Vistra Corp.

And welcome to the VISTA's fourth quarter 2023 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on a touch-tone phone. Again, star 1. To withdraw your question, please press star then 2 if need be. Please note this event is being recorded. And now I would like to take the conference to Eric Misik. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you all for joining Vistra's Investor Webcast discussing our fourth quarter and full year 2023 results. Our discussion today is being broadcast live from the investor relations section of our website at www.VistraCorp.com. There you can also find copies of today's investor presentation and the earnings release. Leading the call today are Jim Burke, Vistra's President and Chief Executive Officer, and Chris Moldovan, Vistra's Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. They are joined by other Vistra senior executives to address questions during the second part of today's call as necessary. Earnings release, presentation, and other matters discussed on the call today include references to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are provided in the earnings release and in the appendix to the investor presentation available in the investor relations section of Vistra's website. Also, today's discussion contains forward-looking statements which are based on assumptions we believe to be reasonable only as of today's date. Such forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or implied. We assume no obligation to update our forward-looking statements. I encourage all listeners to review the safe harbor statements included on slide two of the investor presentation on our website that explain the risks of forward-looking statements, the limitations of certain industry and market data included in the presentation, and the use of non-GAAP financial measures. I will now turn the call over to our president and CEO, Jim Burke.

Thank you, Eric. I appreciate all of you taking the time to join our fourth quarter 2023 earnings call. First, I am proud to share the very strong results that the hardworking Vistra team delivered in 2023. And second, I am excited to announce that we expect to close energy harbor acquisition on Friday, March 1st. The energy harbor acquisition fits squarely with our continued focus on our four strategic priorities as laid out on slide five which starts with operating an integrated business model that combines retail and wholesale operations, leading to more resilient and sustainable earnings in a variety of weather and pricing environments. This was not only true in delivering results $440 million above our original guidance level in 2023, but was recently apparent during winter storm Heather in January of this year, where our core competency of operating generation assets was evidenced by our 98% commercial availability, which is particularly impressive in an environment where the ERCOT overall market outage rate for the five days impacted by the storm was two and a half times Vistra's outage rate. Turning to the other key priorities, we continue to execute on our capital return plan put in place during the fourth quarter of 2021. Since that time, we have returned to our investors approximately $4.3 billion through share repurchases and dividends. Further, we are excited to announce the Board approval of an additional $1.5 billion of share repurchases, which we expect to fully utilize by year-end 2025. Importantly, we have strengthened and simplified our balance sheet while maintaining our capital return plan. Net leverage remains low at 2.4 times, and although we expect to be slightly above our three times net leverage target when Energy Harbor closes, we project a return to below three times by year-end 2024. The successful repurchase of approximately 98% of our outstanding tax-receivable agreement rights marks further progress in our efforts to simplify Vistra's capital structure while improving our free cash flow conversion over the foreseeable planning horizons. Our disciplined capital approach also enables us to invest in renewables energy storage growth that capitalizes on sites and interconnects in the VISTA portfolio. We delivered the Moss Landing 350 megawatt energy storage expansion in June of last year, and we begin construction on three of our larger Illinois solar and energy storage developments located at our former coal plant sites in the spring of 2024. With grids in most of our markets tightening in the coming years as older fossil generation retires, load continues to grow. And with interconnection and transmission challenges, Vistra is well positioned to continue to find ways to serve our customers reliably, affordably, and sustainably while remaining disciplined about our capital allocation. Turning to slide six, we received FERC's approval for both the acquisition of Energy Harbor and the corresponding sale of our Richland and Stryker generation facilities. Energy Harbor is a transformative acquisition and represents another significant step forward for our company. We are diligently working towards closing this transaction, which as I already mentioned, we expect to close on March 1st. Despite closing later than we had hoped, we remain comfortable with our ability to successfully integrate our teams and deliver the initial guidance of pre-tax run rate synergies of $125 million by year-end 2025. We are also reiterating a 12-month 2024 and 2025 ongoing operations adjusted EBITDA midpoint opportunities from Energy Harbor of $700 million and $800 million, respectively, as well as the expected run rate ongoing operations adjusted EBITDA midpoint opportunity on an unhedged and open basis of $900 million. However, given the anticipated closing date, you can expect our updated 2024 ongoing operations adjusted EBITDA guidance range, which we expect to provide on the first quarter 2024 results call, will reflect only 10 months of contribution from Energy Harbor this year. Moving now to slide seven, as a reminder, we began the year with initial guidance for 2023 ongoing operations adjusted EBITDA with a midpoint of $3.7 billion. This guidance was subsequently revised on both our second and third quarter calls, ultimately raised to a midpoint of $4 billion, $25 million. As I stated earlier, despite another year of volatile weather, Characterized by mostly mild weather excluding the unprecedented summer heat in ERCOT during the third quarter, we were able to exceed the midpoint of our original guidance range by $440 million. Importantly, this translated to higher than expected ongoing operations adjusted free cash flow before growth of approximately $2,491,000,000, exceeding the midpoint of our original guidance range by $441 million. These results were achieved through strong customer count and margin performance at our retail segment and a nearly 96% commercial availability rate for our generation segment. Now I'd like to quickly turn to the 2024 guidance. Given the recent regulatory approval and the upcoming transaction closing, we anticipate providing combined VSTRA and Energy Harbor guidance including an update on synergies as part of our first quarter 2024 results call. However, we can reaffirm the VISTA standalone 2024 guidance for ongoing operations adjusted EBITDA in the range of 3.7 to $4.1 billion and ongoing operations adjusted free cash flow before growth in the range of 1.9 to $2.3 billion. We are eager and excited to join with the men and women of Energy Harbor and execute on behalf of our customers and communities as one team. I'll now turn the call over to Chris to discuss our quarterly performance in more detail.