Vistra Corp. · 2026 Q2 call

We remain on track to achieve another record result in 2026 as the business continues to perform very well. Within the geographies we serve, we are observing a structurally improved demand environment, with both PJM and ERCOT hitting new all-time summer peak loads in July.

First, as a founding investor, Vistra will commit up to $1 billion to be invested over time, with any amount in excess of $500 million subject to the achievement of certain milestones. […] Second, Vistra will serve as the preferred power partner, allowing us to participate in Helix development projects either through contracted new build projects or through new contracts with existing assets.

In July, we've also seen new all-time peaks in load in both PJM and ERCOT, with PJM hitting over 168 GW and ERCOT hitting over 91 GW. While data centers will be an important driver of load, particularly in 2028 and beyond, we believe a significant component of this growth is from sources other than data centers.

Vistra delivered second quarter Adjusted EBITDA of $1.767 billion, representing a more than 30% increase compared to the second quarter of 2025. […] Our generation business delivered approximately $994 million of Adjusted EBITDA in the quarter, compared to approximately $593 million in the second quarter of 2025.

Given our performance through the first half of the year, we are confident in our ability to deliver at or above the midpoint of these ranges.

Since initiating the program in November 2021, we have retired approximately 171 million shares at an average cost of approximately $38 per share. We currently have approximately $1.2 billion of share repurchase authorization remaining, which we expect to exhaust no later than the end of 2027.

Speaking of the balance sheet, we have achieved investment-grade credit ratings from two of the major credit ratings agencies. We don't plan to stop there. Our long-term goal is to achieve mid-investment-grade credit ratings at all three major credit rating agencies.

So we're much more of a carrot approach, because certain customers are making investments to be flexible. They should be compensated for it in some form, either actually or with speed. […] I think this idea that you might actually be required to curtail before those that were paid to be curtailed, that feels odd to me. That's not the way markets should clear.

we obviously have said for a long time we don't support bring your own new capacity mandates. […] Frankly, it may actually even give some advantage to co-location with existing resources, we believe, at the end of the day, because there's still a speed advantage to avoiding some of the transmission build that's necessary often to connect front of the meter.

We do have the hedging program and the downside protection of the PTC. I would say that they don't fully offset the ERCOT headwinds, so we would be trending towards the lower end of that range.

you could reasonably conclude that they'd add roughly $700 million to our midpoint opportunity, absent any other impacts

There were eight projects being considered in that county. Per my earlier remarks, there is a reasonable chance there'll be no projects in that county.

What we've seen since then is returns on batteries have been about a fifth of what investors probably expected that they would be, and that's the way competitive markets work. There's no guaranteed rate of return.

In Texas, the oil and gas and the residential small business load is about 3 of the 5%-6%, so the data center piece is about 2%. You've got 3% CAGR on non-data center sectors, about 2% CAGR being driven by the data center.

If you look at July 22nd, there was about a three-and-a-half-hour window as the solar was dropping off the grid that you needed the batteries to serve load, and you needed about 25 gigawatt hours worth of batteries to serve, and there's only about 31 gigawatt hours worth of batteries available on the system. […] Had they known that they were going to have the ability to price themselves and be a little bit more competitive, we think it's very easy that day could have cleared in closer to a $400 or $500 day.

So again, this notion that this is a market that's not able to handle this load growth is not bearing out in the facts.