Vistra Stock Surged Following Its $4.2 Billion Federal Loan. With the Stock Down 23% Over the Past Year, Is It Time to Buy?

VST jumped after the U.S. Department of Energy announced a $4.2 billion conditional loan commitment to Vistra to expand power capacity at three nuclear plants in the PJM Interconnection region.

The funding will add 433 megawatts of clean baseload capacity. The stated driver is surging electricity demand from AI data centers, which makes this a direct link between federal financing and the data-center power trade.

Despite the pop, VST remains down 23% over the past year. The pullback has reset the valuation: the stock now trades at 18.5x forward earnings, with projected earnings growth of 18% annually. Interpretation: that pairing of a mid-to-high-teens multiple and a similar growth rate suggests the market is no longer paying a steep premium for the AI-power narrative, though that reading rests on the projections cited and not on confirmed results.

The loan is a conditional commitment, not a closed financing, so execution risk remains between announcement and funded capacity. The 433 megawatts is a defined, quantifiable addition, which gives analysts a concrete number to model against the PJM footprint.