New York, May 30, 2026, 17:04 EDT
Vistra Corp. closed the holiday week up around 2.5%, finishing Friday just shy of flat at $160.23. Investors kept talking about the power producer’s role in supplying electricity to data centers. On Friday, the stock dipped 0.03% in a range from $156.88 to $162.29. Volume fell short of last week’s rush.
Vistra is going into June with no new session to trade on late-week filings and data-center policy updates. U.S. equity markets were shut for Memorial Day on Monday, May 25, trimming the week to just four sessions, and markets are closed on Saturday.
Stocks touched new highs on Friday as oil slipped and AI-linked names stayed in focus. The Utilities Select Sector SPDR ETF dropped 0.5%, with utilities lagging the move.
Vistra’s latest company-specific news wasn’t related to operations. A Form 4 filing showed senior vice president and chief accounting officer Margaret Montemayor sold 5,000 shares at $164.96 each on May 27. After the sale, Montemayor held 14,360 shares directly. The filing gave no reason for the move.
Vistra’s first-quarter numbers from May 7 are still the lead story for the company. Net income hit $1.03 billion, with ongoing operations adjusted EBITDA at $1.49 billion. Ongoing operations adjusted EBITDA strips out interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. Vistra kept its 2026 EBITDA guidance in place at $6.8 billion to $7.6 billion, and said 98% of its expected 2026 generation has already been hedged. CEO Jim Burke said “load growth remains strong” with the company working on “preparing our fleet” ahead of summer. Vistra Corp. Investor Relations
AI demand was still the focus. Back in January, Meta said its work with Vistra would back nuclear plants at Perry and Davis-Besse in Ohio and Beaver Valley in Pennsylvania. The company said power from those plants would go to grids that support Meta’s sites, like the Prometheus supercluster in New Albany, Ohio.
Ohio put a pause on data-center tax breaks this week as legislators take a closer look at how the sector affects the state. The Associated Press said the state’s tax exemption for data centers is set to cost nearly $1.6 billion in 2025, which is much more than earlier estimates. Governor Mike DeWine told AP he still backs data centers as part of Ohio’s economy.
Peers traded mixed. Constellation Energy, a utility with a big nuclear footprint and data-center links, edged up 0.5% Friday. Talen Energy added 1.4%. Vistra slipped on the day, trailing those two, but was still up for the holiday-shortened week.
KeyBanc’s Sophie Karp kept the bull case focused on locked-in power demand and tight supply. In her January note after Vistra said it was buying Cogentrix, Karp tagged the deal as “strategically and financially compelling,” adding it gave a “significant value uplift.” She pointed to the low cost baked into the purchase and stronger demand from data centers and industrial users. Barron’s
But there are obvious risks. If data-center incentives get harder to secure, or if demand from power contracts is slow to materialize, or approvals on Cogentrix get delayed, or hedges go the wrong way, then Vistra’s premium could get squeezed. The company says its 2026 guidance leaves out possible upside from the Cogentrix deal and the Meta contracts, and its cautionary statements call out moves in power prices and changes in its hedging approach.
Bigger forces are driving the calendar this week, with few company events in focus. Vistra’s investor calendar only shows its May 7 Q1 call as the most recent May event, and nothing coming up. That puts the market’s attention on power prices, risk sentiment, and possible policy around data centers, plus whether investors still want to pay up for independent power producers tied to AI demand.
