Category: Business

Holtec Nuclear Corp. plans an initial public stock offering that would transform the 40-year-old Camden company from the industry’s well-paid undertaker that shuts down aging uranium plants into a rapid-growth supplier of next-generation mini-nuclear plants and liquid batteries, the company said in a Securities & Exchange Commission filing earlier this month.

Holtec hasn’t settled on a date or floated how much money it wants to raise — or what part of IPO proceeds would go into bringing its factory goods to market versus how much would go to company founder Krishna P. Singh.

Singh and his family would remain the controlling shareholder, even as the IPO potentially boosts Singh’s compensation above last year’s $7.5 million with newly public shares and proceeds.

The 400-page IPO registration describes a highly profitable nuclear service enterprise preparing to market new power products. Holtec has spent years preparing these products, just as federal government support and industry demand brings nuclear power back into fashion.

The products include:

• Uranium-fueled, water-cooled Small Modular Reactors, designed and mass-produced at the company’s factory on the Delaware River waterfront. The reactors could be sold or leased in groups by Holtec, and each unit swapped out so they can be refueled without shutting off all power.
• The “green boiler,” a liquid solar-energy storage battery Holtec is testing at facilities that Singh owns in India.

In the statement, Holtec addresses “succession” issues under chief executive Singh, who turns 80 next year. In 2012-13, Singh was a part owner of The Inquirer. Holtec says it has a full management team and succession plans in place. It also requires senior officials to travel separately so an accident won’t put them all out of commission.

The company president, who was promoted to the post in April after his predecessor departed, is Holtec veteran Rick Springman, 47. He earned a mechanical engineering doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania, as did Singh, donor and namesake of Penn’s nanotechnology labs. Springman joined Holtec in 2009.

The nuclear industry is attracting renewed interest and investment after decades punctuated by accidents at Three Mile Island (1979), Chernobyl (1986), and Fukushima (2011) when few, if any, new nuclear plants were built.

Nearly 100 existing plants provide nearly 20% of U.S. electricity, and the U.S. plants compose about a quarter of the global nuclear power industry, according to Holtec data.

Among fans of expanding nuclear power are President Donald Trump and private-equity investors building electricity-thirsty AI data centers.

On sales of $567 million last year, Holtec reported $395 million in net income — which looks at first glance like a very fat 70% profit margin.

But the statement notes that half the profits were due to gains on the company’s financial investments. Profits from Holtec products and services were still a comfortable $200 million for a margin of 35%. But that’s down sharply from sales of $766 million and profits of $333 million, the year before.

Most of Holtec’s sales and earnings flowed from an international business in which it is a leading provider: “decommissioning” and shutting down aging uranium-power reactors and building equipment to manage, store and transport spent uranium. Holtec makes that equipment at plants in Turtle Creek, near Pittsburgh; Orrville, Ohio; and Camden.

Holtec says its 2025 financial performance suffers by comparison to its unusually profitable 2024 results. The earlier year was boosted by extra revenues from shutting down the Indian Point nuclear reactor in New York and other payment-scheduling vagaries.

But the company expects U.S. decommissioning work will decline in the near-term, as fewer nuclear stations go out of service — a reversal from the 2010s, when power companies like Exelon shut plants like Three Mile Island because natural gas had become a cheaper fuel.

Since then, fast-growing power demand for investor-backed data centers has boosted interest in nuclear power. Aided by the U.S. Department of Energy taxpayer-subsidized loans, Exelon spinoff Constellation Corp. is reopening a Three Mile Island nuclear reactor, and Holtec plans to help bring others back online.

Holtec has been rated below NuScale Power, GE Hitachi, and other developers in the competition among U.S. nuclear companies to win Department of Energy (DOE) approval for its modular nuclear plants. But in 2024, the DOE agreed to guarantee a Federal Financing Bank loan of up to $15 billion so Holtec could install its first commercial small reactors — model SMR-300 — at the former Palisades nuclear plant in Michigan, where Holtec was also the decommissioning contractor.

Holtec is also hoping the DOE will give it up to $400 million to speed the Palisades work.

Reopening Palisades is “in the final stages with all major upgrades” completed and smaller jobs done this year for reopening in early 2027, according to the registration statement. Holtec said it can install more small reactors through a partnership with Korea-based Hyundai’s engineering division. Holtec expects the small reactors will prove most attractive in countries that don’t already have nuclear power.

Small reactors could take longer to win regulatory approval, build, and install than expected, Holtec says. And success isn’t guaranteed for the recently developed Holtec Green Boiler and new solar-based Holtec systems, which “could drive significant long-term growth opportunities.”

Among the litigation Holtec lists in its registration disclosures is a dispute with the company’s former outside accountants over what Holtec alleges was “inaccurate accounting and tax guidance” and a lawsuit by a former chief financial officer who alleged he was fired in a dispute over investor communications. The company denied wrongdoing.

Despite the recent surge of support for nuclear power, Holtec said, “negative public and political perceptions of nuclear energy” and news of nuclear accidents could still damage the company.

The statement adds, “Our business is dependent, in part, upon public and political support for nuclear power in the United States and other countries” and on projects that can last beyond a single U.S. presidency.

Peco workers ratified their new union contract on Saturday, officially adopting an agreement that includes raises and pensions for all workers.

“Local 614 members stood together and won a great contract, and we’re proud to be back at work serving the public,” Larry Anastasi, president of IBEW Local 614, said in a statement when the results were announced. “They said it couldn’t be done, but we brought back pensions, medical coverage, and raises for all our members.”

IBEW local 614 represents roughly 1,500 Peco employees, including linemen and call center workers, who have been without a contract for months. Their most recent five-year agreement expired on March 31, and workers walked off the job on the Fourth of July after the union and Peco couldn’t reach an agreement. The work stoppage was the first in the company’s history.

A tentative deal was reached just before midnight on July 6, bringing an end to the three-day strike. The agreement was described as “historic” by the union that evening.

The vote took place on Saturday between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. Of the union members who voted, 97% were in favor of ratifying the agreement.

The five-year contract is effective immediately and goes through March 31, 2031.

In a statement Saturday night, Peco said it was pleased IBEW Local 614 had voted to ratify the contract.

“This agreement reinforces our shared commitment to maintaining a safe workplace and delivering exceptional service to the communities we serve,” the company said.

The new agreement includes 4% annual raises for field workers in the first four years of the contract and 4.5% in the fifth year. Call center workers will get 3% raises annually throughout the five-year contract.

During bargaining, Peco had said that on average, its customer service employees earned $45.12 an hour. Average annual pay in 2025 for a lineman was over $243,500, including overtime.

The agreement also includes cash-balance pensions for all workers. Previously, some 600 workers hired after 2021 didn’t have access to a pension, while those who did have one were on different plans.

In 2001, Peco gave workers the option to switch over from a traditional pension plan to what is known as a cash-balance plan, union spokesperson Melissa McCleery said.

A cash-balance plan, like a traditional pension, is employer-funded, typically doesn’t require the employee to make their own contributions, and often the employer manages how the funds are invested. But like a 401(k), the amount available to the employee upon retirement is based on a stated account balance rather than monthly payments for the rest of the retiree’s life – though the amount can be split up over time.

Roughly 80% switched over to a cash balance plan when the choice was offered, according to McCleery. Since then, the benefits of those cash balance plans have been reduced twice, she said.

“Like many employers, Peco transitioned from traditional pension plans to cash balance pension plans and, more recently, to enhanced 401(k)-based retirement programs,” the company said in a statement Friday. These programs “have evolved over time in a manner consistent with broader employer and utility industry practices.”

Roughly 20 to 30 workers still have the traditional pension and are able to keep it under the new union contract, said McCleery.

Peco did not share how much the new contract will cost the company.

“While specific contract details remain confidential between the company and the union, the tentative agreement will not result in any immediate changes to customer rates,” a company statement noted.

The federal government plans to build two new missile defense ships at Hanwha Philly Shipyard after it finishes the last of the “multi-mission” training and disaster-assistance ships it’s been building, Trump administration and shipbuilding officials said Friday.

But new Navy combat ships that yard leaders also hope to build in Philadelphia will have to wait until the yard has additional space ready, shipbuilding officials said.

The $1.4-billion contract to build two “Golden Defender” ships — officially Missile Range Instrumentation Ships, or tracking ships, topped by bulbous radar, antenna, and other surveillance gear — was announced Friday by U.S. Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought to hundreds of shipbuilders and government staff. The ships will replace surveillance ships built in the 1960s.

The group had assembled to watch Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy christen TS Lone Star State, the fourth National Security Multi-Mission Vessel completed at the yard since 2023. The last of that line, TS Golden Bear, is due next year.

The anti-missile ships will be built on hulls the same size as the multi-mission ships, but without the multistory cabins used for cadets and hospital personnel, to make room for large-scale surveillance gear.

The new ships fit into a network of surveillance and combat gear developed by L3Harris and other big military contractors for the planned “Golden Dome” anti-missile network. They will keep the “hot production line” busy at the 2,000-worker shipyard for the next few years, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said.

Golden Dome will be built by Lockheed Martin, L3Harris, and other defense contractors.

The new ships will be built under a management contract with Tote Services, a Jacksonville, Fla., company that has been overseeing construction of the multi-mission ships.

Tote and Hanwha have been delivering those ships “ahead of time and under budget,” Duffy said.

He contrasted Tote’s and Hanwha’s record, which built on previous yard owner Aker’s upgrades to the yard, with the slow pace of Navy shipbuilding in past decades. He said more ships should be built the Philadelphia way.

“Who controls the seas controls the world,” Duffy said, noting that the Trump administration supports reviving U.S. shipbuilding.

That effort will require vast public spending on design and procurement, plus recruiting and training hundreds of thousands of marine welders, crane operators, and other ship construction workers.

“I’m a free enterprise guy, but we have to recognize that free enterprise doesn’t exist in shipbuilding because every [other nation is] subsidizing commercial vessels,” Duffy said.

Other new shipbuilding contracts are in the works for yards in Philadelphia and competing cities, he said.

“Big orders are coming our way. This is just the beginning,” Duffy said. “There is a lot of partisanship in Washington, but America stands together, Democrats and Republicans, as we figure out how we staff and build ships in our country.”

One of those “big orders” could bring more Navy ship construction to Philadelphia soon — if Hanwha can execute its long-planned expansion of the yard in time. The company has pledged an eventual $5 billion to help revive American shipbuilding but still operates the yard with a single 1,000-foot dry dock and one Goliath crane, a fraction of the size of its main South Korean yard on Geoje Island.

On July 13, the Navy’s Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Maritime, the ship design, construction, and maintenance agency formerly known as NAVSEA whose local offices are the largest employer in Philadelphia’s Navy Yard business district, awarded Tote Services a $2.2 billion contract to build up to eight Landing Ship Medium (LSM) vessels for the Marines.

Those ships will be built in three U.S. shipyards: Italian-owned Fincantieri’s Marinette, Wis., works; the family-owned Bollinger shipyard in Mississippi; and a third yard that has not yet been chosen, Jeff Dixon, president of Tote, said in an interview.

“The Marine Corps needed these landing ships in the Pacific two years ago,” Dixon said, stressing the military’s urgency to get the landing craft built. “Philly will compete in that process. I think they could fit them in,” and still continue work on its commercial ship construction contracts, if the yard can line up new berthing space.

Neighbor Rhoads Industries has two smaller drydocks and other space in and around the yard that could be converted if Hanwha can arrange the space and the financing, he and other shipyard sources said.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. chief executive Jamie Dimon on a visit to the Navy Yard district said Tuesday that his bank has worked with Hanwha on other projects and is eager to back the company’s plans to expand construction of U.S. ships. Hanwha has expressed interest in building combat and support ships, submarines, and drones for the U.S. in South Korea, Philadelphia, and other potential locations.

Hanwha leaders have said U.S. military shipbuilding can be profitable and competitive with the leading shipbuilding nations — China, South Korea, and Japan — only if it scales up construction of commercial ships, making it much more efficient to build each ship.

The Philadelphia yard has been finishing a ship, on average, every eight months. Hanwha says it wants to build up to 20 ships a year in an expanded shipyard.