Hitachi Nuclear Revenue Up 48% as SMR Delivery Nears

Hitachi's nuclear division posted a 48% year-over-year revenue increase as the company prepares to deliver the first of four small modular reactors to Ontario Power Generation in 2030. Power grid equipment still makes up the vast majority of revenue in the Japanese conglomerate's Energy segment.

The reactors are 300-MW BWRX-300 units developed with GE Vernova. In the United States, the Tennessee Valley Authority has picked the joint venture to build at least one BWRX-300 in its territory, with delivery set for 2032.

"With the start of the construction of the first [SMR] in Canada as a foothold, we will advance the deployment of the SMR business in North America, Poland and other parts of Europe," Hitachi said in its 2025 annual report. The same report spoke in general terms about the risks of long-term projects and those involving new technologies, which it said may bring significant changes to contract estimates or lead to terminations. It did not mention the nuclear investment specifically.

Grid business leads

The Energy segment is split into Nuclear Energy and Power Grids. The grid unit makes high-voltage components, power conversion products and energy storage systems, among other equipment. Its revenue in the latest quarter was ¥893.7 billion, about $5.7 billion, up 27%. Nuclear Energy took in ¥65.3 billion, about $415 million.

The whole segment saw revenue rise 28% and orders climb nearly 50%. Hitachi pointed to large power infrastructure projects and data center customers, with North America especially strong. Second-quarter orders came to ¥1,566.2 billion, nearly $10 billion, and transmission and data center customers stood out.

Chief financial officer Tomomi Kato told investors on Wednesday that order growth has been broad-based because of the data center boom, and that the orders will show up in revenue starting next year. He said there are no signs of a pullback in AI-related investment. "So far, we are not seeing any delays or any payment issues," he said through a translator.

Costs and delivery times

Kato said Hitachi is trying to meet delivery timelines while managing cost pressure in an inflationary environment. On long-lead contracts, "we use indexing" so that cost increases during production can be passed along. "Otherwise, we cannot accept a long-term contract," he said.

Anand Birje, who heads Hitachi's recently merged digital services unit in California, said the company applies its own technology platform to raise performance and productivity for energy customers. Hitachi says its HMAX Energy digital solution can lower revenue lost to equipment downtime by as much as 60%.

NVIDIA is one of the partners in that push. Hitachi said it would supply a "grid-to-rack architecture" to support the 800-volt data center design, which NVIDIA and its customers expect will become the industry norm for high-performance computing.

Source: Utility Dive