Issue with Auto-Blend - Resulting merged image not showing in the Layers panel

Hello. I've been running into a problem lately Auto-Blend (stack images option) that bugs me. My goal is to achieve focus stacking. It used to be that I Auto-Aligned several images, then did Auto-Blend and the end-result merged image was showing up as a separate layer in the Layers panel, on top of all the other layers (for each image). Recently though (and can't tell exactly when) I am not getting the merged image in the layers panel anymore. Just the images that where stacked together. I've been in touch with Tech Support with no success so far. All my software is up-to-date (running Windows 10-64 bit). I reinstalled PS (even oldwer versions). No success. I even installed brand new on another computer, no success there either.  It could be something very silly like one parameter in the Preferences, or more complcated (like a BUG!!!). Has anyone experienced this behavior? I hope my description of the issue makes sense. Thanks. Ron