On September 4, Bruker (NASDAQ:BRKR) said its energy and supercon technologies unit, Bruker Energy & Supercon Technologies (or BEST), had struck a supply collaboration with Luvata Materials & Solutions to scale up production of RRP superconductors for magnetic confinement fusion. The deal lands right as governments and private developers from Europe to South Korea race to build fusion demonstration plants, and it comes a month after Bruker’s core scientific instruments business showed its first real signs of stabilizing. Two very different stories are converging inside one stock.
A Front Row Seat To Fusion
The Luvata tie-up is not Bruker’s first rodeo in fusion. BEST and Luvata previously supplied materials and expertise to ITER, the international fusion megaproject, and to the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator, two of the most advanced superconducting plasma facilities ever built. Their RRP superconductors, wires built with the Rod-Restack Process to withstand field strengths between 12 and 20 Tesla, already run inside CERN’s Large Hadron Collider and in ultra-high field NMR magnets. That track record matters now because fusion programs are ramping across Europe, the Americas, China, Japan and South Korea, and Gauss Fusion has already begun evaluating RRP superconductors for its Gauss Industrial Demonstrator and GIGA power plant platform.
The segment is already delivering. On August 4, Bruker reported that BEST revenue climbed 11.9% year over year to $74.2 million in the second quarter, with organic growth of 8.9% net of intercompany eliminations, while first-half BEST revenue rose 12.3% to $141 million. That growth showed up in Bruker’s bottom line too. Non-GAAP operating margin expanded to 14.1% from 9% a year earlier, and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share grew to $0.49 from $0.32, results strong enough that management kept its full-year non-GAAP EPS growth target of 15% to 17% intact.
Fusion’s Payoff Is Still Theoretical
None of that shows up on a GAAP basis. Bruker’s second-quarter GAAP operating results swung to a $65.3 million loss, versus $11.9 million of GAAP operating income a year earlier, dragged down largely by a $134.9 million non-cash goodwill charge. GAAP diluted earnings per share swung to a loss of $0.41 from a profit of $0.05, and for the first half of 2026 the company posted a GAAP diluted loss per share of $0.39. Impairments do not spend cash, but they are a reminder that some of what Bruker paid for in past acquisitions is now being written down.
