American Express Company (AXP) — Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Thank you, Donna, and thank you all for joining today's call. As a reminder, before we begin, today's discussion contains forward-looking statements about the company's future business and financial performance. These are based on management's current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements are included in today's presentation slides and in our reports on file with the SEC. The discussion today also contains non-GAAP financial measures. The comparable GAAP financial measures are included in this quarter's earnings materials as well as the earnings materials for the prior periods we discussed. All of these are posted on our website at ir.americanexpress.com. We'll begin today with Steve Squeri, Chairman and CEO, who will start with some remarks about the company's progress and results. And then Christophe Le Caillec, Chief Financial Officer, will provide a more detailed review of our financial performance. After that, we'll move to a Q&A session on the results with both Steve and Christophe. With that, let me turn it over to Steve.

Thank you, Kerri. Good morning, and thanks for joining us today for our third quarter earnings call. Q3 was our seventh consecutive quarter of strong performance, continuing in the momentum we've built over the last few years and aligned with the growth plan we announced in 2022. It was the sixth consecutive quarter of record revenues which reached $15.4 billion, up 13% year-over-year. Earnings per share of $3.30 was also a new quarterly record. Based on our performance to date, we remain confident in our ability to achieve full-year revenue growth and EPS growth that is consistent with the annual guidance we provided at the beginning of the year. And we are well positioned as we seek to achieve our growth plan aspirations of annual revenue growth in excess of 10% and mid-teens EPS growth in 2024 and beyond in a steady state macro environment. My confidence is based on several factors, including the many attractive opportunities available to us because of the businesses and geographies we operate in, our unique membership model, which powers a virtuous cycle of growth, the success of the strategic investments we've been making in key areas of our business, and our ability to leverage our differentiated business model, which includes our premium global customer base, integrated payments platform, strong partner relationships, and trusted brand. Together, these factors have driven our strong performance over the past two years, including the continued momentum we saw in the third quarter. In the quarter, card member spending remained strong, up 7% year-over-year on an FX adjusted basis. Spending was strongest in our US consumer segment, up 9%, and International Card Services segment up 15% on an FX adjusted basis. And US small business spending increased slightly from a year ago. Millennials and Gen Z consumers continue to be the fastest growing portion of our card member base, with spending from this demographic in the US up 18% year-over-year, and they accounted for more than 60% of all new consumer account acquisitions globally in the quarter. Demand for our products remains robust, particularly for fee-based products, which represented more than 70% of the new accounts acquired in the quarter. Customers continue to be highly satisfied with our products and services, which drives high levels of engagement and retention. We were rated the number one US credit card company for customer satisfaction by J.D. Power for the fourth consecutive year and the 13th time in 17 years of the study. And our credit metrics remain best-in-class as we continue our focus on growing with discipline and a strong focus on risk management across the portfolio. A key reason for the momentum we're seeing is the investments we've been making in innovating our value propositions to deliver generational relevance across all age groups. Resy is a good example of some of the ways we're doing this. We acquired Resy and continue to invest in building out the platform because we know that dining is something that all generations of Card Members care about. We've seen that in our results as restaurants continued to be the largest and one of the fastest growing T&E categories in the third quarter. The number of Resy users, restaurants on the platform, and reservations booked all continue to grow significantly. In Q3, reservations on the platform set another quarterly record. Over the last few years, we've also ramped up the number of exclusive lifestyle experiences, sponsorships, and access to events we offer that appeal to our Card Members across generations and geographies and reinforce the unique value of membership. Our highly popular experiences cut across entertainment, sports, food, art, and fashion. They generate strong on-site engagement with our branded activities and offers, and they help drive interest among prospects. They also continue to attract world-class partners who work with us to add new ways for our Card Members and prospects to experience the power of Amex membership. Earlier this week, we announced our latest sponsorship, an exclusive multi-year agreement with Formula 1 to be the official payments partner of Formula 1 in the Americas. This sponsorship is our first new sports vertical in over 10 years, and it represents a great opportunity to build on the rapidly growing popularity of Formula 1 racing around the world. Another way we're delivering generational relevance is by regularly refreshing and adding value to our products on a global basis. These product enhancements are tailored to the interests and spending patterns of our customers of all age groups in each local market. So far this year, we've made enhancements to over 20 premium products across the company, some of the latest of which were refreshes of our Platinum Card products in Japan, our Business Gold Card in the US, and just yesterday, our Hilton co-branded consumer cards. These examples and many others like them are further enriching our membership model, which helps us attract new premium customers, drive retention and deepen engagement with current customers and add more merchants and partners who provide offers and experiences that deliver additional value. Looking ahead, I feel very good about where we are and where we're going. We'll continue our strategy of investing for growth and adding more differentiated value to our membership model to deliver generational relevance, while continuing to leverage the strengths of our business model, all of which gives us a competitive advantage. I'll now hand the call over to Christophe Le Caillec for additional detail on our quarterly results.

Thank you, Steve, and good morning, everyone. I’m thrilled to be part of my first earnings call where we can discuss our sustained strong momentum, evidenced by our record revenue and earnings per share in the third quarter. I want to take a moment at the beginning to share my insights about the company as someone who has been with it for a long time and has experienced various business climates. Our focus remains on achieving high levels of profitable revenue growth. A key factor enabling that growth has been our disciplined approach to resource allocation. Consequently, the quality of our business is robust, and I'm confident in the sustainability of our growth drivers. We have accelerated our revenue and EPS growth since before the pandemic, and this acceleration is directly attributable to the strategy underlying our growth plan, which Steve highlighted. This quarter, that strategy resulted in an increase of $27 billion in billings compared to the last quarter. We are also generating nearly $2 billion more in revenue and about $600 million more in net income than a year ago, showcasing the earnings potential of our business model. Now let’s examine the specifics of this quarter’s performance, starting with our summary financials. In the third quarter, revenues reached $15.4 billion, marking a record high for the sixth consecutive quarter and an increase of 13% year-over-year. This revenue growth resulted in reported net income of $2.5 billion and earnings per share of $3.30, which is a growth of 34% year-over-year. Moving on to the key drivers of these results, our spend-centric business model begins by looking at billed business. Total billed business grew by $27 billion this quarter compared to last year, a 7% increase on an FX-adjusted basis, as we see the stable growth rates we anticipated. This growth was fueled by a 6% increase in goods and services spending, consistent with last quarter, alongside sustained double-digit growth in travel and entertainment spending, driven by the ongoing demand for travel and dining experiences, particularly with our restaurant spending, which is our largest category, up 13% this quarter. Total network volumes increased by 6% year-over-year on an FX-adjusted basis. It’s important to note that we exited a small product last quarter that was included in our process volumes, which affects our Q3 growth rate, and we expect this impact on year-over-year growth to persist in the coming quarters. As we look at our spending trends across businesses, a few key points stand out. Our US consumer segment saw strong billings growth of 9% this quarter, driven by our commitment to attract, engage, and retain premium Card Members across all generations, particularly with Millennial and Gen Z customers whose spending grew by 18% this quarter. In commercial services, US SME growth was at 2% this quarter, consistent with last quarter. Organic growth in this segment has slowed due to unique dynamics faced by small businesses over recent years, although we still see strong demand for new accounts. Looking ahead, we aim to support SME clients in running their businesses. Billings from our US large and global corporate customers were flat year-over-year. As we’ve mentioned over the years, these customers do not significantly drive growth for us but remain a crucial part of our business model. Meanwhile, international card services showed our highest growth this quarter, with spending from international consumers and from international SME and large corporate customers each increasing by 15%. Overall, the strength in spending from both our US consumers and Card Members outside the US is balancing out the softness we've observed in commercial services over the past few quarters. Taking everything into account, our spending volumes are aligned with our revenue guidance for the year and our long-term goal of sustainable growth rates exceeding pre-pandemic levels. Moving on to loans and Card Member receivables, we experienced year-over-year growth of 15% along with strong sequential growth as our customers rebuild balances. Over 70% of our revolving loan growth in the US comes from our long-term customers. Regarding credit quality, our customer base is demonstrating excellent credit performance. Both write-off and delinquency rates remain fairly flat compared to last quarter and are below pre-pandemic levels. Looking forward, we anticipate that delinquency and write-off rates will rise over time but stay below pre-pandemic levels in the fourth quarter. In terms of capital management, we returned $1.7 billion to shareholders in the third quarter, including $1.3 billion in common stock repurchases and $438 million in dividends, supported by strong earnings. Our CET1 ratio was 10.7%, well above the regulatory minimum of 7%. As we consider the Basel III proposal, we recognize potential improvements may need to be made, and we’re actively engaged in discussions around that. We remain committed to returning excess capital to shareholders while supporting our growth. Looking ahead, we expect revenue growth of approximately 15% for the full year, consistent with our guidance provided earlier. We project variable Card Member engagement expenses to be around 42% of total revenues for the full year, slightly below our original expectations. Our marketing spend is set at about $5.5 billion for the year, and we expect operating expenses to be around $14.5 billion. Our earnings per share guidance remains between $11.00 and $11.40. Our focus will continue to be on delivering sustainable revenue growth exceeding 10% and achieving steady-state EPS growth in a stable macro environment. Before opening the call for questions, I want to mention that Kerri Bernstein is transitioning to the role of Corporate Treasurer. I want to thank Kerri for leading our Investor Relations during a successful period for the company and welcome Kartik Ramachandran as our new Head of Investor Relations. Now, let’s open up the call for your questions.

Thank you, Christophe. Before we open up the lines for Q&A, I will ask those in the queue to please limit yourself to just one question. Thank you for your cooperation. And with that, the operator will now open up the line for questions.

Thanks. Good morning and congrats, Christophe, Kerri, Kartik. Steve, just a question. We hear a lot about the choppy macro backdrop and its impact on spending. I'm just curious if you've seen any changes, behavioral, over the past quarter that might make you more sanguine on the outlook, or do you feel like your customers are unfazed? And just on a related point, I know the Delta stuff, there's been a lot of headlines on the changes that Delta's made to the Medallion qualification process. I'm just curious if you've seen any impact. Thanks.

Thanks, Sanjay. Let me begin with Delta. As Delta makes adjustments, we are aligned with them throughout the process. One of the advantages of having Delta as a partner is their commitment to customer satisfaction. They implemented some changes that elicited feedback, and I believe they responded positively by making further adjustments, which have been well received. However, regarding spending or card acquisition, there has been no impact. We haven't observed any changes in card spending related to Delta or in card acquisition. In fact, Delta card spending increased by nearly 20% year-over-year, which is encouraging. Looking at the US consumer, both the domestic and international sectors remain robust. We recorded a 9% increase in US consumer spending, with goods and services growing by 6% and travel and entertainment increasing by 13%. This momentum continues from a strong baseline. On the international front, we've experienced a 15% increase in spending from our International Card Services, with positive trends in both goods and services and travel and entertainment. It's essential to note that our card base represents a small fraction of the overall US economy. Our strong credit metrics are attributed to our high-quality Card Members, who, to this point, have not faced any adverse impacts. It's worth mentioning that you likely had similar questions around this time last year, and my response was probably the same. Currently, we can only base our management on what we're observing in our business, which is still showing strong growth. We rely on the Blue Chip economic forecast, which suggests a continuation of the current trends. In a stable macroeconomic environment, I am confident in our ability to meet our plans. As Christophe stated, we are well positioned, and as I mentioned earlier, we are well equipped to continue achieving our growth objectives.

Hey, good morning, Steve. Good morning, Christophe.

Good morning.

Look, as a follow-up to Sanjay's question, obviously it was good to see the solid revenue growth, given the challenging economic backdrop. And you're still talking about double-digit revenue growth next year, but maybe just talk about some of the pieces or the drivers you expect to see given what's going on in billing's growth and are you leaning more into lending in order to drive this growth? And then just lastly, like, do we need to see billings to improve in order to be able to drive double digit revenue growth? Thank you.

You asked a lot of questions, Ryan, though they are essentially one question broken into parts. When we look at our model, there are several avenues for generating revenue. We see revenue growth from billing, card fees, and lending. Our current revenue and billing growth align with our long-term goals, and we feel optimistic about where we are on billings growth. It's worth noting that the primary driver of our fee revenue is new card acquisition, rather than raising fees. We've invested around $5.5 billion this year and plan to increase that next year, which boosts our confidence in card acquisition. As Christophe mentioned, there are plenty of great opportunities ahead. Regarding lending, we've indicated multiple times that our current book is stronger than it was in 2019. If our Card Members continue to lend responsibly, given their varying needs over time, we believe our three-pronged revenue model will ensure we can achieve double-digit revenue growth next year.

And maybe, Ryan, I can add one point on the lending side. As Steve said, we have a premium customer base and we grow in lending of that premium customer base. 70% of the balances are coming from established Card Members that we know well. So those Card Members we know revolve with competitors' products and historically we under-index on that. We capture a big share of their spend, a smaller share of that lending. And what we're doing here is just deepening the relationship with them and capturing a bigger share of their revolving needs.

Thank you, and congratulations to everyone. Kerri, it's been great working with you, and I wish you good luck. So, Steve, I have a question about the SMB business, which is really important for you. It's only growing 2%, but I believe there are significant opportunities there. Can you provide some insight into what's happening with the SMB sector and your outlook for it as we move into 2024?

I believe this is the second consecutive quarter of low growth for us. Much of our previous high growth was driven by organic growth, which we haven't seen much of recently from small businesses. However, we remain optimistic about the acquisition opportunities and lending prospects available to us. Small businesses have experienced a unique cycle over the past few years, going from low inventory to stocking up. Despite the slowdown over the last two quarters, we still see significant potential in small businesses, which constitute a major portion of our billings. Our presence spans various sectors, including restaurants, retail, professional services, and construction. We feel confident about this segment and are hopeful that organic growth will return.

Thanks everybody for taking my question and congratulations, Kerri, we've really enjoyed working with you and Christophe. We are looking forward to more dialogue. I just have one question. There was a comment about raising the reserve rate modestly as we move forward. Obviously that's not a function of changing economic outlook because you don't know what that will be. I'm assuming it's a mix shift issue. Can you talk about that a little bit in terms of what components are shifting in the mix and the different reserve rates for those products?

There is still some normalization occurring. Our delinquency rates are relatively stable, though you might notice a slight increase. This is what I meant when I mentioned that we should expect a small increase in the reserve rate. Normalization is still taking place, but our delinquency and write-off rates remain strong compared to our past performance and our peers. There is nothing concerning in that statement; it is just meant to give you a heads-up about what we are observing.

Hi, good morning. Christophe, regarding the Basel III endgame, is the message still the same? It seems there's a significant increase in risk-weighted assets, and I'm wondering if that might lead to a need to reduce buybacks at some point. I would like to hear your thoughts on this.

This set of rules is quite complex, exceeding a thousand pages. To summarize our perspective on Basel III, it's important to note that we generate a significant amount of capital, with a return on equity in the 30% range. Additionally, while our regulatory capital is at 7% CET1, we actually aim for a target of 10% to 11%, which is 300 to 400 basis points above the regulatory requirement. This buffer could potentially be impacted if the Basel III rules are implemented as currently drafted. In essence, our current capital level remains strong in light of those rules. It's also important to mention that the regulators posed questions about how these rules apply to our business, specifically referencing the charge card segment. As you know, over 75% to 78% of our revenue comes from stable and predictable fees, like card fees that we discussed earlier. We are actively in discussions with regulators to determine the best course of action. The outcome is uncertain, but currently, I don’t foresee any changes in our short-term capital management strategies.

Hello, thank you for taking my questions. I want to discuss the relationship between spending and account growth. It seems that the average spending per card or account is leveling off, and account growth is also showing a slight slowdown this quarter, even though you are still adding around 3 million new accounts or cards each quarter. This comes alongside a decrease in marketing this quarter, although it appears that you plan to increase marketing next quarter to reach the $5.5 billion target. My question is whether there is anything specific contributing to the slower account growth or if there's been any change in attrition or issues related to Delta.

No. I think, it comes down to timing. And what happens is quarters happen to cut off on particular days, and that's just the way it is. But no, we're committed to the $5.5 billion overall approximately of marketing. You saw a slight sequential drop. I think we went under the 3 million for the first time in a while. And we look at account growth as, or cards acquired from an overall revenue perspective, but we still see tremendous opportunities out there, which is why we've sort of signaled here, more than signaled, we said we're going to raise our marketing expense for next year as well. So, no, we're not seeing anything at all that gives us pause. And we will continue to acquire those cards as long as those opportunities are out there. So you will see a higher level of marketing spending in the next quarter.

Thank you. Good morning, Steve and Christophe. Welcome to the call.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Can you share any initial thoughts on the open banking rule that the CFPB recently proposed? There's a view that open banking essentially forces banks to hand over the keys to their customer relationships. I was just hoping you could speak to any opportunities that may present for Amex. And then following up on the capital commentary, Christophe, there's a view that you could reduce your op risk if you treated your rewards expense as a contra revenue. Any thoughts on that would be great, thank you.

In terms of open banking, looking at the UK experience, which has had open banking for about a decade, it hasn't significantly affected our business either in a positive or negative way. Therefore, I don't consider it a major threat or opportunity. I want to emphasize that we are offering a membership model product that includes various components beyond just basic payment services. Our product provides numerous advantages in terms of security, fraud protection, and dispute resolution compared to an open banking product. Consequently, I do not view it as either an opportunity or a threat to our business in the short or long term. Now, I will pass the other question to Christophe.

So on Basel, Bill, there are various things that we're discussing with regulators. I don't think it would be useful to go through the list here this morning on the call. But you raise either an important element here, which is that nothing is really changing in our business, right? We're still doing the exact same thing. And so we need to figure out with regulators what the right level of capital here and not be dependent upon accounting treatment or anything like that. So, too early to discuss this in detail. When we have more clarity, we'll provide you with a ton of out of Basel III detail.

Hi, good morning. Pleasure to meet everybody. And, Kerri, thanks so much for all the help. I was just curious on your card member rewards as a percentage of billed business. It stepped down quite nicely quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year. I was just curious if you're seeing anything in particular on the utilization of rewards recently or any commentary around that. Thank you so much.

Yeah. So, yes, and our total VCE, I called out, was lower this quarter at 40%. So as you know, variable card member engagement and rewards is the biggest number there. It's a very large expense base. So we're constantly looking at when we do product refreshes, when we launch products, we're looking at ways to make sure that these value proposition works best and we price for this. And there's always changes, there's always changes as well in terms of how the Card Members choose to redeem their points from one quarter to another. As you know, we are also adding constantly new redemption partners that change the mix in terms of their weighted average cost per point. So there’s, at any point in time, a lot of variables that will impact that ratio. We are very focused on making sure that we have the right ratio versus revenue and we also have the right value proposition that would be compelling in the marketplace. So it's a little bit lower this quarter. I think we said 42% for the full year because we are seeing it's a bit better as well from a full year standpoint. It's still going to be an area of investments for us. It drives a lot of growth as well. That's one of the key reason why Card Members sign up for the cards and engage with it. And we're going to keep working on those value propositions and make sure that we have the right balance here.

The only other point I'll add is that within our value propositions, because of our really premium card base, lots and lots of partners want to work with us and include benefits within our value propositions to reach our Card Members. And so, you know, when you look at the overall value proposition, it's just not rewards-based. It is partner-based, and there are different mechanisms from a funding perspective of how that all works out. So that's part and parcel of our value proposition as well.

Thanks. You continue to outperform on credit, at least very much relative to your peers and below pre-pandemic levels. What are your thoughts on net charge-offs heading into 2024? And maybe you could touch a little bit on how the season-end curves are happening for your recent vintages.

We're not going to provide extensive details about 2024 during this call. We'll address that early next year when we discuss 2024 guidance. However, I can share that the foundation of our credit performance and decisions is based on the quality of our products, which attract premium Card Members. This is our primary focus. We have a skilled risk organization and follow disciplined risk decision-making, but it all begins with product quality, which sets us apart from our competitors. As we've stated before, we are emphasizing the premium nature of our portfolio even more. Regarding new Card Members, 70% of those joining are doing so through fee-paying products, which is significant. This information informs our projections. While there is still some residual COVID-related influence and normalization occurring, we are pleased with our current credit performance. Moreover, the gap between us and our competitors is widening.

Good morning. Thank you for the questions and congratulations to Kerri and Kartik on their new roles. The net interest yield on card member loans improved by 50 basis points from the previous quarter, exceeding the levels from Q4 2019. While I recognize the effects of current rates, the increase this quarter was quite significant compared to the prior quarter, so I am curious about how we should anticipate that trend moving forward. Additionally, given the clarity you have due to the accounting treatment of card fees, what should we expect regarding that trend in the coming quarters, especially considering it has slowed down for several consecutive quarters? Thank you.

Yeah, yeah. So on the yield, the key thing here, there are many moving parts, right? There are, as you know, in terms of the funding, in terms of their pricing, in terms of their various vintages. But the key, the biggest element that is driving that small increase in the yield is the revolve rate. So the share, the revolving balances, the interest-bearing balances in our total loan balances is actually is increasing a little bit. And that's an outcome of our tenured Card Members rebuilding their balances, which is something we've called out for several quarters now. And I just want to point out again that most of that growth is coming from, most of that growth, i.e. 70%, is coming from tenured Card Members that we know well and we can underwrite well. So that's the key driver behind the yield improvement. When it comes to card fees, you're right. We have good visibility because we amortize those fees over 12 months. So we see that trend. So you should expect that trend to continue a little bit, i.e., the growth rate to moderate. As I said, a key driver to this is going to be the cycle of product refreshes. And it's also going to be a function of us investing more marketing dollars, bringing on more fee paying Card Members. And that dynamic is just going to play out. So you should expect in the next few quarters, a bit of a moderation there, but I need to call out that it's a moderation from a very high level and as we used to say on this call, even during the pandemic, that specific category was still growing so it's still going to grow strongly in double digits.

If we look back at the pandemic, we experienced growth rates of 10% to 11%. In the third and fourth quarters of 2022, we saw significant growth, but it's important to note that we hadn't acquired many new cards in 2020. This led to lower amortization in late 2021, resulting in a slightly higher growth rate at that time. However, we are pleased with the 19% growth rate, especially considering that our numbers continue to increase.

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions, squeezing me in here. Again, congratulations to Christophe, Kerri, and Kartik. I wanted to maybe switch from talking about the card products that the whole call has been talking about a little bit, and maybe just talk a little bit about the non-card products. I think other loans and receivables is now up over $10 billion in total now. It's obviously been an area where you've spent a lot of time investing in. Maybe just talk a little bit about that, both on the consumer and commercial side. Where are you seeing some of the strongest growth? How do you expect that to trend? How much is that contributing to interest yields, and et cetera? Thanks.

Yeah, so let me sort of just hit from a strategic perspective of what we're trying to do and even at $10 billion it's still a relatively small piece. One of the things we try to do from a small business perspective is to make sure that we can provide a variety of working capital needs to our small business customers. And in that case, it can be non-card loans for working capital, it can be shorter-term loans for up to two years or so forth. And I think part of that was the overall Kabbage acquisition that we did to be able to do that because what we wanted to do, and it goes along with what we did with sort of our checking account as well, is we wanted to make sure that we could provide for small businesses a host of products and services from having to check a transaction account, having a lending product, having a charge product, and then having working capital loans. And so I think that really fits in. But that's not the driver of growth for us in that segment. From a consumer perspective, what we've continued to try to do is to really grow our organic footprint with our consumers. And you can go back in history, it started as a charge card and then we put lending and then we put pay-over-time and plan it within the product and came up with a savings account and a debit product and also a small component of personal loans. And so, we've been judicious and careful about how we've gone about that. But I think it's an important add to make sure that our customers are not going to our competitors when they need products and services like that. So that's the sort of strategic sort of backdrop on why we have that.

Okay. And with that, we will bring the call to an end. Thank you for joining today's call and for your continued interest in American Express. The IR team will be available for any follow-up questions. Operator, back to you.