Key Takeaways
- Wells Fargo cut its Vistra price target to $198 from $212 and kept its Overweight rating. That target is still 39% above the price after a 26% drop over the past year.
- Most of the damage came from Texas. Wholesale power there has sat near $30 per megawatt-hour, and forward prices are below the levels Vistra’s 2027 outlook was built on.
- Wells Fargo’s target implies 20x forward earnings, above Vistra’s five-year average of 15x, and analysts’ 2027 earnings estimates have slipped over the past three months.
- A rebound looks reasonable, but a 39% gain within a year asks too much before Vistra’s Nov. 6 report shows how its 2027 outlook is holding up.
Vistra (VST) shares are down about 26% over the past year, and Wells Fargo just trimmed its price target for the second time since August.
On Oct. 28, analyst Shahriar Pourreza cut his target to $198 from $212 and kept his Overweight rating. That still points to about 39% upside from Wednesday’s $143 close.
Texas did the damage
Most of the slide traces back to Texas. ERCOT wholesale power has sat near $30 per megawatt-hour in 2026, flat with 2025. On Vistra’s second-quarter call in August, CEO Jim Burke said that level “is not going to get new stuff built.”
CFO Kris Moldovan added on the same call that ERCOT forward curves are “meaningfully lower than they were on October 31, 2025.” Those older curves underpin Vistra’s 2027 adjusted EBITDA range of $7.4 billion to $7.8 billion. Management kept it anyway, citing higher PJM prices and its hedges.
Then AI spending worries hit. Meta Platforms, which has signed 20-year deals for 2,609 MW of Vistra’s nuclear power, reported third-quarter results, and fears about data center costs sent Vistra down 10% the next day, Oct. 22.
Wells Fargo still sees a rebound
Wells Fargo hasn’t ignored Texas. When it cut its target to $212 from $220 in August, it pointed to Vistra’s strong second quarter in spite of the ERCOT headlines.
Fair enough: second-quarter ongoing adjusted EBITDA rose more than 30% from a year earlier to $1.77 billion, and Vistra reaffirmed its 2026 guidance.
TIKR tracks 23 analysts on Vistra. How many say “Buy”?
See the full breakdown of Buy, Hold, and Sell ratings on Vistra, along with Wall Street’s revenue and earnings estimates, all in one place. More than 500,000 investors use TIKR to research stocks like this one. See Vistra’s Analyst Ratings
Does $198 add up?
The rest of Wall Street has cut, too. The 23 analysts covering Vistra have lowered their consensus target to $208 from $227 a year ago. It peaked at $234 in March:
Vistra (VST): analysts’ consensus (mean) price target, $ per share, last year (TIKR)
Targets run from $106 to $305, and Wells Fargo’s $198 sits 5% below the average.
Earnings estimates still look strong. Analysts expect normalized EPS to nearly double this year, to $8.81 from $4.76 in 2025, and to reach $10.48 in 2027:
Vistra (VST): normalized EPS, actual and consensus estimates, $ per share, fiscal 2024-2028 (TIKR)
But the 2027 figure has been slipping. Analysts have cut it by about 6% over the past three months, and nothing out of Texas since August argues for raising it.
Vistra trades at 14x forward earnings, just under its five-year average of 15x:
Vistra (VST): forward (NTM) P/E, last 5 years (TIKR)
Wells Fargo’s $198 works out to 20x expected earnings over the next twelve months. That’s well above Vistra’s five-year average.
Expect a smaller bounce
Texas matters more the further out you look. As of Aug. 3, Vistra had hedged about 94% of its expected 2027 generation but only about 72% of 2028’s. So weaker forward prices bite harder in 2028.
At 14x, Vistra looks cheap against its own history, and I think a rebound is reasonable. But a 39% gain within a year needs a richer multiple than the stock usually gets. It also needs a 2027 forecast that holds up, and that’s too much to count on right now.
Vistra reports third-quarter results on Nov. 6. A 2027 outlook there that survives weaker Texas prices would bring $198 a lot closer.
So what is Vistra stock actually worth?
TIKR lets you forecast the future price of any stock in less than a minute. Just enter a few assumptions into TIKR’s valuation model and see what Vistra could be worth. Start from Wall Street consensus estimates, or adjust the inputs to reflect your own view of the business. It’s free to use.
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