Constellation Energy (NASDAQ: CEG)beat Wall Street’s second-quarter earnings expectations with adjusted operating earnings of $2.55 per share, raised its full-year earnings guidance to $11.50-$12.50 per share, signed another 920 megawatts of long-term power purchase agreements and agreed to sell its 606 MW Brazos Valley Energy Center for $860 million as it continues integrating Calpine. Investors welcomed the update, sending the shares 1.19% higher to $264.20, even though GAAP earnings fell to $1.42 per share from $2.67 a year ago.
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Most of those headlines describe a business performing well today. The announcement that may matter most, however, involves an asset that won’t produce a single megawatt until 2027. During the quarter, Constellation cleared two of the biggest regulatory hurdles needed to restart the Crane Clean Energy Center, while continuing to lock customers into power purchase agreements that stretch as far out as 2032. Those milestones help explain why management sounded increasingly confident about the company’s long-term earnings power, even though its most valuable growth project is still sitting idle.
Larry Benedict — who beat the S&P 500 by 18X in 2025 and made clients $95M during the 2008 crisis — says Trump installing a new Fed chair is triggering the most significant shift in U.S. markets in nearly 20 years. Readers had chances at 62% in 2020, 117% under a month in 2022, 89% in 17 days after Jackson Hole. One ticker at the center.
Constellation Already Has Customers For Power It Hasn’t Produced
Booking a hotel months before your vacation doesn’t put you in the room any sooner. It does tell the hotel owner something valuable: demand already exists. Electricity isn’t much different. Constellation spent the second quarter signing another 920 megawatts of long-term power purchase agreements with investment-grade customers, even though those contracts won’t begin until 2029 through 2032, years after many utilities would still be searching for buyers.
That helps explain why the Crane Clean Energy Center already carries so much weight in the investment story despite remaining on track for a 2027 restart. As FERC approved the transfer of its capacity interconnection rights and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission cleared another key licensing milestone, management wasn’t simply moving a power plant closer to operation – it was steadily removing uncertainty around an asset whose future output is already attracting long-term demand. By the time Crane sends its first electrons onto the grid, much of its commercial value may already have been created.
The Market Pays More For Certainty Than Capacity
Building additional generating capacity has never been the hardest part of the utility business, unlike building it without knowing who will eventually buy the electricity. Which is an enterprise way of saying “building a castle in the air”. But thanks to this quarter, Constellation Energy now seems to be gradually removing that uncertainty, not only by securing long-term customers years in advance, but also by clearing the regulatory hurdles that have historically delayed or derailed nuclear projects.
During the quarter, FERC approved the transfer of Crane’s capacity interconnection rights while the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a key fuel licensing amendment, bringing the restart another step closer to reality.
That combination helps explain why management felt comfortable raising full-year earnings guidance even though Crane won’t contribute meaningful generation until 2027. Investors aren’t assigning value to electricity that exists today; they’re assigning value to the growing probability that future electricity will actually reach the grid on schedule, with customers already waiting to buy it. That distinction may seem subtle, but it’s exactly why an idle nuclear plant can already influence the value of Constellation Energy.
The Easy Money Was Last Year
Constellation’s biggest move didn’t come after this earnings report because it did months ago, when investors began pricing in a future powered by rising electricity demand, nuclear restarts and data-center expansion, sending the stock above $400 before a long period of profit-taking pulled it back toward $240. That correction has gradually given way to accumulation, with the shares reclaiming both the 20-day and 50-day moving averages as buyers quietly returned. Wednesday’s 1.19% gain simply extended that recovery instead of redefining it.
That kind of price action fits a company whose biggest catalysts still lie ahead. Crane isn’t expected to restart until 2027, while much of the newly contracted generation won’t begin flowing until 2029 through 2032, leaving investors little reason to chase the stock after one strong quarter. The chart suggests the market is comfortable waiting, provided each earnings report keeps turning future projects into nearer-term realities.
The insiders got rich from SpaceX years before you could touch it. But just one mile from SpaceX's launchpad, a tiny company is doing something SpaceX can't.
Robert Kiyosaki calls it The Shadow SpaceX. The man he calls his "Financial 007" found it first.
It still trades under $7.
The institutions have not moved in yet. But they will.
Investors Who Bought The Dreams Are Now Waiting For Power
Every investment story eventually reaches the point where promises have to become proof, and Constellation is now entering that phase. Management has shown it can secure long-term customers years before new generating capacity comes online, navigate one of the most demanding regulatory environments in the country and raise earnings guidance while building projects whose biggest financial contributions still sit several years away. Those are meaningful achievements, but they also raise the standard for what comes next.
I believe the stock can work its way back toward last year’s highs, but probably not because of another earnings beat. Investors have already demonstrated they’re willing to pay for visibility; the next leg higher will likely require more of the same, additional long-term power purchase agreements, steady progress toward Crane’s 2027 restart, a smooth Calpine integration and continued evidence that electricity demand from data centers and large industrial customers remains as durable as management believes.
Miss on those milestones, and the market will quickly remember that many of today’s growth assumptions still belong to tomorrow. Keep delivering them quarter after quarter, and Constellation won’t just own one of America’s largest clean-energy fleets; it will own something even harder to build in the utility sector, investor confidence that extends well beyond the next quarter.
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Like my recommendation I call "an upgrade to Tesla stock." It's a little-known company that just inked a groundbreaking partnership with the king of AI, Nvidia. This deal virtually hands this under-the-radar firm the keys to the self-driving industries' biggest customers, putting them miles ahead of Tesla in the autonomous vehicle race.
That's why I want to put this stock on your radar before markets open.
Fair warning: if you don't make a move by July 31st, this opportunity to position your money in the best stocks for the second half of 2026 could pass you by.
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Plus, extreme drought prompts strict water-rationing measures in Puerto Rico.
Today’s Top Stories from NBC News
SATURDAY, AUGUST 8, 2026
In today’s newsletter: The Senate confirms Todd Blanche as attorney general. Extreme drought prompts strict water-rationing measures in Puerto Rico. And a pastor’s wife kicks him out after learning he’s linked to two of his former wives’ deaths.
(Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
After weeks of uncertainty, Todd Blanche was confirmed as U.S. attorney general early Saturday in a mostly party-line vote.
Blanche, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, was confirmed by a vote of 50-49, with only two Republican senators, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, voting against him.
The vote was held after 4 a.m. on Saturday, as a late-night session ran over into the early hours ahead of a planned Senate recess.
“I am deeply honored by the trust and confidence President Trump has placed in me to lead the Department of Justice as our great nation’s 88th Attorney General,” Blanche said in a post on X, adding: “I am grateful to the Senate for staying late to complete this process.”
His confirmation had been in jeopardy, largely because of concerns about his handling of the so-called anti-weaponization fund, established as part of a purported settlement between private citizen Trump and the federal government he now controls.
The fund could have been used to compensate Trump allies who claimed they were victims of government overreach, including people charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack. Blanche also signed off on another part of the deal that gave Trump, his family members and his businesses immunity from tax audits.
The Senate also voted 90-6 early Saturday to pass a short-term funding bill to remove the threat of a government shutdown before the midterm elections.
A federal appeals court affirmed a U.S. judge’s ruling to block President Trump’s planned construction of a White House ballroom, finding that whether “a massive ballroom should be constructed is for Congress to decide and is not a matter for Executive self-help.” The order, however, allows below-ground work to move forward.
Trump blasted the decision on social media and vowed to “immediately” appeal to the Supreme Court, arguing the project was “required” for national security as the construction includes an underground complex that would house military and security facilities. But appeals court judges said the administration directly caused some of the security concerns and delays it is now complaining about.
Water rationing efforts in Puerto Rico began yesterday, forcing 180,000 residents in the greater San Juan area to be split into two zones and alternate potable water service every two days. July was the driest month in the capital in more than 120 years, and the weather exacerbated long-standing issues with the territory’s deteriorating water infrastructure.
On Friday morning, water trucks known as “oasis” lined the roads, providing a lifeline for residents. One resident said she stopped at three different “oasis” that had already run out of water before finding one that still had a supply. Another, an 84-year-old woman who lives alone and uses a walker, said she has to rely on neighbors to bring her water. “I have never seen anything like this in my life,” she said.
When detectives from Oregon showed up to the Missouri home of John Bridges, a retired Seventh-day Adventist pastor, to investigate the death of his second wife, Bridge’s current wife — his fifth — sent him packing. “I am not afraid of him and I don’t think he would come back to hurt me,” Janice Sue Grote said in a phone interview with NBC News. “But I don’t want to sleep with a man who is under suspicion of murder. I don’t want to be stupid.”
All four of Bridges’ previous wives are dead. Recently, authorities reopened investigations into the deaths of his first two wives — Joyce Bridges and Astrid Bridges — as possible homicides.
One of the biggest questions surrounding the current generative AI boom is how well and how quickly the technology will be able to tackle problems in the real world. AI is amazing at crunching spreadsheet data and controlling virtual computer interfaces, but it’s much less clear how well today’s commercial AI systems can operate in the physical world, where about 80% of global economic activity takes place, according to various consultancies.
Andon Labs, a small Bay Area start up, seeks to demystify AI’s progress and translate growth in AI capabilities to a wider public audience. They build and perform experiments, like Drone-Bench, that showcase how AI succeeds and falls short of human-level performance on a variety of real-world activities. For example, I covered their project to put AI in charge of a boutique store in San Francisco earlier this year.
So when I heard that the Andon team was going to evaluate how well off-the-shelf AI systems could control consumer drones, it seemed like a great way to show how quickly the technology is progressing. Drone-Bench shows that consumer-facing AI systems can already match human performance on most tasks required to control a drone. It sounds like sci-fi, but having been chased around the Andon Labs office by the buzzing device, I can assure you it’s not.
Drones will be a key part of our future tech landscape, and Americans have been largely insulated from the latest advances. It seems likely that drone swarms could soon become a national security threat, making this high-flying experiment both eye-opening and, paradoxically, very grounding.
— Jared Perlo, tech reporter
▼ Read All About It
Police released new surveillance video of the mass shooting at an In-N-Out in Idaho, showing the clearest account yet of the deadly shooting last weekend.
Video captured by a tourist on board a boat in Botswana showed the heart-pounding moment the vessel had to outrun a charging hippo.
For subscribers: Europe’s key rivers are drying up, fueling economic disruption, forcing energy-saving measures and even exposing sunken World War II ships.
▼ NBC Selected: Online Shopping, Simplified
Over 1 million cartons of eggs have been recalled for salmonella. Here’s what you should know to stay safe. Plus, cyclosporiasis cases have now been reported in 47 states. Here’s what to do if you have the lettuce linked to it.
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Thanks for reading the Morning Rundown. Today’s newsletter was curated for you by Elizabeth Robinson and Delia Sara Rangel.
By the way, the answer to the quiz question above is C. Humanoid robots.
