Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

I think our investors understand our mindset around these, and we look forward to hopefully given another set of opportunity for our investors to see how we’ll create value once we close the Energy Harbor acquisition.

Q – Julien Dumoulin-Smith: Yes, absolutely. And just speaking of which, right I mean obviously, the 2024 guidance today is not apples-to-apples with maybe what Street is “using” out there. I mean any chance that you could give us a little bit of a sense of what the EH impact is mark-to-market today even in a ballpark, sense to try to kind of square your guidance?

Jim Burke: I think Julien, it is a little bit from a timing standpoint, an apple and an orange, but I do think you can take a couple of pieces and add them together. So if you look at our stand-alone guidance for next year, we’re looking at a midpoint of $3.9 billion. And then we unpacked the Energy Harbor 2024 2025 numbers, because we what we wanted to do we gave you an average last time of 750. Now we’re unpacking it saying 700 for 2024. That’s still using some data that we got originally, through our cases but we’re tracking curves. We have a sense of things are about where they were at the time, we announced the deal from a power price standpoint. So there alone you’re taking the 3.9 and the 700 here, you’re getting to 4.6. We had been at a midpoint of 4.35, on average when we gave you that direction when we announced the deal.

So, I think the two pieces just added together put us north of where we have been signaling the combined opportunity. And this still has the targeted synergy levels in here. I think we could potentially exceed those targeted synergy levels, but we need to get into the business fully have the details around that execution plan before, we would upsize anything there Julien. So, I do appreciate you calling out, because I think there’s been some consensus that is included. Energy Harbor and some that has been stand-alone. Our stand-alone is well north of anything that we have signaled, at this point and we think our Energy Harbor at this point is on track. And when we get into it, I think we might be able to find some additional upside. But at this point, we’re not reflecting that.

Q – Julien Dumoulin-Smith: At least, on track with those synergies it seems. But thank you very much again for time, guys. Appreciate and I’ll pass it.

Jim Burke: Thank you, Julien.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from David Arcaro with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Q – David Arcaro: Hi. Thanks. Good morning. Thanks for taking the question.

Jim Burke: Good morning, David.

Q – David Arcaro: Could you comment on the retail trends that you’re seeing, do you expect this retail strength to continue? And I guess looking into the 2024 guidance, you’ve got some solid growth that you’re reflecting year-over-year in the Retail segment. Wondering if 2024, could be potentially considered kind of a new baseline, I guess for the performance of that segment?

Jim Burke: Yes, David I’ll start off. I’d like Scott Hudson, our President of Retail to add some commentary. I think the business – obviously, we break our business apart, quite a bit. There’s different geographies in the business. ERCOT has its own unique design. The other markets obviously, have a different one more with the TDU, the wires company doing the billing. Our business has a very heavy residential footprint from an earnings profile standpoint, but a very large-scale business and profitable business in the Commercial & Industrial segment. The business has performed better than we expected it to perform this year relative to plan. And next year is pretty flat to that. So I think it’s actually more stable is how I would describe the retail business not a large growth assumption or a moonshot required for us to be delivering in our 2024 guidance.