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JetBlue continues its quarterly losing streak, but its loss isn’t as bad as Wall Street expected

Shares of JetBlue ticked down in premarket trading on Tuesday.

JetBlue continued its quarterly losing streak when it reported third-quarter earnings on Tuesday morning, but its loss wasn’t as deep as analysts expected.

The carrier posted a net loss of $143 million, compared to Wall Street’s estimate of $154 million. The airline, which boosted its Q3 sales outlook last month, bumped its capacity by 1% in the quarter ended in September, in line with its forecast from July. JetBlue shares ticked down more than 1% in premarket trading.

The company reported a loss per share of $0.40, beating analyst estimates of a $0.43 loss per share.
Revenue was $2.32 billion, in line with estimates and down about 2% year over year.
In the year through September, JetBlue has flown 29.6 million passengers, down more than 3% from the same stretch last year.

JetBlue’s costs per seat mile excluding fuel grew 4.6% from last year, in line with its forecast.

“We are optimistic the demand environment will continue to improve through the end of the year,“ said JetBlue President Marty St. George, who added that demand for premium seats is expected to be stronger than core economy offerings. JetBlue said premium revenue per seat mile was 6 points higher versus core, in line with other airlines’ Q3 results.

For the rest of the year, JetBlue said it expects its costs per seat mile to grow between 3% and 5% in Q4. The airline anticipates those costs to grow between 5% and 6% for the full year, a narrower range than it previously forecast.

During the third quarter, investors piled into JetBlue stock when low-cost rival Spirit filed for bankruptcy in August. Wall Street sees JetBlue and Frontier Airlines as the biggest beneficiaries of Spirit’s troubles, and both carriers have attempted to purchase Spirit in recent years. Earlier this month, Spirit told investors it was “actively engaged in discussions with a number of interested counterparties,” reigniting rumors of a potential acquisition.

Luke Kawa2h

Trump Media rises on plans to make event contracts available on Truth Social in partnership with Crypto.com

Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group are up after the company announced that it will be making prediction markets available on its Truth Social platform through its partnership with Crypto.com.

Users “will be able to trade prediction contracts related to major events and milestones, such as political elections, interest and inflation rate changes, commodity prices on gold and crude oil, events across all major sports leagues, and more,” per the press release. Beta testing is to begin “in the near future,” followed by a full US launch with designs on a global rollout.

Speech is free and talk is cheap — until you put your money where your mouth is. Prediction markets are a booming business, with Piper Sandler estimating that volumes at Kalshi and Polymarket are poised to be up 91% month on month in October, driven in part by interest into contracts tied to the outcomes of sporting events.

The ascension of prediction markets has been viewed as negative for the “traditional” domains for online sports betting, with the likes of DraftKings and Flutter Entertainment suffering as prediction market activity linked to sports picks up steam. Both these firms, which are looking to increase their footprints in the event contracts space, are selling off this morning as this new entrant also threatens to eat away at market share.

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions. Event contracts trading is offered by Robinhood Derivatives, LLC, a registered futures commission merchant with the CFTC.)

Luke Kawa3h

Cameco soars on partnership with US government and Brookfield to deploy new nuclear reactors stateside

Shares of Cameco Corp are surging in premarket trading after the Canada-based uranium company announced that it and Brookfield Asset Management have signed a binding term sheet with the US government to build nuclear reactors in the US via their jointly owned Westinghouse Electric business.

(Brookfield and Cameco acquired 51% and 49% of Westinghouse Electric, respectively, in a 2023 deal.)

As a uranium provider to nuclear power plants, Cameco has the opportunity to benefit not just through its Westinghouse exposure, but also by having a bigger market to supply.

Shares of no-revenue nuclear company Oklo as well as Nuscale both popped on this news, but since pared gains.

The aggregate investment value of these new projects is “at least” $80 billion, per the press release. The US government will take care of arranging financing, permitting, and approvals, and Westinghouse will construct nuclear facilities which “are expected to generate reliable and secure power for the American grid, including powering significant data center and compute capacity to drive growth in artificial intelligence in the United States.”

The agreement will see the US government get a 20% share of any cash distributions tied to this project in excess of $17.5 billion. If that milestone has been hit on or prior to January 2029 and the valuation of Westinghouse is expected to be $30 billion or higher, the US government can demand an IPO of this division and the ability to accumulate a 20% stake in this entity.

Corning tumbles despite in-line to positive Q3 results and bright Q4 outlook

AI has been a source of surging demand for the 174-year-old company’s fiber-optic cables, which are used to help link servers in data centers.

Matt Phillips4h

Claire Yubin Oh5h

UPS spikes after reporting Q3 profits way ahead of expectations, as cost savings flow through to bottom line

UPS delivered a rosy set of results that sent the stock up as much as 17.7% in premarket trading on Tuesday, with the logistics giant’s cost-cutting efforts beginning to show results in its third-quarter profits.

The company’s adjusted earnings per share came in at $1.74 for the quarter, beating the $1.32 average analyst estimate compiled by Bloomberg. Revenue also topped expectations, coming at $21.4 billion, and UPS now expects ~$24 billion for Q4 — above prior expectations from analysts, who were penciling in $23.8 billion.

The company’s CEO, Carol Tomé, said in the press release:

“We are executing the most significant strategic shift in our company’s history, and the changes we are implementing are designed to deliver long-term value for all stakeholders. With the holiday shipping season nearly upon us, we are positioned to run the most efficient peak in our history while providing industry-leading service to our customers for the eighth consecutive year.”

Indeed, UPS has been on a large-scale turnaround plan lately, focusing on efficiency, after its demand was hit by tariff uncertainties and stiff competition. The company has trimmed down less profitable deliveries from Amazon and says it has cut a whopping ~34,000 jobs from its operational workforce so far this year, as of Tuesday. The company’s also closed or consolidated a number of packaging facilities, and says it is on track to achieve $3.5 billion worth of total cost savings in 2025, relative to last year.

Luke Kawa5h

Strive’s new wave of retail bulls have nearly completely vanquished the shorts

Shares of Strive Inc. are on the back foot this morning as a torrid two-day rally that saw the stock rise 90% amid back-to-back records for call options traded begins to cool.

JPMorgan strategist Arun Jain observed that the short interest in the stock tumbled from north of 20 million shares to a negligible amount, as the stock soared thanks to heavy retail buying in recent sessions.

JPM ASST retail imbalance and short interest

(For the record, 20 million in short interest pales in comparison to the nearly 1.3 billion in volumes over the course of Friday and Monday, another reminder that even successful short squeezes are defined more by the enthusiasm of new buyers.)

The elimination of that forced buyer base might be serving as a bit of a “mission accomplished” signal for bulls in the near term.