Vistra Corp
$VST is the biggest position I carry, about ten percent of the book.
The pitch in one line: VST is the cleanest liquid expression of "who powers the AI." Every gigawatt of new data center load in ERCOT and PJM has to come from somewhere, and VST is the largest independent power producer across those two grids combined. They already have signed twenty-year power purchase agreements with Amazon and Meta tied to the pending Cogentrix acquisition, which adds 5,500 megawatts and is expected to close mid-to-late 2026.
The reason it's been a frustrating hold until very recently: the stock peaked at $220 in February and spent most of March drawing down twenty-five percent on a combination of natural gas at seventeen-month lows compressing merchant margins, a $4 billion debt issuance to fund Cogentrix, and regulatory overhang on PJM capacity pricing. None of those things broke the thesis, but together they took the stock from priced-for-perfection back to priced-for-skepticism.
What's changed in the last week: the $4 billion notes priced cleanly at 4.55 to 5.55 percent, removing the binary refinancing risk Morgan Stanley had been flagging. Jefferies argued in a fresh note that at current levels VST is trading at roughly an eleven percent FY28 free cash flow yield ex buybacks, and that the price is not embedding any future data center contract wins. Sixteen of nineteen analysts still rate it Strong Buy with a mean price target of $234.
What's coming into May:
a) April 27 to May 1, the hyperscaler earnings cluster. Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Google. If aggregate AI capex is reaffirmed near the $630 billion bar the market has set, VST gets to participate in the AI re-rating without needing to do anything itself.
b) May 7, VST Q1 earnings before the open. Consensus is modeling more than two hundred percent year-over-year EPS growth. Options flow is skewed bullish into the print. The setup carries real binary risk in either direction, but the trailing seventy-two times P/E that scares people normalizes to roughly fourteen times on FY27 estimates if guidance reaffirms.
c) May 12, April CPI. A hot print pushes the ten year back toward 4.55 percent and pressures every duration-sensitive AI infrastructure name including this one. A cool print is the cleaner setup.
My probability-weighted twelve-month target is $184, about thirteen percent above current. That sits below the consensus $234 because I'm carrying a higher bear weight on a possible PJM capacity-cap proposal and on the Martin Lake arc-flash incident from April 21 that has not shown up in price yet. But the asymmetry is what keeps it the largest line: a $225 bull case if Cogentrix closes on schedule and a fresh hyperscaler PPA lands, against a $120 bear case if Q1 misses or PJM acts.
This is what the math says for me, not what it should say for anyone else.