NPWR

NET Power is a development-stage energy-technology company with essentially no business behind the stock today. Revenue was $0 in FY2025 (down from an already-negligible $250K in FY2024), and the FY2025 net loss attributable to the company ballooned to $579M against a $1.79B operating loss. The loss is dominated by a $1.5B impairment and other charges — an admission that the original Oxy-Combustion Cycle it spent years developing has been substantially written down as the company pivots to buying off-the-shelf gas turbines paired with PCC carbon-capture technology it must still license from Entropy. R&D rose 56% to $99.5M and project-development spend jumped 36x to $72.4M, so cash costs are accelerating even as the technology story resets.

The balance sheet looks superficially clean — liabilities/equity of just 0.32x and $204M of equity — but that misreads the situation. Retained earnings are -$695M, ROE is -284%, and the equity cushion is shrinking fast (total assets fell 74% YoY, largely the impairment). What matters is cash: $199M on hand against -$121M of operating cash flow, i.e. well under two years of runway before any commercial revenue, which management targets for 'early 2029.' The final investment decision for Project Permian Phase I isn't even expected until Q3 2026. Reaching 2029 almost certainly requires large external financing or dilution (shares already up 7.4% YoY), on top of the supply-chain, tariff and tax-incentive risks management flags directly.