NRG Energy to buy Vivint Smart Home for $2.8 billion

• Vivint was a Blackstone-backed business taken public by a Fortress Investment Group SPAC in 2020, and its exit comes on the same morning as three new SPAC merger announcements at a combined pre-money equity value of $2.7 billion.

Details: NRG will pay $12 per share in cash, representing a 33.5% premium to yesterday's closing price for Vivint shares and a bump to the baseline $10 SPAC price. NRG also will assume $2.4 billion in debt.

The bottom line: The Vivint Smart Home acquisition fits within NRG's years-long effort to reduce its reliance on power generation for revenue, and to expand into the retail energy and consumer markets. But even as the company seeks to burnish its sustainability cred, it still owns sizable stakes in fossil fuel-fired generation, including coal.