Did we kill Holtec's IPO plans?

Last week, I wrote this post on my initial excitement about Holtec's upcoming IPO.

Holtec is a nuclear power company that actually makes money today! I thought... "finally! a real nuclear business going public!"

But after digging further into the business, my excitement turned to "awh, hell naw".

Then, one week after our post and social media videos, Holtec withdrew their IPO plan

Obviously, I don't think our small platform was the sole reason why Holtec withdrew, but it's interesting nonetheless.

But I do think my posts and videos made some small impact. Other voices certainly did. And this is why the second part of Flank's mission is to restore stakeholder capitalism. Small voices matter. The public didn't learn about the Palisades fuel problem (explained later) from Holtec or from the NRC. It learned from a Reddit post that a nuclear safety expert picked up on September 21, and the regulator was confirming it that same day.

Let's look further into the withdrawn IPO.

Why did Holtec Withdraw their IPO?

The reason the company said they postponed the IPO from the postponement notice was an "unusual confluence of developments.", including:

• Adverse market sentiment has affected the equity markets in general and the nuclear sector in particular in the past two weeks.

  • What the f*ck?! Market conditions over a two week period scared you away from an IPO? ...if you're serious, you're a joke. My wager: you tried to sell us crap, and we weren't buying it bro

• They say the "adverse market conditions" were brought by "driven primarily by uncertainty over data center development, which has compounded a set of pre-existing headwinds, including rising energy costs"

  • Ok, sure, but doesn't this make your public offering MORE valuable if you can say what you say you can do or plan to do?

• driven primarily by uncertainty over data center development, which has compounded a set of pre-existing headwinds, including rising energy costs

• Other reasons cited in the announcement:

  • elevated global trade tensions,

  • ongoing military conflicts, and

  • mounting inflation fears that have driven the central banks of major economies (EU, Japan and US) to raise their benchmark rates

    • Yeah, these are all BS in my humble opinion

So with all those reasons, Holtec is saying... "we believe a more favorable market environment is likely to better reflect these fundamentals."

eye roll

Or maybe no one wanted you. Let's recap what we found, all of it in Holtec's own amended filing :

• Revenue fell 25% last year, from $765.5 million to $576.6 million, and you wanted about 18 times sales for it.

• Most of the profit isn't from running anything. Of the $471 million Holtec made before taxes in 2025, $434 million was other income, mostly investment gains and interest on the plant cleanup trust funds.

• Those trust funds, $2.2 billion of them, aren't even coming with the public company. They're moving to a company owned by the founder's holding company.

• Public buyers would have owned 8.82% of the business and about 1% of the vote.

• Before we'd see a dime, the founder's companies get the first $555 million in payouts, plus 85% of the tax savings the IPO structure creates. Holtec's own math puts that at $1.6 billion.

• Palisades, the showcase plant, has made $0 in revenue and eaten over $1.3 billion in capital.

Where are they going from here?

When you look at what's going on in Holtec's business, it becomes more apparent why they delayed.

Palisades, the plant the whole pitch was built on, started loading fuel on August 30. That same day, one fuel assembly tilted over after the handling machine let go of it, and loading has been paused ever since, per [Holtec's own update](https://holtecinternational.com/hh-41-22/). They're still investigating the cause, building a tool to lift that assembly back out, and need NRC approval before they can go further.

No restart date.

The IPO paperwork Holtec filed on September 8 says fuel loading "commenced" on August 30. It does not say it stopped.

The public didn't find out until September 21, five days after the IPO was pulled, and only because someone posted on Reddit

Sorry for the dark screengrabs-- i'm not buying a new subscription for this one article lol

Money is tight too. Holtec had $27.4 million of cash on June 30, and its short-term bills exceeded its short-term assets by $225 million. Palisades runs on a $1.52 billion government loan guarantee and a $300 million grant from Michigan, not on this IPO.

And the paperwork is still on file. Come back after mid-November and they have to refile with third-quarter numbers, which will show whatever this pause cost.

So, yeah, all the bad news makes sense why they are backing away.

My thoughts

This was a doomed IPO from the beginning.

The company tried to sell us retail investors absolute crap, and I'm proud of us for not accepting it. Holtec should sit in a corner quietly and think about what they want to offer good, hardworking normal investors in the future before they try to come back to our public markets.

Sentiment: anger, don't try to sell us dogsh*t, Holtec.