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How the Senior Tax Deduction Interacts With Your Social Security Income

Filed Under: Money.com, SUCCESS

Anyone can use the standard tax deduction, but older adults now get an extra perk.
Recent temporary changes to the tax code via the One Big Beautiful Bill offer people older than 65 the ability to deduct an additional $6,000. That’s on top of the standard deduction. While up to 85% of Social Security benefits are taxable, the added deduction can help you get lower your taxable income and overall tax bill.

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What the deduction is (and what it doesn’t do)
The deduction is for $6,000 per person from tax years 2025 through 2028, and qualifying couples get to deduct $12,000 each year. That’s on top of the standard deduction, which ultimately reduces how much you pay in taxes.
While the tax deduction can reduce Social Security taxes, you can use it even if you delay Social Security benefits until you turn 70. As long as you are at least 65 years old, you can get an extra $6,000 deduction.
A $6,000 deduction does not reduce your final tax bill by $6,000. That’s what tax credits do, which is why they’re considered more valuable. Still, a $6,000 deduction will reduce your adjusted gross income by that amount for tax purposes. It’s an effortless way to save a few hundred dollars from your annual tax bill.
The deduction does not affect the income thresholds that are used to determine whether your Social Security benefits are taxable. If you qualify, you can claim the senior deduction on Schedule 1-A when you’re doing your taxes whether you claim the standard deduction or itemize.
Income limits for the senior deduction
The $6,000 senior deduction gets a little smaller for every dollar above $75,000 in modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) for a single filer, and $150,000 for a couple filing jointly.
It’s a gradual cliff, with single filers completely ineligible for the $6,000 deduction if their MAGI reaches or exceeds $175,000. The limit is $250,000 in MAGI for couples filing jointly.
How and why to stay up to date on the rule
The current tax code has this rule expiring in 2028 — though that could change if Congress passes legislation that extends it.
You can confirm the current rules on the IRS’s website before filing your taxes. It’s an extra tax break you can count on for now, but it’s a good idea to be attentive in 2027 and 2028 when details about the rule’s future may be established.

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Celestica sees 2027 sales nearly doubling to $40 billion

Filed Under: SUCCESS, The Street

Celestica expects revenue to nearly double to $40 billion in 2027, a 90% increase from its outlook for this year, as major cloud and artificial intelligence customers ramp up demand for networking equipment and custom computing systems.

The Canadian technology company designs and manufactures hardware used in large data centers, including high-speed network switches and systems built around specialized AI processors. 

The forecast follows a strong third quarter. Celestica’s revenue jumped 83% from a year earlier to $5.83 billion, and adjusted earnings more than doubled to $3.30 per share, exceeding the company’s previous guidance. 

Celestica (CLS) also raised its 2026 revenue forecast to $21 billion from $20.5 billion in its third-quarter earnings announcement on Oct. 26.

Celestica shares jumped 12.62% to $277.76 in afternoon trading on Oct. 27.

Google and OpenAI programs fuel Celestica’s growth

Celestica’s Connectivity & Cloud Solutions business, which supplies data-center networking and computing equipment, generated $4.87 billion in third-quarter revenue, up 102% from a year earlier.

Revenue from its Compute & Storage business grew 242%, driven by higher volumes of AI computing systems and demand for storage products, according to the company’s quarterly filing.

Also read: Broadcom gets major OpenAI boost in AI chip race

Google is one of the customers behind Celestica’s expansion plans.

Celestica is increasing its U.S. manufacturing capacity to support systems built around  Google’s Tensor Processing Units, or TPUs, specialized chips designed to handle AI tasks. The company, which describes itself as a preferred manufacturing partner for Google’s data-center hardware, expects its U.S. expansion to be completed in 2027.

Celestica is also preparing to ramp production of hardware systems built around OpenAI’s Jalapeño AI accelerator.

OpenAI designed the processor with help from Broadcom, which provides chip implementation and networking technology. Celestica contributes circuit board, server rack, and system engineering expertise to help bring the platform into large-scale production.

The companies announced the Jalapeño project in June, with plans to expand the custom AI computing platform over multiple generations.

Beyond custom AI systems, Celestica supplies networking equipment that connects large numbers of processors inside data centers.

Its 800-gigabit and 1.6-terabit Ethernet switches help move data between AI chips at high speeds. As cloud operators build larger AI clusters, they need faster connections to prevent data transfers from slowing down computing workloads.

Earlier this month, Celestica introduced the DS6005, a liquid-cooled network switch designed to support dense AI clusters and reduce power consumption.

zhihao / Getty Images

At its Oct. 27 investor and Analyst Day, Celestica said customer demand forecasts for 2028 are already meaningfully higher than its $40 billion revenue outlook for 2027.

Management said those projections are based on programs Celestica has already won. However, the forecasts still depend on customer deployment schedules and do not represent guaranteed future revenue.

Meeting the expected demand will require Celestica to expand its manufacturing capacity before many of the planned AI systems are ready for delivery.

Celestica plans up to $2 billion to expand production

Celestica expects to spend $1.5 billion to $2 billion on capital investments in 2027, up from roughly $1 billion planned for 2026.

The company is adding production capacity at its U.S. facilities in Texas, upgrading operations in Mexico and expanding its manufacturing campus in Thailand.

Some of the investment will also go toward additional electrical capacity and automated production lines to assemble and test complex AI systems.

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Celestica must pay for much of that expansion before the new equipment generates revenue.

The company lowered its 2026 non-GAAP free-cash-flow forecast to $460 million from $600 million, citing additional working capital needed to prepare for next year’s growth.

Working capital includes money tied up in inventory and other operating needs. Celestica may need to buy components and increase production before customers pay for the completed hardware.

Management said during its Oct. 27 earnings call that it expects a net use of cash in 2027 as capital spending and working capital requirements increase.

Celestica has already raised additional funds to support its expansion. The company completed a $3.45 billion stock offering in August and ended September with approximately $4 billion in cash and cash equivalents.

The expansion also leaves Celestica exposed to changes in the plans of its largest customers. 

Its latest quarterly filing shows that one customer accounted for 35% of third-quarter revenue, while its 10 largest customers generated 85%.

If a major customer delays an AI project, changes its hardware requirements, or cuts planned spending, Celestica could be left with production capacity built for orders that arrive later than expected.

The next test will be whether Celestica can bring its new factories and production lines online fast enough to deliver the nearly $19 billion in additional annual revenue it expects in 2027.

Related: Morgan Stanley just made a bold call on Amazon stock

What Jim Cramer is watching as Anthropic heads to Nasdaq

Filed Under: SUCCESS, The Street

Wall Street spent much of 2026 waiting for the AI giants to go public. Now that the moment is arriving, one of the market’s loudest voices is asking whether investors have enough money to buy them all. It is a question about supply, not about whether AI works.

The timing is hard to ignore. Anthropic filed its public IPO paperwork on Oct. 26, and reports have said the listing could value the company at $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion.

That would put it in the same league as SpaceX, which listed in June, according to Reuters. Its arrival turns a long-running debate into a live test.

Anthropic’s filing puts a price tag on the AI boom

The prospectus shows how quickly the business has grown. Anthropic reported $16.3 billion in revenue for the first half of 2026 and plans to list on Nasdaq under the ticker ANT, aiming for a mid-November debut. It reported an operating loss of $693 million over the same period.

Also read: Meta and Microsoft just sent employees a memo about Anthropic

The spending is just as striking. Anthropic disclosed future obligations of roughly $518 billion for compute, covering data centres, equipment and cloud services, in an earlier filing. By the time it filed its S-1 on Oct. 26, Reuters reported those commitments had grown to more than $600 billion across approximately eight partners.

It is also paying SpaceX about $1.25 billion a month for access to the Colossus data center in Tennessee, under a deal running through May 2029. Commitments of that size require steady access to capital.

That is the kind of scale behind Cramer’s worry. Even before the public filing, Anthropic had told investors it expected to spend at least $518 billion over the next decade building AI infrastructure with six partners, according to TheStreet. That figure climbed further by the time the S-1 was filed. Axios editor Dan Primack said the S-1 marked a shift toward using public markets to finance compute spending.

Key details are still missing. The prospectus did not say how many shares Anthropic will sell or at what price, and it flagged risks from AI itself as well as to the company’s business model. The size of the raise will go a long way toward answering Cramer’s question.

A crowded market for new shares

SpaceX set the tone in June with the largest IPO on record. Its total proceeds reached $85.7 billion after underwriters exercised their option to buy additional shares, Reuters reported. That one deal alone soaked up a huge pool of investor cash.

The overall pipeline has been unusually heavy. By early summer, 65 U.S. IPOs had raised $114.1 billion in 2026, more than seven times the amount raised in the same period a year earlier. Cramer now puts the year’s IPO total at $148 billion.

More is on the way. OpenAI filed confidentially earlier this year, and Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar told employees on Aug. 19 that the company will be public in 2027, and possibly sooner. OpenAI raised $122 billion at an $852 billion valuation in March, the largest private round on record.

The debt market is carrying its share of the load too. Alphabet raised $20 billion in a single bond sale in February, after Meta issued nearly $30 billion in bonds the previous October, Axios reported. Oracle’s bond offerings, the outlet noted, have not fared as well as those from Meta or Alphabet.

Anthropic filed its public IPO paperwork on Oct. 26, and reports have said the listing could value the company at $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion.VCG / Getty Images

Why this is not 2000, and why it still rhymes

There are reasons to think the market can handle it. JPMorgan strategists argued that corporate demand alone may have the capacity to absorb a large share of the equity supply coming to market. Record buybacks and cash-funded mergers both help pull shares off the market.

History offers some comfort as well. Past mega-offerings have not reliably signalled market peaks. That nuance matters for anyone tempted to treat every big listing as a sell signal. Cramer has stressed that today’s AI leaders are so well capitalised the boom does not have to end the way the dot-com era did.

More Artificial Intelligence:

AI’s biggest business opportunity may not look like AI

AI racks are outgrowing old power: 2 chipmakers have a strategy

BofA splits software into winners and losers as AI agents arrive

The real test is how investors price that spending. Anthropic’s IPO will be the first chance for Wall Street to put a public value on its locked-in infrastructure bets, according to TheStreet. A strong reception would ease Cramer’s fears, while a weak one could confirm them.

Profitability will be part of that debate. Anthropic reported a net loss of $80.7 billion through June, though nearly $72 billion of that came from a non-cash accounting charge tied to convertible bonds, not from operations.

Cramer is not calling a top

Supply alone may not end a bull market. Cramer’s point is that it weakens the rally until a bad quarter, a rate hike or a run on margin can finish the job, as reported by CNBC. That is a slow-burn risk rather than a sudden one.

For everyday investors, the signal to watch is how the biggest deals trade after they list. Investors expect Anthropic to go public at a valuation near $2 trillion, which would top SpaceX’s $1.77 trillion IPO valuation. A smooth debut would suggest the market still has room for more.

The AI story itself may be sound. The question Cramer is raising is whether there is enough money to fund it all at once. PitchBook’s John Atkins said in February that as much as half a trillion dollars more in bonds could be issued this year. The next few months of IPOs and bond sales will show whether investors can absorb it all.

Related: Jim Cramer sees something Wall Street may be missing in Broadcom

What Does the Mortgage Application Process Really Look Like?

Filed Under: Money.com, SUCCESS

Key Takeaways

Mortgage applications move from a soft credit check to prequalification, preapproval, underwriting, appraisal and closing; most borrowers apply online.
Online applications take 10 to 15 minutes to complete; tools such as bank linking and automatic document pulls vary by lender.
Missing paperwork is the top hurdle, per Veterans United’s Katie Rose; have pay stubs, W-2s, two years of tax returns and bank statements ready.

For many homebuyers, applying for a mortgage can feel daunting, especially if it’s your first loan. But the application process has become much easier than the days of making copies and hauling boxes of documents.
Although you’ll still need to provide plenty of paperwork, from income verification to credit reports, most loan applications can be completed online in minutes, especially with an experienced lender to guide you through every step.
Not every mortgage is the same, though, nor is every mortgage application. Here’s what to expect when you apply for a mortgage, and how it can differ from lender to lender (or even loan to loan).
How the mortgage application process works
The conventional mortgage application process is usually pretty straightforward. You start by clicking an apply button, submitting a lead, and providing basic information: whether you want a purchase or refinance loan, your name, location, Social Security number, and income.
Using that information, the lender will run a soft credit check and prequalify you for a loan amount based on that preliminary information. Somewhere along this timeline (it varies by lender), you’ll be asked to create an account on the lender’s loan portal. On this secure site, you can upload all required documents if you decide to continue with the application.
At this point, you’ll need to provide all required documentation, including your most recent pay stubs, W-2s, tax returns for the last two years, and bank statements. Your lender will provide a full list of the documents you’ll need to complete your application.
Once you’ve submitted all the paperwork, the lender reviews it and can issue a preapproval letter, which provides a more accurate estimate of how much you can borrow than a prequalification.
An underwriter will then verify all the information you’ve provided and ensure your application meets all the loan requirements. If it does, the lender will usually send an appraiser to assess the home’s value, then move the loan to closing. This is when you finalize the loan documents and pay any closing costs.
That process can get more complicated with a government-backed loan like an FHA loan, and even more so with a specialized loan like a VA mortgage, which has additional service and documentation requirements. It can become even more complicated for borrowers stationed overseas or being assigned to new duty stations.
Fortunately, most lenders let you complete your mortgage application online, which is the most popular option among today’s borrowers, according to Katie Rose, NMLS 860643, a senior loan officer with Veterans United.
“Most people like to do [the application] online because they don’t have to leave their house or they’re active duty and it’s difficult to go into a facility,” Rose says.
How applications vary across lenders
A mortgage application does two things: verify who you (and your co-borrower) are and ensure you can cover your mortgage payment for the foreseeable future.
That means every application will ask for information about your job, income, assets, debts and credit. It will also need info about the price range you’re shopping in (or the property you’re eyeing, if you’ve already found one) and your personal details, like name, Social Security Number and contact info.
That doesn’t mean every application is the same, though. As Rose explains, the information collected stays pretty much the same from lender to lender; the difference comes down to the tools built into the application.
“Some tools can link bank accounts and pull statements automatically, or upload documents right from your phone, so you’re not chasing down paperwork on your own,” Rose says. “Specialized lenders can often go a step further too. For military borrowers, that might mean verifying service-related eligibility automatically instead of tracking down paperwork yourself.”
Money reviewed the loan application processes of four national lenders: loanDepot, Veterans United Home Loans, Churchill Mortgage and Georgia’s Own Credit Union. This is how their applications work:
loanDepot
The loanDepot application is a streamlined seven-step process that requires personal info, property details, financial assets, and other basics found in other loan apps. It also includes secure bank linking, allowing the lender to automatically pull bank and asset statements instead of requiring the borrower to scan and upload them manually.
Its conclusion is the most notable part of loanDepot’s application process. Instead of simply entering your information and hitting submit, at the end of the application, borrowers are given a grid of “loan offers.” These detail the loans, terms, monthly payments, and interest rates loanDepot is offering you based on the details you just input. You can then choose the loan that works best for you.
For veteran and military applicants, loanDepot also asks some additional questions regarding military service and can pull their COE directly from the VA.
Veterans United
Veterans United is a mortgage lender specializing in VA loans, mortgages backed by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. As such, it’s no surprise that its mortgage application process has a military slant.
Veterans United has developed an application that simplifies and accelerates the process. You’ll provide information about your pay, grade, years of service, branch, Permanent Change of Station (PCS) orders, and Expiration Term of Service (ETS) dates.
However, automation is what makes the application and review process stand out. You can link your myPay account directly to the Veterans United myVU app, letting them access your Leave and Earnings Statement and bank statements in minutes instead of waiting for you to upload them. The lender will also instantly pull the applicant’s Certificate of Eligibility (COE) directly from the VA, a process that can take a non-VA lender several days.
Once you submit an application, a Veterans United loan officer will contact you within a couple of hours to finalize a plan.
Overall, Veterans United’s application is quick and streamlined. You can complete it entirely online, though you can get help by phone if you need it. The process took us about 15 minutes, though you could get a preapproval decision in as little as 12 minutes.
Churchill Mortgage
Churchill Mortgage also offers an efficient, streamlined mortgage app. The online application takes about 15 minutes (it may take slightly longer if you add a spouse or co-borrower) and requires similar information about housing history, personal info, property details, work history, and more. Using the information you provide, you’ll work with a loan specialist to discuss your options, which can include conventional, FHA and VA loans.
One standout element of Churchill’s process is that, after you submit, you’re sent to your personal dashboard, where you can see your remaining to-dos. You can also run payment calculations, connect your bank accounts, upload documentation, and monitor your loan application’s progress.
VA loan process
If you’re seeking a VA loan, you’ll indicate military service in the application. You’ll then be asked to enter what branch you served in and for how long. This lets the loan officer know a VA loan may be an option for your purchase. If you choose a VA loan, you’ll be asked for additional information. There are also questions about whether you’re a first-time homebuyer or if you’ve taken a homebuyer education course (the answers to these can affect your loan options and pricing, a Churchill rep says).
Georgia’s Own Credit Union
Georgia’s Own Credit Union has a streamlined application for all their loan types, but we looked at their FHA process. The application takes 10 to 15 minutes to complete if you have all your documents on hand.
A borrower starts the initial application process through the credit union’s website by answering four basic questions: whether you want to buy a home or refinance it, your existing debts, your gross monthly income and the state you live in.
You’ll then be asked whether you’re a first-time or repeat buyer, the address and zip code of the property, the type of home, the number of units, purchase price and down payment. With this basic information, you will get an initial estimate of your loan amount.
Answer a few more questions about your credit score, whether you served in the military, how long you plan to stay in the home, and whether it will be your primary residence. You’ll then be given a loan estimate for a 30-year and 15-year FHA loan. You can click a button to see a list of estimated closing costs, and you can also see how your loan estimate changes if you decide to buy points to lower your quoted rate.
If you choose one of the offered options, click a button to start the full application. You’ll need to create a credit union account, where you can securely upload all required documents (pay stubs, W-2s, bank statements, etc.) and track your loan. After you submit your application, a loan officer will contact you within a day to discuss next steps, including starting underwriting and scheduling an appraisal.
Common hurdles and how to make your mortgage application go more smoothly
Though loan applications can vary slightly by lender, mortgage professionals say a few common snags are universal.
Documentation is the big one. No matter the lender, mortgage applications require a lot of paperwork to back up your information. You need tax returns, bank statements, pay stubs, statements for your investment and retirement accounts, and more. If you don’t have these pulled and organized before applying, it could hold up your application and delay underwriting. Depending on market conditions, you could even miss out on a lower interest rate.
“Documents seem to be the biggest hiccup,” Rose says. “If everybody’s got their documentation ready, it makes for smooth sailing.”
You don’t necessarily need physical copies of everything, though. Digital versions can work — but make sure you can access those items easily before starting your application.
“Know how to log into the various things. Your bank account or the payroll service that your employer uses, for example,” says Chris DeRuischer, home loan specialist at Churchill. “Can you log in and get a copy of your 401(k) statement? It might not all be requested, but just knowing the log-ins and having all of that organized is very helpful.”
Frozen credit is another common issue in the application process. Lenders almost always need to pull a borrower’s credit to verify debts and assess how they pay and manage bills. If their credit is frozen, a common strategy to stave off identity theft and fraudulent charges, it can stop an application in its tracks.
“It’s a pretty popular thing to do,” DeRuischer says. “If you have your credit frozen, you will need to go on the app with each of the bureaus, unfreeze your credit score, thaw those, and then we’ll be able to pull the credit report after that.”
Deruischer recommends keeping your credit unfrozen for at least 30 days, since most lenders will need to re-pull credit just before closing. (They often do this to make sure nothing major has changed about your debts or payment history since applying.)
Ray Hicks, home loan specialist at Churchill Mortgage, also notes that getting hung up on the nitty-gritty details can hold an application back, too. While you should always enter the most accurate numbers and data possible, a few slightly off details won’t derail your mortgage.
“What I tell my clients when filling out their application is to do their best,” Hicks says. “They aren’t going to mess anything up. Of course, put in your correct personal info, but anything past that, if there’s an error, we’ll get it corrected on our end.”

What To Know About the Hottest Corner of the Semiliquid Market

Filed Under: SUCCESS

Funds that invest in privately held infrastructure like toll roads and data centers held $31.7 billion in assets as of mid-2026, and investors may be tempted to dive in. Here are three factors they should consider first:The direct infrastructure category includes a diverse set of assets, each with different risks and rewards.Since most of these funds are relatively new (16 of 22 vehicles launched between 2023 and 2025), they haven’t dealt with significant redemption requests.Although borrowing at the fund level isn’t widely used in direct infrastructure at the moment, it’s something investors should watch.2026 Direct Infrastructure LandscapeLet’s dig into each of those critical variables.Navigating the Infrastructure MenuA diverse group of assets is rolled up under the infrastructure umbrella, but the risks associated with those assets differ. The asset class is most often sliced into four subsectors—core, core plus, value added, and opportunistic—with the risk of loss increasing as one moves from core to opportunistic. Investors and financial advisors should thus weigh the risk/reward profiles of each and their portfolio needs before making an allocation decision.Core assets are established, operational assets with regulated cash flows whose returns are typically income-based. Examples include toll roads, airports, and water systems.Core-plus assets are also operational but carry additional risks relating to growth, expansion, or recontracting, which introduces capital appreciation into their expected returns. Some examples are fiber networks and contracted storage facilities.Value-added assets can have substantial development risk relating to platform buildouts, turnarounds, or operational improvement projects; accordingly, they have greater capital appreciation potential. Data center development is a timely example, and one that has grown in prominence amid the artificial intelligence buildout.Opportunistic assets have private equitylike returns in exchange for risks relating to construction, merchants, or politics. Examples include early-stage buildouts for fiber, data center, and AI-driven power and cooling projects.Fundraising data from the past two decades show that each bucket made up a substantial portion of private fund infrastructure allocations, accounting for anywhere between 15% (core plus) and 33% (core) of assets.The Liquidity Test: Understanding Limits and ProrationsThe lack of seasoning on these direct infrastructure vehicles means that their investors have yet to face true liquidity tests. Such tests have already played out in nontraded REITs in 2023 and in private credit this year.As Morningstar has documented, semiliquid funds intentionally limit how much money investors can redeem to harvest an illiquidity premium. As a result, the amount each investor receives back is a function of how much other investors asked for in aggregate during a given redemption window, which typically occurs quarterly. In periods of stress and negative headlines, redemption requests can exceed the limit.If that happens, managers may choose to redeem an additional 2 percentage points beyond the stated limit during a given redemption window, such as increasing a 5% tender offer to 7%. They are not obligated to exercise that discretion, however, and investors should not expect they will do so. When requests exceed a fund’s tender-offer limit, the manager prorates each investor’s redemption request; that is, investors only get back a proportional amount of what they asked for.Broad-based inflows have so far prevented such a scenario from unfolding across most of the largest direct infrastructure strategies.Across the three largest direct infrastructure strategies, only Brookfield Infrastructure Income has redeemed more than 1.0% of outstanding shares during a single quarter thus far. Brookfield, however, reported that more than 90% of the shares it repurchased in the last two quarters of 2025 were repurchased by a Brookfield-managed fund, suggesting third-party redemption pressures have been negligible, as they have been for both KKR and Blackstone’s semiliquid offerings.An Area to Watch: LeverageFund-level financial leverage is not currently a popular strategy across direct infrastructure managers—just five of 22 strategies reported nonzero outstanding fund-level borrowings in their most recent public filings.While leverage can enhance returns (or detract from them when the cost of leverage is greater than unleveraged returns), it can also help finance new asset acquisitions or allow a fund to meet share repurchase requests without selling assets. The presence alone of permanent financial leverage isn’t good or bad, but it should at the very least be considered alongside other potentially distinguishing characteristics, like liquidity terms (redemption amounts and cadences) and fund expenses.The greenness of many of these strategies makes the trajectory of permanent fund-level leverage across the category an area to monitor. More than half the peer group reported net asset values of less than $500 million as of the most recent filings. As a larger portion of the category achieves scale, it is possible that more managers will employ permanent fund-level leverage.

JetBlue CEO says creditors are wrong about restructuring

Filed Under: SUCCESS, The Street

When a company’s senior creditors engage a restructuring adviser, the bond market reads it as a warning.

For JetBlue Airways (JBLU), a Wall Street Journal report that a group of senior creditors had hired restructuring adviser PJT Partners sent shares to a new low and put the airline’s balance sheet under a public spotlight it did not welcome.

The stock recovered sharply. JetBlue rose nearly 19% in early trading after its third-quarter earnings report, even though the company posted a wider quarterly loss. Investors chose to focus on management’s fourth-quarter outlook and a stated target for reaching profitability by 2028.

Chief Executive Joanna Geraghty did not sidestep the creditor issue. “We have no intention, no plans to file for bankruptcy. We are not engaged with any restructuring company,” she told CNBC.

She described a “fundamental disconnect between the narrative in the bond market and what our financial results actually demonstrate.”

Why JetBlue’s Q3 loss was wider

JetBlue posted a net loss of $257 million for the three months ended Sept. 30. A year earlier the loss was $143 million. The airline’s fuel bill climbed 61% to $868 million, accounting for most of the wider shortfall.

Also read: JetBlue has a boarding policy designed to anger passengers

The balance sheet tells a different story than the income statement. JetBlue ended the quarter with $2.2 billion in liquidity. Its unencumbered asset base, collateral the company could draw on in a financing, stood at $7 billion, including $2.8 billion in aircraft and engines. Those are the figures management pointed to when arguing the restructuring concern does not match the operating reality.

Revenue per available seat mile (RASM), a standard measure of how efficiently an airline converts capacity into revenue, is expected to rise as much as 22% in the fourth quarter from a year earlier. That would bring the full-year increase to between 13.5% and 14.5%. The fourth-quarter guidance was the number investors reacted to most.

Average fares backed up the revenue outlook. JetBlue’s average fare in the third quarter rose more than 19% from a year earlier to $245.11, up from $205.67. The company said travel demand has held firm even at higher price points.

JetBlue’s case for $1 EPS by 2028

Chief Financial Officer Ursula Hurley said the company has sufficient liquidity and financing options to reach its 2028 targets. She put those targets at a minimum of $1 in earnings per share and positive free cash flow by that year.

“JetBlue believes it has the liquidity and financing options to build a strong bridge to at least $1 in earnings per share and positive free cash flow in 2028,” Hurley said.

JetBlue has not posted an annual profit since 2019. Getting from the current loss position to the 2028 target requires the company to sustain higher fares, expand premium revenue, hold down costs and reduce debt, in a sequence that leaves little room for one of those to slip.

A new domestic first-class section recently went on sale as part of the premium push. The product is designed to attract higher-spending travelers and lift unit revenue above what a coach-only cabin can generate. That move places JetBlue alongside a broader industry trend toward premium differentiation, though the airline is doing it with a more constrained balance sheet than its larger competitors.

JetBlue carried $8.4 billion in total debt as of Sept. 30. That number, alongside the fuel cost jump, is the source of the creditor concern Geraghty pushed back against.NurPhoto / Getty Images

The risks that haven’t gone away

JetBlue carried $8.4 billion in total debt as of Sept. 30. That number, alongside the fuel cost jump, is the source of the creditor concern Geraghty pushed back against. Servicing that debt while the company is still posting net losses narrows the margin for operational setbacks.

Higher jet fuel costs have affected the whole industry. JetBlue is more exposed than most of its competitors. Delta (DAL), American, and United carry a wider mix of revenue sources and deeper cash reserves. A fuel spike that a larger carrier absorbs in a quarter can push JetBlue’s 2028 results well below what management has projected.

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The strategic setbacks of recent years compounded the debt burden. JetBlue’s attempted acquisition of Spirit Airlines was blocked by a federal judge. A regional partnership with American Airlines (AAL) was also blocked by regulators.

JetBlue now has the Blue Sky partnership with United Airlines (UAL), but neither deal replaced what a Spirit combination would have provided: a lower cost structure and more domestic capacity at competitive price points.

The company has said it is not pursuing another large acquisition. That means the internal turnaround is the full plan. RASM growth, cost control, debt reduction and premium-seat adoption all have to move in the right direction at the same time.

A deterioration in any one of those would put the 2028 timeline under renewed pressure.

How JetBlue proves the CEO right

Fourth-quarter RASM is the first test. Geraghty and Hurley pointed to the up-to-22% increase as evidence the revenue picture is improving. If the actual result comes in below that range, the creditor narrative will return. If it lands at or above guidance, it starts to support the argument that the bond market is reading the company’s situation incorrectly.

Fuel costs in the fourth quarter will run alongside the revenue question. The 61% increase in Q3 was the main reason the net loss widened from a year earlier. A sustained rise in jet fuel prices could offset fourth-quarter revenue gains and push the result below what management has projected.

Debt reduction is the longer test. At $8.4 billion in total obligations, JetBlue needs to generate consistent positive cash flow before it can begin to bring that figure down. The 2028 free-cash-flow target is the starting point for that process, not the end of it. Investors watching the stock from here need to track whether the company’s cash position is improving each quarter, not just whether earnings guidance is being met.

The stock climbed nearly 19% after the report. Geraghty’s case for the company’s health centers on the Q4 revenue guidance and the $7 billion in unencumbered assets she cited on the earnings call. Those numbers get tested when the fourth-quarter report comes out.

Related: JetBlue creditors hire bankruptcy advisers as debt concerns grow