Vistra Profit Jumps 75% as a Hot Summer Lifts Power Prices and the Outlook Tightens

Vistra's third-quarter profit rose 75% as record summer heat lifted power prices, and the generator raised the midpoint of its 2026 outlook while setting its first formal guidance for 2027.

The power generator reported net income of $1.14 billion for the quarter ended September 30, up from $652 million a year earlier. Revenue rose 28% to $6.35 billion, ahead of the $6.03 billion analysts expected, according to the consensus compiled by MarketBeat.

Earnings were $3.25 a share, up from $1.75 a year earlier. The MarketBeat-compiled consensus had expected $2.98 a share.

On the company's own operating measure, the jump was larger still. Ongoing Operations Adjusted EBITDA — its adjusted earnings yardstick, excluding the segment that closes old plants — rose more than 50%, to $2.38 billion from $1.58 billion.

Investors took the print as relief. Shares rose about 5.6% in premarket trading, to $119.26, according to a Finnhub reading at 8:07 a.m. ET on Friday.

The two sessions before the release had cut the other way. The stock fell 13.8% on Wednesday and 6.2% on Thursday, closing at $112.89 at a 52-week low. KeyCorp had downgraded the shares to Sector Weight days earlier.

A summer the fleet was built for

Chief Executive Jim Burke said the summer brought record weather across Vistra's markets. New all-time peak demand records were set in July in both ERCOT, the Texas grid, and PJM, the grid spanning the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest. The fleet achieved commercial availability of nearly 95% through that stretch.

Higher realized energy and capacity prices did the rest, the company said, helped by three months from the plants acquired from Lotus and the return of Martin Lake Unit 1. Texas supplied $1.23 billion of the adjusted earnings measure, up from $784 million, and the East segment $979 million, up from $719 million.

Retail, the customer-facing business, more than doubled to $98 million from $37 million. The West segment rose to $76 million from $63 million despite a $269 million impairment charge tied to the Moss Landing 350 facility in California.

The profit's paper half

Nearly half of the reported profit is not yet cash. The $1.14 billion includes a $559 million unrealized gain on hedges expected to settle in future years, up from a $184 million gain a year earlier.

The adjusted measure strips that gain out. That is why it grew more slowly than reported profit — and why prices, weather and fleet performance, not paper gains, drove the adjusted result the outlook is built on.

Below those lines, profit attributable to common shareholders was $1.09 billion, after $48 million of preferred dividends. Operating income rose to $1.71 billion from $1.04 billion.

A tighter 2026, a first 2027

Vistra now expects 2026 Ongoing Operations Adjusted EBITDA of $7.1 billion to $7.5 billion. The range it replaces, reaffirmed in August, was $6.8 billion to $7.6 billion — the floor rose $300 million while the ceiling fell $100 million. The midpoint rose $100 million and the width halved, by TickerGrove's calculation from the two releases.

The cash measure moved the same way. Full-year Adjusted FCFbG — free cash flow before growth spending — is now expected at $4.3 billion to $4.7 billion, replacing $3.925 billion to $4.725 billion.

For 2027, the company set formal guidance for the first time: Adjusted EBITDA of $7.7 billion to $8.5 billion and Adjusted FCFbG of $4.3 billion to $5.1 billion. Its earlier 2027 marker, a $7.4 billion to $7.8 billion midpoint opportunity, was explicitly not guidance.

The outlook leans on hedges already in place. As of October 30, Vistra had hedged about 100% of expected 2026 generation volumes, about 98% for 2027 and about 78% for 2028.

A bigger fleet, more buybacks

In October, Vistra closed its acquisition of Cogentrix Energy, adding about 5,500 megawatts of natural-gas generation. It paid about $2.2 billion in cash and repaid about $1.7 billion of debt assumed in the deal.

Two solar projects started operating in the quarter: the 405-megawatt Pulaski plant in Illinois, selling power to Microsoft under a long-term contract, and the 100-megawatt Deer Creek solar and storage plant in California. A separate 20-year deal will supply 207 megawatts from the Odessa gas plant in Texas to New Era Energy and Digital.

The board added $1.5 billion to the buyback, leaving about $2.5 billion of repurchase authorization to use by year-end 2028. Vistra has repurchased about $6.7 billion of stock since November 2021, and about 339 million shares remain — roughly 30% fewer than in 2021.

Liquidity stood at $8.92 billion on September 30. After the Cogentrix payment, a $1 billion preferred-stock redemption and the debt repayment, the company put the pro forma figure at about $5.4 billion.

What remains unknown

Whether the new guidance includes Cogentrix is not stated in the release. The ranges it replaces excluded the deal, and management's earnings call at 10 a.m. ET today is the first chance to settle the scope.

The release also prints no per-share earnings line of its own. The $3.25 figure comes from data compilations tied to the release's profit attributable to common stock, and the third-quarter Form 10-Q — not yet filed — will carry the company's own per-share table.

What to watch: Vistra's earnings call at 10 a.m. ET today, Friday's close after the open and the October jobs report, and the Form 10-Q filing.