Vistra Corp. (VST) — Equity Research

1Business profile

Vistra Corp., along with its various holdings, functions as a unified entity primarily engaged in retail electricity supply and power generation. The company organizes its operations across six distinct segments: Retail, Texas, East, West, Sunset, and Asset Closure. It directly provides electricity and natural gas to residential, commercial, and industrial clients throughout 20 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Beyond its retail endeavors, Vistra also participates in generating electricity, facilitating wholesale energy transactions, managing commodity-related risks, producing fuel, and overseeing fuel logistics. With approximately 4.3 million customers, Vistra commands an impressive generation …

2Financials — five-year trend

Five fiscal years, oldest first — revenue trajectory, margin structure, and free cash flow conversion (capex-light models track operating cash flow closely).

3Quality vs peers

VST against the median of its S&P 500 electric utilities peer set (14 names: LNT, AEP, CEG, DUK, EIX, ETR, EVRG, ES…).

4Valuation — own history & DCF

Trailing P/E of 23.1x sits at the 83rd percentile of VST's own six-year range; P/S at the 67th. Both multiples sit far from where this stock has historically traded — the market is pricing a materially different growth/quality premium than in prior years. Verdict: rich vs own history. Two DCF lenses, stated plainly: FMP's consensus model says $173 (+25% vs spot). Our transparent FCFF model returns a negative value ($-38) — trailing FCF is ~zero (FCF margin 0.7%), so the model is telling us this name currently funds no distributable cash at its trailing margin, not that equity is worthless. Land-heavy builders run this profile at cycle troughs; treat the FCFF lens as degenerate this quarter and lean on the consensus lens, the multiples, and the sensitivity grid below. Both embed assumptions you can audit below — treat them as model output, not truth.

5Expected move & options context

ATM IV on the 2026-11-06 expiry is 72% (strike $138.00). That prices a ±14.08-point (±10.2%) move over the next 5 sessions — spot × IV × √(5/252). IV at this level means the options market is paying generously for short-dated vol; structures that buy vol are expensive, structures that sell it are well paid — inputs, not rules.

Positions on file: no VST lines in positions.json

6Risks & bear case

• Growth decelerating — revenue growth 16.5% → 3.0% over the last two fiscal years.
• Long-duration cash flows — beta 1.38: rate moves hit the multiple harder than the market average; DFEDTARU path matters here.
• Valuation leans on the terminal — 60% of DCF value sits beyond year 10; small assumption shifts move the answer a lot (grid below).
• Judgment risks are not in these numbers — competitive disruption, product-cycle decay and management-transition risk have no clean data series here; the qualitative section carries that color with citations.

7Scenario framing

Scenario values are corners of the FCFF sensitivity grid — model outcomes under stated assumptions, not forecasts or targets. This quarter the FCFF grid is degenerate: with trailing FCF near zero, every corner of the grid lands negative (table kept below for the audit trail), so the grid cannot rank bear/base/bull against spot. The working anchor is FMP's consensus DCF of $173 (+25% vs spot); the sensitivity chart still shows how brutal the assumption spread is for a low-FCF builder. The live question for Wednesday's print: whether incentives and land spend roll over — that is what re-arms the FCFF model.

8News flow

Latest headlines from Yahoo Finance and Google News RSS — unfiltered wire, read with the usual skepticism about source quality; titles link out to the source.

9Qualitative read — management, health, theses

Cited qualitative research (Perplexity, Sonar model): how management is executing, operating-health signals that never hit the financial statements, and the live bull/bear debate. This is opinion synthesis with named sources — treat it as color around the numbers, not verified fact.

10Catalysts & macro linkage

• Earnings: no date within 120 days in the FMP calendar — check back after the next fiscal update.
• Options expiry 2026-11-06 — front-month IV 72% prices ±10.2% by then.
• Fed target upper — DFEDTARU (daily policy rate) (rates — bond-proxy duration) — 4.00% vs 4.00% a year ago, flat 30d over 4.0% 30d ago, as of 2026-11-01. Last move: +25bp on 2026-09-17. Rate path feeds the duration premium on a 1.4-beta name.
• Model refresh triggers: any FQ beat/miss on revenue, FRED DGS10 moves ≥25bp, or a new fiscal year in the ratios series re-runs the DCF.

11Appendix — data provenance

Every pull from report generation 2026-11-01. Raw payload: ~/Projects/market-report/work/VST-2026-11-01.json.