Vistra Corp.

Good day and welcome to the Vistracorp first quarter 2026 results conference call. All participants will be in the 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. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Eric Misik. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining Vistra's investor webcast discussing our first quarter 2026 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 earnings release. Providing our prepared remarks today are Jim Burke, VISTA's President and Chief Executive Officer, and Chris Moldovan, VISTA's Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Other senior VISTA executives will be available to address questions during the second part of today's call, if necessary. Our earnings release, presentation, and other matters discussed on the call today include references to certain non-GAAP financial measures. All references to adjusted EBITDA and adjusted free cash flow before growth throughout this presentation Refer to ongoing operations adjusted EBITDA and ongoing operations adjusted free cash flow before growth. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable gap 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, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us to discuss Vistra's first quarter 2026 operational and financial results. 2026 is off to a fast start. As outlined on our year-end call, within the first week of the year, we announced the acquisition of the 5,500 megawatt Cogentrix natural gas generation portfolio, as well as long-term power purchase agreements with Meta for approximately 2,600 megawatts of energy and capacity at our PGM nuclear sites. These actions further strengthen our generation footprint and enhance our ability to serve growing customer demand with high quality dispatchable and zero carbon resources. The quarter also provided a good test for our generation fleet. Volatile weather created a dynamic backdrop that underscored the importance of operating assets safely and reliably. And I'm proud to say our team rose to the occasion. Within the geographies we serve, we are seeing a structurally improved demand environment. Load growth remains elevated, hyperscalers are executing on record CapEx spending plans, and our conversations with large load customers continue to advance. All of this reinforces our view that power market fundamentals will continue to improve through the end of the decade and beyond. We remain excited about the growth opportunities for new and existing generation. We are working with policymakers, regulators, transmission providers, and our customers to create innovative solutions that can support new load while preserving an affordable framework for existing customers. With our large diversified and flexible fleet, our development capabilities, innovative retail franchise, and experienced commercial team, we believe Vistra is uniquely positioned to deliver on these initiatives and we look forward to building on our early momentum throughout the rest of this year and beyond. Turning to slide five, Vistra delivered approximately $1.5 billion of adjusted EBITDA, a record result for a calendar first quarter. The strong financial performance is a direct result of the consistent execution of our generation commercial and retail teams, as well as diversification afforded by our integrated business model. This was particularly evident during the first quarter as we managed through a volatile weather backdrop. Weather was exceptionally mild across the geographies we served for most of the period, especially in ERCOT, where the quarter was the second warmest first quarter since 1950, only to be interrupted by Fern, a protracted winter storm that brought significant snow and ice, as well as below zero temperatures to a significant portion of the country. Despite those conditions, our generation team performed very well during Fern, with our natural gas fleet performing at 97% commercial availability, and our nuclear fleet at 100%. During the milder portions of the quarter, our commercial team successfully optimized the fleet, responding to market conditions by backing down assets when warranted and buying low-cost power in the market. Importantly, Martin Lake Unit 1 returned from an extended outage late in Q1 and has been running well since. Moving to the outlook, we are reaffirming the guidance ranges for 2026 adjusted EBITDA and adjusted free cash flow before growth both of which we introduced on our third quarter 2025 call. We are also maintaining our 2027 adjusted EBITDA midpoint opportunity range. Our confidence in the outlook continues to be supported by strong operational performance and our comprehensive hedging program, where we have successfully hedged a significant amount of our expected generation through the end of 2027. Our comprehensive hedging program, which focuses on opportunistically locking in value, ensures a more stable and resilient earning stream across varying economic cycles. As a reminder, our outlook does not include any potential contribution from the pending Cogentrix acquisition, nor does it include any uplift from the long-term power purchase agreements with META at our PJM nuclear sites. We expect to update our guidance ranges as well as our adjusted EBITDA midpoint opportunity following the closing of the Cogentrix acquisition. Finally, the amount of capital we expect to generate over the coming years provides flexibility to execute on both organic and inorganic growth opportunities, as well as return a meaningful amount of capital to our shareholders. We can do both. Our approach remains disciplined and opportunistic, and that was reflected again this quarter. Through the design of our share repurchase program and given our increasing free cash flow yield, We accelerated share repurchases during the first four months of the year, deploying approximately $525 million. Combined with our first quarter dividend of approximately $75 million, we have already returned approximately $600 million to our shareholders this year. Turning to slide six, as we have outlined for the last two years, we continue to see a structurally improved demand environment that supports our long-term outlook. While large-scale data centers remain a key component of the expected growth, we expect incremental demand from multiple sources, including medium-sized data centers, increased industrial activity, and ongoing electrification. In ERCOT, we believe annual load growth of at least 5 to 6 percent through 2030 is reasonable, and in PJM, 2 to 3 percent annual load growth appears likely to persist. Importantly, while these views remain below many third-party forecasts and ISO projections, they reflect what we believe to be the pace of physical development and are consistent with the perspective we shared nearly two years ago on our first quarter 2024 earnings call. While there are large interconnect cues in our major markets for both load and generation, we believe our estimates to be realistic load growth forecasts that reinforce that competitive markets are ready to meet the coming demand. Since we expect overall load growth to outpace peak demand growth, a dynamic that should result in higher utilization of the existing generation and transmission infrastructure, we believe the existing grids can handle this level of growth successfully, providing a helpful runway to bring on additional generation resources later this decade and beyond. Moreover, utilizing the existing infrastructure more efficiently is key to preserving affordability. With more power moving through the system, fixed costs are spread over more volumes, which should support lower unit costs for customers over time. And third-party research confirms this dynamic. A Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory study demonstrated that states with positive load growth over the last five years experienced a decline in inflation-adjusted prices on average, while states with flat load growth or decline in load experienced double-digit inflation-adjusted price increases. Policymakers and industry participants, including large load customers, are working on solutions to better manage the infrequent peak load and are willing to be creative. At Vistra, we remain focused on developing these solutions, including through the deployment of demand response capabilities or through distributed generation technologies, as they could enable a faster time to power while awaiting a grid connection and help manage through super peak hours during the year, all while enhancing reliability and affordability. In summary, the load growth is real and is actualizing, and that creates meaningful opportunities for Vistra to support all its customers from residential to commercial and industrial, including data centers. Finally, turning to slide seven, as we have highlighted, the load growth developing across our markets creates significant opportunities to deploy capital towards organic development projects that can further increase the earnings power of our business. As you can see on the page, we currently have approximately 4,500 megawatts of organic development opportunities that were recently completed or in process across our portfolio. They include contracted renewables such as Oak Hill 1, the recently contracted Oak Hill 2, Pulaski, and the recently energized Newton projects. high-return thermal additions such as our coal-to-gas conversions at Coleto Creek and Miami Fort, Texas gas expansions including gas plant augmentations and our Permian new-build gas units, and longer lead-time projects such as the PJM nuclear uprate supported by our long-term power purchase agreements with META. These projects represent cost-effective and efficient ways to achieve incremental capacity with the majority expected to be online by 2028. At the same time, the development opportunity set is not limited to the project shown here. The team remains hard at work advancing multiple additional gigawatts of opportunities across the generation spectrum. Up rates will continue to play an important role, and we see the opportunity for more than 200 megawatts at Comanche Peak and approximately 300 additional megawatts at our PJM gas sites. We see numerous development opportunities at existing coal and gas sites that provide options for meaningful contracts for existing capacity, as well as capacity additions with favorable speed and cost profiles relative to greenfield projects. As we advance these projects, the team will look for ways to partner on these investments through long-term power purchase agreements with creditworthy customers. Now I'll turn it over to Chris to discuss our more recent financial results, outlook, and capital allocation. Chris.