Key Takeaways
- Vistra stock is down 28% over the past year, closing at $152.02 on October 16, even after a 20.5% five-session run that started from a $138 close on September 30.
- The Street holds 17 buys, 4 outperforms, and 1 underperform, and the $210.10 mean target sits 38% above the close.
- On October 5, the Energy Department offered Vistra a conditional loan of up to $4.2 billion for nuclear uprates.
- November 6 brings Q3 results and a planned update to 2027 guidance.
Vistra Corp. (VST) stock is down 28% over the past year, closing at $152.02 on October 16. The shares slid through late 2025, then took another leg down this summer as Texas power prices stayed soft and the state paused to audit data center grid requests.
October looked different. From a $138.35 close on September 30, Vistra stock ran 20.5% in five sessions, then gave part of that back. The bounce started at three nuclear plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Texas Added to Vistra Stock’s Slide This Summer
The stock started the period above $200 and closed 2025 at $161.33. No single documented event explains that leg. Through 2026 it swung between the mid-$130s and the high $170s without breaking out, and it finished September at $138.35.
The Texas pressure built over the summer:
- In August, Governor Greg Abbott ordered an audit of planned data centers seeking grid connections. ERCOT (the Texas grid operator) then postponed its Batch Zero study of new large loads. Vistra said its Comanche Peak data center project still targets energization at the end of 2027.
- On the August 7 second-quarter call, CEO Jim Burke said ERCOT wholesale prices had averaged $30 a megawatt hour so far in 2026, the same as 2025. He said that level won’t get new plants built. CFO Kris Moldovan said 2027 adjusted EBITDA would trend toward the lower end of its $7.4 billion to $7.8 billion midpoint opportunity range. His reason: higher PJM prices, hedges, and the nuclear production tax credit don’t fully offset weaker ERCOT forward prices.
The quarter itself held up. Adjusted EBITDA came in at $1.767 billion, up more than 30% from a year earlier. Burke described the regional split plainly: “you’ve seen PJM strengthening, you’ve seen ERCOT weakening, it helps to be a diversified player in this context.” Vistra kept its 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance of $6.8 billion to $7.6 billion and said it expects to land at or above the midpoint.
The late-August low drew a buyer from the corner office. A partnership Burke owns with his spouse bought 2,200 shares on August 31 and 4,465 shares on September 1, at weighted averages of $135.99 and $135.25.
What Ohio and Pennsylvania Did for VST in October
On October 5, the Energy Department announced a conditional loan commitment of up to $4.2 billion. The money would finance uprates (projects that raise a reactor’s power output) and modernization at Vistra’s Beaver Valley plant in Pennsylvania and its Davis-Besse and Perry plants in Ohio. The DOE said the work covers 433 MW of uprates, and the commitment includes an option to finance future uprates at Comanche Peak. It’s conditional: Vistra still has to meet technical, legal, environmental, and financial conditions before the loan is funded. For scale, by my math $4.2 billion equals 58.3% of the $7.2 billion midpoint of Vistra’s 2026 adjusted EBITDA guidance.
Reuters reported Vistra stock up more than 6% at $148.48 that morning after reports of the loan. The next day, Alphabet (GOOGL) agreed to buy 3,590 MW of power from Constellation Energy (CEG). Constellation jumped more than 13%, and Reuters reported Vistra up 10% as the deal spilled over into nuclear-linked stocks.
The run ended on October 8, when Vistra fell 6.35% to $156.14 alongside a 4.85% drop in Constellation. By my math, the October 16 close of $152.02 is 2.6% below that level but still 9.9% above the September 30 close.
One quieter move landed on October 15. Vistra redeemed all $1 billion of its 8% Series A preferred stock at $1,000 a share. In September it had raised $1.5 billion in junior subordinated notes priced at 7.000% and 7.250%, with proceeds earmarked partly for those redemptions. By my math, the retired preferred carried $80 million a year in dividends.
The Street Never Followed Vistra Stock Down
Vistra stock now carries 17 buys, 4 outperforms, and 1 underperform. Buys rose from 15 at September 30, and the one sell on the table at that date is gone. The $210.10 mean target is down 6.9% from $225.78 a year ago. Over the same stretch the quarterly close fell 22.4%, from $195.92 (by my math), so the mean now sits 38.2% above the stock. Separately, 21 analysts publish a price target, and the lowest is $106.00.
A 38.2% gap only makes sense if the Texas load Burke expects in 2027 and 2028 actually arrives.
The Number Vistra Stock Needs on November 6
Vistra reports third-quarter results on November 6. In August, Moldovan said Vistra plans to update both 2026 and 2027 guidance on that call. The 2027 update would likely wait if the Cogentrix acquisition hasn’t closed. Vistra received FERC approval for that deal in August and expects it to close in late 2026.
The 2027 figure is the one that matters. Moldovan said Cogentrix and the Meta power contracts could add roughly $700 million to the midpoint, absent other impacts. He named further power-price moves and Cogentrix’s hedge levels as things that could shift it. Add that to the $7.4 billion low end and you get $8.1 billion, by my math: a rough marker, not a number Vistra has guided to. A 2027 midpoint at or above it would suggest August’s ERCOT softness hasn’t deepened, and it would give the Street’s 38.2% gap more to stand on. A midpoint well short of it needs an explanation. If that explanation turns out to be Texas prices, a conditional loan Vistra hasn’t drawn yet won’t fill the hole.
You can pull up Vistra’s one-year price chart and the full Street target history on TIKR for free. Then you can see for yourself how the mean has tracked the stock quarter by quarter. Learn more here.
So what is Vistra stock actually worth?
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Disclaimer:
Please note that the articles on TIKR are not intended to serve as investment or financial advice from TIKR or our content team, nor are they recommendations to buy or sell any stocks. We create our content based on TIKR Terminal’s investment data and analysts’ estimates. Our analysis might not include recent company news or important updates. TIKR has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading, and happy investing!
