Once an obscure name, Talen Energy Corporation has taken Wall Street by surprise to become one of the hottest stocks in the utility space this year, as its shares have more than doubled in value. Talen's surge comes on the back of its deal to sell a data center campus to Amazon Web Services and supply the facility with nuclear power from the Susquehanna station northwest of Allentown, Pennsylvania.
And Talen's assets are located almost entirely in the PJM grid, a predominantly mid-Atlantic region where power prices are expected to explode as demand outstrips supply due in part to growing data center load. "TLN represents a way for investors to gain more leverage to nuclear contracts with tech customers and PJM's attractive power fundamentals," UBS analyst William Appicelli told clients in a Wednesday note.