesses, nuclear national security and nuclear power.
@StableBread

Fajasy on X

Nuclear should bring in $3.7B of the $3.8B of revenue BWX Technologies $BWXT expects in 2026. $BWXT builds nuclear reactors and their heavy components, manufactures nuclear fuel, then services reactors once they’re running. It reports two segments: → Government Operations (73% of 2025 segment revenue, $2,350.1M): Reactors and fuel for the Navy’s submarines and aircraft carriers, uranium processing for the government, microreactor programs, and stakes in the joint ventures running government nuclear sites (booked as equity income, not revenue). → Commercial Operations (27%, $853.1M): Steam generators (heat exchangers turning reactor heat into steam), reactor pressure vessels, fuel, and field services for power utilities, mostly in Ontario. Also Kinectrics (a Toronto-based nuclear engineering and testing firm acquired in 2025) and a medical isotope unit $BWXT is selling. Naval propulsion is the core, at “a little bit less than 1/2” of revenue, CEO Rex Geveden said at $BWXT’s Investor Day on September 29, 2026. Special materials (the government uranium business) makes up 15-20%, and commercial power ~30%. The U.S. government accounted for 68% of 2025 revenue, directly or through prime contractors, down from 76% in 2024 as the commercial side grew. Four large utilities accounted for another 17%, per the FY2025 10-K. What keeps the Navy from switching suppliers is licensing. Only two plants in the U.S. hold Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licenses to produce fuel from high-enriched uranium (HEU, enriched to 20% or more, which is what naval reactors run on). Both belong to $BWXT (Nuclear Fuel Services in Erwin, Tennessee, and its Lynchburg plant), and the 10-K calls Nuclear Fuel Services “the sole provider of nuclear fuel for the U.S. Navy.”

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