Vistra Corp.

What does Vistra Corp. own?
Vistra owns approximately 46,000 megawatts of generation capacity after the Cogentrix deal, including four nuclear plants, plus a retail business serving about 5 million customers under brands such as TXU Energy, Ambit, Dynegy, and Homefield Energy.

Is Vistra publicly traded?
Yes. Vistra Corp. trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker VST and has been a component of the S&P 500 since 2024.

When was Vistra founded?
The company was formed in 2016 when Texas Competitive Electric Holdings emerged from the Energy Future Holdings bankruptcy and rebranded as Vistra Energy. Its operational roots go back to 1882 through Texas utility predecessors.

Who is the CEO of Vistra?
Jim Burke has served as President and Chief Executive Officer since August 2022. He succeeded Curt Morgan, who led the company through its 2016 emergence from bankruptcy.

Is Vistra the same company as TXU?
TXU Energy is a retail electricity brand owned by Vistra. The original TXU Corporation was taken private in 2007 and restructured through bankruptcy; Vistra is the successor to its competitive businesses, but the regulated utility Oncor is now a separate company.

What is Vistra Vision?
Vistra Vision is the internal business unit holding the company's zero-carbon and customer-facing assets: nuclear plants, solar, battery storage, and the retail electricity brands. The fossil generation fleet sits in a parallel grouping called Vistra Tradition.

Vistra's corporate lineage runs through more than a century of Texas electricity. Its earliest predecessor, the Dallas Electric Lighting Company, began serving North Texas in 1882. Through consolidation, three regional utilities joined in 1945 under the Texas Utilities Company holding company. The enterprise rebranded as TXU Corporation in 1999 as it positioned itself as a multinational energy company.

The defining event in the company's modern history came in 2007, when private equity firms KKR, TPG Capital, and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners acquired TXU Corporation for approximately $45 billion including assumed debt. It remains the largest leveraged buyout ever completed. The acquired company was renamed Energy Future Holdings (EFH), with TXU Energy as the retail electric provider, Oncor as the regulated transmission utility, and Luminant as the generation business.

The buyout failed. A collapse in natural gas prices driven by the shale boom crushed wholesale power prices, and EFH could not service its debt load. Energy Future Holdings filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 2014. In October 2016, the competitive businesses, TXU Energy, Luminant, and shared corporate services, emerged from reorganization under Texas Competitive Electric Holdings (TCEH). The regulated transmission business, Oncor, was separated and later sold. In November 2016, TCEH renamed itself Vistra Energy, and the stock began trading on the New York Stock Exchange in May 2017.

The rebuilt company grew quickly through dealmaking. In April 2018, Vistra Energy merged with Dynegy Inc. in an approximately $1.7 billion all-stock transaction that roughly doubled its generation fleet and expanded it beyond Texas into PJM, MISO, New York, and New England. In 2019 it acquired retail providers Ambit Energy for approximately $475 million and Crius Energy Trust for approximately $470 million, broadening its customer base across the Midwest and Northeast. The company simplified its name to Vistra Corp. in 2020.

Decarbonization assets became a larger theme from 2020 onward. Vistra completed its Moss Landing battery energy storage facility in California in phases, building it into one of the largest battery installations in the world. In March 2024 the company completed its acquisition of Energy Harbor Corp. for approximately $3 billion in cash plus assumed debt, adding about 4,000 megawatts of nuclear generation, three nuclear plants in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and roughly 1 million retail customers. Vistra entered the S&P 500 in mid-2024.

Acquisition activity continued through 2025 and 2026. In 2025, Vistra acquired a portfolio of natural gas plants from Lotus Infrastructure Partners for approximately $1.9 billion. In October 2026 it closed its purchase of Cogentrix Energy, adding approximately 5,500 megawatts of gas-fired capacity. That same quarter the company commenced operations at the 405 MW Pulaski Solar Facility in Illinois under a power purchase agreement with Microsoft and signed a 20-year, 207 MW agreement with New Era Energy and Digital tied to its Odessa combined cycle plant in Texas, reflecting surging electricity demand from data centers.

Vistra has committed to a roughly 60% reduction in Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 against a 2010 baseline and to net zero emissions by 2050, assuming enabling technology and policy. The Vistra Vision subsidiary concentrates its clean assets: four nuclear plants producing round-the-clock zero-carbon power, a growing solar portfolio, and approximately 1,020 MW of battery storage capacity.

The company's coal fleet is being retired or converted. Several Illinois coal units have closed in recent years under the state's coal-to-clean framework. Environmental groups continue to press Vistra on remaining coal and gas emissions, and the company acknowledges its trajectory depends partly on policy support for nuclear life extensions and carbon management technologies.

• S&P 500: Vistra was added to the index in 2024.
• Fortune 500: Ranked among the largest US corporations by revenue.
• Nuclear industry recognition: The expanded nuclear fleet has drawn coverage as a key asset in grid reliability discussions.

Winter Storm Uri (February 2021): The Texas grid failure cost Vistra approximately $1.6 billion in a single week as it bought power at capped prices to serve retail customers. The event triggered ERCOT market reforms and litigation across the industry; Vistra reported the loss publicly and recovered within the year.

Moss Landing battery fire (January 2025): A major fire destroyed a portion of the Moss Landing Energy Storage Facility, then the world's largest battery installation, prompting local evacuations and scrutiny of lithium-ion storage safety. Vistra recorded a partial impairment on the affected capacity and cooperated with county and air district reviews.

Coal and emissions scrutiny: Environmental groups have challenged the pace of Vistra's coal retirements and its gas expansion, most recently the Cogentrix acquisition. The company counters that its nuclear and storage buildout represents one of the largest zero-carbon investments among US generators.