VistraNarrow moat

VST — overall economic moat

Investment snapshot
Narrow moat↗ WideningConfidenceMediumValuationFair
Strongest advantage6,448 MW of nuclear nobody can replicate
Greatest threatTwo good years of return on capital in nine
Key metricROIC vs 8% cost of capital
Verdict: A merchant generator turning itself into a contracted one, half a nuclear fleet at a time. The assets are real, the buyers are Amazon and Meta, and none of the contracted power has been delivered yet. Reported earnings are unreadable - $7.00 to $2.18 to $5.87 while Adjusted EBITDA rose throughout - so watch return on capital, which has cleared 8% twice since 2017.
📈 VST valuation, revenue & earnings — P/E, P/S, revenue, EPS →

Vistra makes electricity and then sells it to the people who use it. Almost nobody in American power does both.

Generation capacity by fuel, ~44,000 MWCombined-cycle gas ~22,700 MW — 52%Coal and lignite 8,743 MW — 20%Nuclear 6,448 MW — 15%Gas peaking 4,822 MW — 11%Solar 650 MW — 1%Battery storage 624 MW — 1%
The AI-power story is about nuclear, and nuclear is under 15% of the fleet. Everything else is capacity a competitor with capital can buy.

The generation half is about 44,000 megawatts of capacity1 — mostly natural gas, then coal, then six nuclear reactors, and a small and growing amount of solar and batteries. The retail half sells electricity and natural gas to roughly five million residential, commercial and industrial customers across 18 states and the District of Columbia2. In between sits the thing that makes the company unusual: the plants have a customer before the power is made, and the customer is the same company.

You can see it in the segment numbers, and you have to look at the right ones. Vistra reported $17,738 million of revenue in 20253. Of the revenue earned from outside parties, Retail was $14,233 million — four-fifths of the total — while the Texas generation segment showed $934 million and East $2,169 million4. That is not because the power plants are small. It is because they sold $8,528 million of output to Retail rather than to the market, and the sale is eliminated on consolidation5.

The number management reports and the market watches is not revenue. It is Adjusted EBITDA, which was $5,838 million in 2025 against $5,539 million in 20246, split roughly evenly across Retail at $1,622 million, Texas at $1,834 million and East at $2,282 million7. Guidance for 2026 is $6.8 billion to $7.6 billion.

The reason the industry uses that measure rather than earnings is worth understanding before anything else about this company. Vistra hedges several years of its future output, and accounting requires the unsettled hedges to be marked to market every quarter. In 2025 that line swung by nearly two billion dollars8, and reported diluted earnings per share fell from $7.00 to $2.189 in a year when the underlying business earned more. The earnings line reports the price of electricity, not the profit on selling it.

The last three years have been about changing what kind of company this is. Vistra bought Energy Harbor in March 2024 for $3.1 billion10, which brought 4,048 megawatts of operating nuclear plants in PJM11. It then sold that output forward: a 20-year agreement with Amazon Web Services for 1,200 megawatts from Comanche Peak in Texas, and 20-year agreements with Meta for 2,609 megawatts from its PJM nuclear fleet12. A merchant generator that sells into a spot market is being converted, one reactor at a time, into something closer to a contracted one.

It has also been buying its own shares with unusual conviction — about 171 million of them since November 2021 at an average cost near $38, with more than $6.5 billion returned to shareholders in total13. The stock is $137 today14.

At roughly $46 billion the market values the whole thing at about 23 times trailing earnings and 2.4 times revenue15, and the shares sit about 38% below the all-time high they reached in September 202516. The number that decides whether that is cheap is not the AI-demand headline. It is return on invested capital, which has cleared an 8% cost of capital in two of the last nine years17. Its four revenue lines are taken in turn in The Revenue Lines.

The number that tests this moat
Reported
Revenue, and where it comes from
$17.7B - and $5.8B of Adjusted EBITDA

Reported revenue was $17,738M in 2025, of which a negative $766M was an unrealized mark on unsettled hedges. The number management guides and the market uses is Adjusted EBITDA: $5,838M in 2025, guided to $6.8-7.6bn for 2026. Watch the EBITDA, not the top line.

Source: Vistra Corp. Form 10-K, fiscal year 2025 ↗
Moat scorecardHow ratings work →
Switching costs3/10
Network effects2/10
Pricing power4/10
Hard to replicate7/10
Disruption resistance6/10
Overall durability6/10

Assets that genuinely cannot be reproduced - six reactors and a place on two grids everyone else is queueing for - attached to a commodity whose price is set by somebody else's marginal unit and capped by the state. The contracting is converting the best of it into something durable; the return on capital has not yet followed.

Dig deeper
DIG DEEPER 01
The Revenue Lines
The retailer books 80% of the outside revenue and the generators earn three-quarters of the profit, selling most of their power to it.
DIG DEEPER 02
The Moat
Real assets, a genuine structural advantage, and a return on capital that has cleared its hurdle in two of nine years.
DIG DEEPER 03
Competitors
Nobody wins a customer with a better electron — what is contested is capital, sites, turbine slots and a handful of twenty-year contracts.
DIG DEEPER 04
Major Clients
Five million customers who cannot matter, and two who now hold twenty-year claims on half the nuclear fleet.
✦ Future bets — beyond today's moat
✦ FUTURE BET 01
The Future Bets
Sensible, funded projects that improve the odds at the margin and do not change the game.
⚠ Threats to the moat
⚠ THREAT 01
Two Good Years Out of Nine
Every bad year has a true explanation, and a decade of explanations is a pattern.
⚠ THREAT 02
Everything Assumes the Load Arrives
The bear case is in the company's own risk factors, and it has three separate ways of coming true.
◆ What the market may be missing
◆ THE VARIANT VIEW
What the Market Isn't Pricing In
Earnings per share fell from $7.00 to $2.18 in a year Adjusted EBITDA rose — and a third of the company has been repurchased at an average of $38.
◆ THE VARIANT VIEW
Inside the Latest Quarter (Q2 2026)
Adjusted EBITDA up more than 30%, revenue down 5.5% and missing consensus by a third, and both numbers are correct.
References
  1. ReportedThe generation half is about 44,000 megawatts of capacity — mostly natural gas, then coal, then six nuclear reactors, and a small and growing amount of solar and batteries
    Vistra Corp. Form 10-K, FY2025, Item 2 Properties and generation fleet — six nuclear generating units at four facilities totalling 6,448 MW: Comanche Peak Unit 1 (ERCOT, 1,200 MW, 18-month refuelling, licence to 2050), Comanche Peak Unit 2 (ERCOT, 1,200 MW, 2053), Beaver Valley Unit 1 (PJM, 939 MW, 2036), Beaver Valley Unit 2 (PJM, 933 MW, 2047), Perry (PJM, 1,268 MW, 24-month refuelling, 2046) and Davis-Besse (PJM, 908 MW, 24-month refuelling, 2037), with nuclear units "generally operated at full capacity"; coal and lignite fleet of seven facilities totalling 8,743 MW; twelve peaking generation facilities totalling 4,822 MW; battery energy storage of 350 MW in California, 270 MW in Texas and 4 MW in Illinois; solar of 538 MW in Texas and 112 MW in Illinois; the Moss Landing 100 MW and 300 MW battery facilities "will not return to service" — FY2025 · publ. February 2026 · source ↗
  2. ReportedThe retail half sells electricity and natural gas to roughly five million residential, commercial and industrial customers across 18 states and the District of Columbia
    Vistra Corp. Form 10-K, FY2025, Item 1 Business — "The Company brings its products and services to market in 18 states and the District of Columbia, including all major competitive wholesale power markets in the U.S. We serve approximately 5 million residential, commercial, and industrial retail customers with electricity and natural gas. Our generation fleet totals approximately 44,000 megawatts of generation capacity powered by a diverse portfolio, including natural gas, nuclear, coal, solar, and battery energy storage facilities"; the integrated model "enables us to structure products and contracts in a way that offers significant value compared to stand-alone retail electric providers"; five reportable segments — Retail, Texas, East, West and Sunset, plus Asset Closure; retail investors served through TXU Energy in ERCOT, Homefield Energy in MISO and Public Power in PJM, ISO-NE, NYISO and MISO — FY2025 · publ. February 2026 · source ↗
  3. ReportedVistra reported $17,738 million of revenue in 2025
    Vistra Corp. Form 10-K, FY2025, segment revenue note — total revenues by segment for 2025: Retail $14,340M, Texas $5,353M, East $6,174M, West $325M, Sunset $74M, eliminations $(8,528)M, total $17,738M; intersegment sales Retail $107M, Texas $4,419M, East $4,005M, West $3M, Sunset $(3)M, eliminations $(8,531)M; unrealized hedging revenue $(766)M in 2025 against $1,013M in 2024; realized hedging revenue $583M; transferable PTC revenues $229M; East capacity revenue of $793M sold offset by $566M purchased. For 2024 total revenues were Retail $12,797M, Texas $5,394M, East $5,661M, West $839M, Sunset $39M, eliminations $(7,506)M, total $17,224M; for 2023, Retail $10,572M, Texas $3,979M, East $5,890M, West $866M, Sunset $48M, eliminations $(6,576)M, total $14,779M — FY2025 · publ. February 2026 · source ↗
  4. Moat Explorer calcOf the revenue earned from outside parties, Retail was $14,233 million — four-fifths of the total — while the Texas generation segment showed $934 million and East $2,169 million
    Vistra Corp. Form 10-K, FY2025, segment revenue note — total revenues by segment for 2025: Retail $14,340M, Texas $5,353M, East $6,174M, West $325M, Sunset $74M, eliminations $(8,528)M, total $17,738M; intersegment sales Retail $107M, Texas $4,419M, East $4,005M, West $3M, Sunset $(3)M, eliminations $(8,531)M; unrealized hedging revenue $(766)M in 2025 against $1,013M in 2024; realized hedging revenue $583M; transferable PTC revenues $229M; East capacity revenue of $793M sold offset by $566M purchased. For 2024 total revenues were Retail $12,797M, Texas $5,394M, East $5,661M, West $839M, Sunset $39M, eliminations $(7,506)M, total $17,224M; for 2023, Retail $10,572M, Texas $3,979M, East $5,890M, West $866M, Sunset $48M, eliminations $(6,576)M, total $14,779M — FY2025 · publ. February 2026 · source ↗
  5. ReportedIt is because they sold $8,528 million of output to Retail rather than to the market, and the sale is eliminated on consolidation
    Vistra Corp. Form 10-K, FY2025, segment revenue note — total revenues by segment for 2025: Retail $14,340M, Texas $5,353M, East $6,174M, West $325M, Sunset $74M, eliminations $(8,528)M, total $17,738M; intersegment sales Retail $107M, Texas $4,419M, East $4,005M, West $3M, Sunset $(3)M, eliminations $(8,531)M; unrealized hedging revenue $(766)M in 2025 against $1,013M in 2024; realized hedging revenue $583M; transferable PTC revenues $229M; East capacity revenue of $793M sold offset by $566M purchased. For 2024 total revenues were Retail $12,797M, Texas $5,394M, East $5,661M, West $839M, Sunset $39M, eliminations $(7,506)M, total $17,224M; for 2023, Retail $10,572M, Texas $3,979M, East $5,890M, West $866M, Sunset $48M, eliminations $(6,576)M, total $14,779M — FY2025 · publ. February 2026 · source ↗
  6. ReportedIt is Adjusted EBITDA, which was $5,838 million in 2025 against $5,539 million in 2024, split roughly evenly across Retail at $1,622 million, Texas at $1,834 million and East at $2,282 million
    Vistra Corp. Form 10-K, FY2025, Adjusted EBITDA reconciliation — 2025 Adjusted EBITDA by segment: Retail $1,622M, Texas $1,834M, East $2,282M, West $244M, Sunset $(74)M, Corporate and Other $(70)M, total $5,838M, including nuclear fuel amortisation of $133M in Texas and $354M in East; 2024 Adjusted EBITDA: Retail $1,463M, Texas $2,032M, East $2,017M, West $225M, Sunset $(104)M, Corporate and Other $(94)M, total $5,539M; the 2025 change included higher retail margins "driven by strong counts and one-time gains from supply cost management" of $169M, a $(1,963)M change in unrealized net gain (loss) from commodity hedging transactions, $228M of impairment of long-lived assets and $191M of insurance income — FY2025 · publ. February 2026 · source ↗
  7. ReportedIt is Adjusted EBITDA, which was $5,838 million in 2025 against $5,539 million in 2024, split roughly evenly across Retail at $1,622 million, Texas at $1,834 million and East at $2,282 million
    Vistra Corp. Form 10-K, FY2025, Adjusted EBITDA reconciliation — 2025 Adjusted EBITDA by segment: Retail $1,622M, Texas $1,834M, East $2,282M, West $244M, Sunset $(74)M, Corporate and Other $(70)M, total $5,838M, including nuclear fuel amortisation of $133M in Texas and $354M in East; 2024 Adjusted EBITDA: Retail $1,463M, Texas $2,032M, East $2,017M, West $225M, Sunset $(104)M, Corporate and Other $(94)M, total $5,539M; the 2025 change included higher retail margins "driven by strong counts and one-time gains from supply cost management" of $169M, a $(1,963)M change in unrealized net gain (loss) from commodity hedging transactions, $228M of impairment of long-lived assets and $191M of insurance income — FY2025 · publ. February 2026 · source ↗
  8. ReportedIn 2025 that line swung by nearly two billion dollars, and reported diluted earnings per share fell from $7.00 to $2.18 in a year when the underlying business earned more
    Vistra Corp. Form 10-K, FY2025, consolidated financial statements — net income attributable to Vistra $944M (2024 $2,659M, 2023 $1,493M); cumulative preferred dividends $(192)M; net income attributable to common stock $752M (2024 $2,467M, 2023 $1,343M); diluted earnings per share $2.18 (2024 $7.00, 2023 $3.58); weighted average diluted shares 345,656,067 (2024 352,567,060, 2023 375,193,110); operating income $1,906M (2024 $4,081M); total stockholders equity $5,097M at 31 December 2025 (2024 $5,570M, 2023 $5,307M); 2025 financing activity included $1.744bn to redeem senior secured and unsecured notes and $1.028bn to repurchase common stock; Energy Harbor purchased for $3.1 billion in March 2024; the Lotus Acquisition for $1.1 billion in October 2025; $325 million of insurance proceeds received in 2025 for the Moss Landing and Martin Lake Incidents — FY2025 · publ. February 2026 · source ↗
  9. ReportedIn 2025 that line swung by nearly two billion dollars, and reported diluted earnings per share fell from $7.00 to $2.18 in a year when the underlying business earned more
    Vistra Corp. Form 10-K, FY2025, consolidated financial statements — net income attributable to Vistra $944M (2024 $2,659M, 2023 $1,493M); cumulative preferred dividends $(192)M; net income attributable to common stock $752M (2024 $2,467M, 2023 $1,343M); diluted earnings per share $2.18 (2024 $7.00, 2023 $3.58); weighted average diluted shares 345,656,067 (2024 352,567,060, 2023 375,193,110); operating income $1,906M (2024 $4,081M); total stockholders equity $5,097M at 31 December 2025 (2024 $5,570M, 2023 $5,307M); 2025 financing activity included $1.744bn to redeem senior secured and unsecured notes and $1.028bn to repurchase common stock; Energy Harbor purchased for $3.1 billion in March 2024; the Lotus Acquisition for $1.1 billion in October 2025; $325 million of insurance proceeds received in 2025 for the Moss Landing and Martin Lake Incidents — FY2025 · publ. February 2026 · source ↗
  10. ReportedVistra bought Energy Harbor in March 2024 for $3.1 billion, which brought 4,048 megawatts of operating nuclear plants in PJM
    Vistra Corp. Form 10-K, FY2025, growth and portfolio transformation — acquisition of Energy Harbor in 2024 "including 4,048 MW of nuclear generation facilities in PJM"; acquisition in 2025 of 2,557 MW of natural gas generation facilities in Delaware and Pennsylvania (PJM), Rhode Island (ISO-NE), New York (NYISO) and California (CAISO); plans to add 433 MW of uprate capacity from the Perry, Davis-Besse and Beaver Valley nuclear plants in PJM; announced plans "to repower the Coleto Creek and Miami Fort coal generation facilities as natural gas-fueled facilities upon their retirement no later than 2027 and the middle of 2028, respectively"; commercial operations reached at the Oak Hill solar facility in Texas totalling 200 MW; twenty-year PPAs with Meta for a total of 2,609 MW of carbon-free power and capacity from the PJM nuclear plants, with delivery commencing on a portion of operating energy and capacity in late 2026 and full delivery by year end 2027, and uprate delivery commencing in 2031 with full delivery by year end 2034 — FY2025 · publ. February 2026 · source ↗
  11. ReportedVistra bought Energy Harbor in March 2024 for $3.1 billion, which brought 4,048 megawatts of operating nuclear plants in PJM
    Vistra Corp. Form 10-K, FY2025, growth and portfolio transformation — acquisition of Energy Harbor in 2024 "including 4,048 MW of nuclear generation facilities in PJM"; acquisition in 2025 of 2,557 MW of natural gas generation facilities in Delaware and Pennsylvania (PJM), Rhode Island (ISO-NE), New York (NYISO) and California (CAISO); plans to add 433 MW of uprate capacity from the Perry, Davis-Besse and Beaver Valley nuclear plants in PJM; announced plans "to repower the Coleto Creek and Miami Fort coal generation facilities as natural gas-fueled facilities upon their retirement no later than 2027 and the middle of 2028, respectively"; commercial operations reached at the Oak Hill solar facility in Texas totalling 200 MW; twenty-year PPAs with Meta for a total of 2,609 MW of carbon-free power and capacity from the PJM nuclear plants, with delivery commencing on a portion of operating energy and capacity in late 2026 and full delivery by year end 2027, and uprate delivery commencing in 2031 with full delivery by year end 2034 — FY2025 · publ. February 2026 · source ↗
  12. ReportedIt then sold that output forward: a 20-year agreement with Amazon Web Services for 1,200 megawatts from Comanche Peak in Texas, and 20-year agreements with Meta for 2,609 megawatts from its PJM nuclear fleet
    Vistra secures long-term nuclear PPA from Comanche Peak (Power Engineering) — a 20-year power purchase agreement with Amazon Web Services, with options to extend for up to an additional 20 years, to supply 1,200 MW of carbon-free power from the Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant; power delivery is anticipated to begin in the fourth quarter of 2027 and to ramp to full capacity by 2032 — September 2025 · publ. September 2025 · source ↗
  13. ReportedIt has also been buying its own shares with unusual conviction — about 171 million of them since November 2021 at an average cost near $38, with more than $6.5 billion returned to shareholders in total
    Vistra Corp. second quarter 2026 results, 7 August 2026 — Ongoing Operations Adjusted EBITDA of $1,767 million against $1,349 million in Q2 2025 and $1,412 million in Q2 2024, an increase of more than 30%, on revenue of $4.02 billion that missed consensus by roughly a third; 2026 Ongoing Operations Adjusted EBITDA guidance reaffirmed at $6.8 billion to $7.6 billion and Ongoing Operations Adjusted FCFbG at $3.925 billion to $4.725 billion; 2027 Adjusted EBITDA midpoint opportunity range of $7.4 billion to $7.8 billion excluding Cogentrix and the Meta PPA, trending toward the lower end, with those two items potentially adding roughly $700 million; approximately 171 million shares retired at an average cost of approximately $38 per share since November 2021 and more than $6.5 billion returned to shareholders through 3 August 2026; approximately $1.2 billion of share repurchase authorisation remaining, expected to be completed no later than year-end 2027, with a target of at least $1 billion of annual share repurchases and approximately $300 million of common dividends annually; a $1 billion commitment to the Helix data centre platform — Q2 2026 · publ. August 2026 · source ↗
  14. ReportedThe stock is $137 today
    Vistra (NYSE: VST) market data — share price $137.09 on 28 August 2026, market capitalisation $46.01 billion on 335.64 million shares outstanding; trailing price/earnings 23.4 and forward 13.3; trailing twelve-month revenue $19.21 billion, net income $2.03 billion and EPS $5.87; dividend $0.92 a share, a yield of 0.67%; 52-week range $132.66 to $219.82, with an all-time high close of $219.82 on 22 September 2025; the shares returned 257.92% in 2024 and closed that year at $137.87 — August 2026 · publ. August 2026 · source ↗
  15. ReportedAt roughly $46 billion the market values the whole thing at about 23 times trailing earnings and 2.4 times revenue, and the shares sit about 38% below the all-time high they reached in September 2025
    Vistra (NYSE: VST) market data — share price $137.09 on 28 August 2026, market capitalisation $46.01 billion on 335.64 million shares outstanding; trailing price/earnings 23.4 and forward 13.3; trailing twelve-month revenue $19.21 billion, net income $2.03 billion and EPS $5.87; dividend $0.92 a share, a yield of 0.67%; 52-week range $132.66 to $219.82, with an all-time high close of $219.82 on 22 September 2025; the shares returned 257.92% in 2024 and closed that year at $137.87 — August 2026 · publ. August 2026 · source ↗
  16. ReportedAt roughly $46 billion the market values the whole thing at about 23 times trailing earnings and 2.4 times revenue, and the shares sit about 38% below the all-time high they reached in September 2025
    Vistra (NYSE: VST) market data — share price $137.09 on 28 August 2026, market capitalisation $46.01 billion on 335.64 million shares outstanding; trailing price/earnings 23.4 and forward 13.3; trailing twelve-month revenue $19.21 billion, net income $2.03 billion and EPS $5.87; dividend $0.92 a share, a yield of 0.67%; 52-week range $132.66 to $219.82, with an all-time high close of $219.82 on 22 September 2025; the shares returned 257.92% in 2024 and closed that year at $137.87 — August 2026 · publ. August 2026 · source ↗
  17. Moat Explorer calcIt is return on invested capital, which has cleared an 8% cost of capital in two of the last nine years
    Moat Explorer calculation from SEC EDGAR XBRL — return on invested capital as NOPAT divided by average operating invested capital, where NOPAT is OperatingIncomeLoss multiplied by one minus the effective tax rate and invested capital is total assets less current liabilities less cash: 1.0% (2017), 2.3% (2018), 7.0% (2019), 4.9% (2020), -5.4% (2021), -4.2% (2022), 9.5% (2023), 13.8% (2024), 5.6% (2025). The 8% hurdle is an assumed weighted average cost of capital, not a filed figure — FY2017-FY2025 · publ. August 2026 · source ↗
Sources
Generated September 23, 2026