New Era Energy jumps 31% on 20-year Vistra power deal for its Texas data centre
The contract obliges New Era to post a letter of credit of US$116 million within 15 business days of the Sept. 18 signing.
Adrian Kessler· Sep 22, 2026
New Era Energy & Digital, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAI) said on Monday that it has contracted up to 207 megawatts of power for 20 years from an affiliate of Vistra Corp. (NYSE: VST) for the first phase of its Texas Critical Data Center near Odessa. Holding that power in its own name costs New Era a letter of credit of US$116 million, due within 15 business days of the Sept. 18 agreement.
Shares closed at US$7.65 in New York on Monday, up 30.5 per cent from Friday's US$5.86. Volume reached 25.5 million shares against a daily average of 6.4 million. The stock has traded between US$0.47 and US$9.45 over the past year, and Monday's close values New Era at about US$815 million.
The company is building the Texas Critical Data Center on 493 acres in the Permian Basin, a site it expects to scale to 1.4 gigawatts over time, and the contract covers only the first phase of it. Luminant ET Services Company will supply a minimum of 200 megawatts from Vistra's 1,180 megawatt gas-fired plant in Odessa, immediately next to the property, with deliveries expected in the third quarter of 2027.
What the power costs before any of it flows is set out in the current report New Era filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. Beyond the US$116 million letter of credit, the company has to post further security of as much as US$82.8 million by the day deliveries begin. It reported US$69.8 million in cash and cash equivalents at June 30, the most recent figure in its filings, and the release lists its ability to obtain credit support "on commercially reasonable terms or at all" among the things that could go wrong.
If the two sides fail to execute the purchase and sale agreement covering the Phase 1 substation and New Era does not pay the construction costs Vistra invoices, Luminant's affiliate may draw on that credit support for as much as US$116 million. Luminant's own obligations depend on those conditions being satisfied by Dec. 31, 2027.
Vistra Takes A Five Per Cent Interest In The Powered Project
A development framework agreement signed alongside the contract gives Vistra non-voting interests equal to 5 per cent of the fully diluted equity of whichever entity owns the part of the project Luminant powers, issued once deliveries start. The same document grants Vistra a right of first refusal from April 2028 over new onsite generation at the Ector County site, and a right of first offer, running five years, on certain power generation and battery storage projects New Era proposes elsewhere. New Era also has to reimburse Vistra for certain substation and transmission line construction costs once the purchase and sale agreements are executed.
"Having firm, contracted power for Phase 1 in New Era's name is an incredible milestone which we believe materially reduces Phase 1 development risk at TCDC," chairman and chief executive Charlie Nelson said in the release.
Texas Paused Data Centre Approvals Above 75 Megawatts
Texas has been harder to plug into since the summer. Governor Greg Abbott directed the Public Utility Commission and the grid operator on Aug. 3 to audit every data centre moving through interconnection, and ERCOT paused approvals to energize data centre and crypto mining loads of 75 megawatts or more. A Sept. 11 update for the ERCOT board from Jeff Billo, the grid operator's vice-president of interconnection and grid analysis, put 204 projects drawing 66.4 gigawatts in the conditional base load category. Another 158 projects drawing 127.9 gigawatts went into the studied load category, and the audit's effect on the timeline is still to be determined.
The Vistra contract settles where New Era's first phase gets its electricity. It does not carry the project through that review, and the substations and lines still have to be built.
Read more: Texas grid strain forces ERCOT to consider industrial power shutoffs
New Era is competing for tenants with bitcoin miners that rebuilt themselves as data centre landlords. TeraWulf Inc. (NASDAQ: WULF) signed a lease with Anthropic in July and sold a stake in its Texas data centre, and Cipher Digital Inc. (NASDAQ: CIFR) has been turning its own sites over to artificial intelligence hosting.
Read more: TeraWulf lands USD$19B Anthropic lease while selling Texas AI data centre stake
Read more: Cipher Digital pushes deeper into AI hosting as bitcoin revenue declines
Power is due at the site in the third quarter of 2027. The full texts of the power purchase agreement and the development framework agreement are to be filed with New Era's quarterly report for the period ending Sept. 30.
