Bank of America is standing firm on uranium, naming Cameco (NYSE: CCJ) as its top sector pick for 2026. Spot uranium is currently trading around $85 per pound, roughly 23% below the bank’s average annual price forecast. That gap is not a sign of weakness — it represents the recovery potential BofA still sees on the table, driven by an anticipated resumption of utility purchasing in the second half of the year.
BofA’s analysis points to an upside of approximately 48% relative to its price target on Cameco shares — one of the widest spreads across the bank’s entire coverage universe. Three factors underpin the thesis: the company’s exposure to higher realized prices, a robust balance sheet — with more cash than debt and a current ratio of 3.08 — and its 49% stake in Westinghouse Electric Company. That holding ties Cameco directly to the expansion of civilian nuclear power in the United States, where the Department of Energy has committed $17.5 billion to fund components for up to ten AP1000 reactors.
The gap between spot prices and BofA’s forecast reflects three market dynamics. First: friction in long-term contracting, which slows the pass-through of benchmark prices to actual transactions. Second: supply discipline, with producers holding back output rather than getting ahead of demand. Third: utilities are still rebuilding inventories after years of contracting below the replacement rate — according to Cameco data, roughly 589 million pounds were contracted over the past five years, against 815 million pounds consumed in reactors. The rebalancing moment is drawing closer. RBC Capital has raised its price target on the stock to C$175, citing growing interest from sovereign buyers and utilities.
Cameco is not simply the world’s largest publicly traded uranium producer. Through its Westinghouse stake, it has exposure to the entire nuclear fuel chain: mining, refining, conversion, fuel fabrication, and reactor technology. BofA analyst Lawson Winder had previously described CCJ as “the only large-cap, liquid, US-listed vehicle with exposure to the full nuclear supply chain.” Data center demand and US industrial policy are pushing in the same direction: rapid decarbonization, energy security, and independence from Russian enriched uranium supplies.
If US utilities return to large-scale procurement in the second half of 2026 — as BofA expects — spot prices will need to converge toward long-term contract values, which had already climbed to $90 per pound by the end of the first quarter, their highest level since 2008. For Cameco, that moment is also when the advantage of its market-linked contracts will translate into materially higher revenues. The positioning is already in place. What happens next is a matter of timing.
