American Express Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
January 24, 2025
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Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the American Express Q4 2024 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded.

Operator

I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, Head of Investor Relations, Mr. Kartik Ramachandran. Please go ahead.

Kartik Ramachandran
Kartik Ramachandran
SVP & Head of Investor Relations at American Express

Thank you, Darryl, 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.

Kartik Ramachandran
Kartik Ramachandran
SVP & Head of Investor Relations at American Express

The comparable GAAP financial measures are included in this quarter's earnings materials as well as the earnings materials for the prior periods we discuss. All of these are posted on our website at ir. Americanexpress.com. We will begin today with Steve Squeri, Chairman and CEO, who will start with some remarks about the company's progress and results and then Christophe Lechaik, Chief Financial Officer, will provide a more detailed review of our financial performance. After that, we'll move to a Q and A session on the results with both Steve and Christophe.

Kartik Ramachandran
Kartik Ramachandran
SVP & Head of Investor Relations at American Express

With that, let me turn it over to Steve.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

Thank you, Kartik. Good morning and thanks for joining us. 2024 was another strong year for American Express. We delivered record revenues of $66,000,000,000 for the year, up 10% on an FX adjusted basis, achieving our long term aspiration. We had record net income of $10,000,000,000 with earnings per share of $14.01 up 25% for the year, which is higher than our long term aspiration.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

The great work of our colleagues around the world drove 2024 results that were strong across our key metrics, setting new records in many categories. In addition to record revenues and net income, we had record levels of annual card member spending, record net card fees and a record 13,000,000 new card acquisitions. We also saw continued high card member retention, best in class credit performance and disciplined expense management. Notably, we exited the year with increased momentum as 4th quarter billings growth accelerated to 8% overall, driven by robust holiday spend. We continue to enrich our membership model refreshing over 40 products globally in 2024, including the U.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

S. Consumer gold card, which is particularly appealing to millennial and Gen Z consumers, as well as refreshing our Delta co brand cards. We also enhanced our dining portfolio with the acquisitions of Tac and Rome, and we launched several new top tier sponsorships and experiences such as our multi year global partnership with Formula 1. Our U. S.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

Small and medium sized enterprise customer base continue to grow with strong new card acquisitions throughout the year and we saw an improvement in small business sentiment in the Q4 which linked to stronger organic spending by our small business customers through the holiday season. A key driver of our growth is the ongoing global expansion of our merchant network. We added millions of new merchant locations globally in 2024 and we reached an average of 80% coverage across our top 12 international countries with coverage in travel and entertainment categories well above 80%. That's an increase of 8 percentage points from 3 years ago. These results clearly show that our strategy of backing our customers by investing in our value propositions, coverage, marketing, technology and talent is working.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

As we look ahead to 2025, American Express will be celebrating a major milestone, our 175th year in business. Our company's history is one of innovation and growth. From our start in 18/50 as a freight delivery company operated with horses, wagons and trains to becoming a global travel services company in the early 20th century, pivoting into a card focused payments company by the 1960s and ultimately evolving into the global premium financial and lifestyle company powered by technology we are today. Our longevity has been fueled by talented colleagues who have delivered a steady stream of innovative products and services that are focused on serving premium consumers and businesses of all sizes and who have stayed true to our brand that has been built on trust, security and service since our earliest days. As I've discussed over the past several years, we've continued the cycle of customer focused innovation, which has been largely responsible for resetting the growth trajectory of the company.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

We believe our growth is sustainable. We're confident that we will continue to bring in large numbers of new premium customers, especially millennial and Gen Z consumers and small businesses, while also maintaining high growth across our international business. In looking at the external marketplace, we continue to see strategic opportunities to sustain our growth. For example, in the U. S.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

Fee based consumer premium cards are the fastest growing part of the industry and we have about 25% of those cards indicating a continued upside opportunity. Across the industry, the number of millennials and Gen Z consumers with premium products are growing at an even faster rate and we're adding highly creditworthy customers in these cohorts faster than the industry with substantial room to continue this growth. It's clear that our premium products are resonating well with these age groups whose spending needs will continue to expand as they move forward in their lives and careers with many likely to also start new small businesses in the coming years. In SME, we see continued growth opportunities in the U. S.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

Where we expect to continue adding new small business customers and expanding our offerings to meet more of their needs beyond the card such as lending, checking and cash flow management. And when we look at international, which is our fastest growing segment, we are underpenetrated in both consumer and SME. We have an average of 6% spend share across our top 5 countries, which represent almost a third of the revenues outside the U. S. International SME in particular is growing off a small base and with the differentiated products and capabilities we offer, we have an opportunity to continue our rapid growth in this part of our business.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

The long runway for growth we see both in international consumer and SME coupled with the opportunities we have to continue expanding our merchant coverage across the globe gives us confidence that we can sustain our growth trajectory outside the U. S. So as we look at this year and beyond, we're going to continue with our strategy of investing at high levels in innovative value propositions, marketing and technology to drive growth. This includes our ongoing focus on our product refresh strategy. Currently, we're refreshing between 3550 products a year and we're planning to maintain that pace in 2025 along with other enhancements to our membership model for both our consumer and commercial customers.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

Turning to guidance for the year, we expect 2025 revenue growth of 8% to 10% and EPS of $15 to $15.50 or a 12% to 16% increase over 2024 adjusted for the Acertify gain. Regarding our thinking and establishing this year's guidance, as we've said, card member spending is the largest component of our total revenues. In putting our plan together, our assumption had been that steady billings growth we saw through most of 2024 would continue in 2025, but the 4th quarter spend numbers were stronger than we expected. While it's too soon to tell how this year will play out, we're encouraged by that increased momentum we saw exiting 2024. For now, we're assuming 2025 billings growth will be similar to full year 2024 number.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

However, if spend growth continues at the elevated Q4 level throughout this year, we would expect to come in at the higher end of our revenue range, all else being equal. I'll now turn it over to Christophe for additional commentary about our results and our 2025 guidance.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

Thank you, Steve, and good morning, everyone. Given we are at year end, I will discuss both our Q4 and full year results. Starting first with our full year performance. 2024 was a strong year with 10% revenue growth on an FX adjusted basis and EPS of $14.01 up 25%. And we continue to deliver superior returns driven by our spend and fee led model as we ended the year with an ROE of 35%.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

Notably, we also returned $7,900,000,000 of capital to shareholders this year, which included the Assertify gain. We saw a stable spending environment for most of 2024 with an acceleration in spending as we exited the year. We continue to see healthy loan growth and we achieved record net card fees. We achieved these results while maintaining our best in class credit performance, investing at high levels for growth as well as driving significant operating leverage. In sum, the building blocks of our financial model are performing well and drive our confidence in the year ahead.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

Now taking a closer look at total bill business performance on Slide 3, robust spending during the holiday period by our premium customer base helped generate 8% FX adjusted growth year over year in Q4, an uptick from the 6% range we saw for the past few quarters. The increase in growth was broad based across both T and E and goods and services categories, across geographies and across every customer segment as we'll see in a moment. In addition, transaction growth also accelerated to 10% in the quarter, reflecting greater engagement from our card members. I'll highlight a few key points as we look at spend trends across our businesses over the next few slides. U.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

S. Consumer spend was up 9% year over year in the quarter as strong holiday spend drove momentum versus Q3. Growth accelerated in both G and S and T and E categories with performance a bit more concentrated in this strong holiday shopping period compared to the rest of the quarter. Looking across generations, millennial and Gen Z spend continues to grow faster than the other age cohorts, up 16% in Q4 versus last year. Notably, all generations saw an uptick in spend this quarter compared to Q3.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

Commercial services spend was up 4% versus last year for the quarter with U. S. SME growing 3%, a bit of an uptick from the past few quarters as organic spend growth improved a bit sequentially. We also saw an increase in spending from our large and global client base with improvement in T and E spend across client industries as well as improvement in goods and services spend. Lastly, international grew 15% in Q4 versus last year on an FX adjusted basis as we continue to make strides in our international business.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

This rapid growth was visible across spend categories and across our consumer and commercial businesses with each of our top 5 markets growing in mid to high teens. As you can see, Q4 spend results were strong across our businesses and we feel good about the spend acceleration we saw. While growth in Q1 will be impacted by the grow over from leap year in 2024, so far the 1st 3 weeks of January look more in line with Q4 trends. At the same time, we need to see if the momentum will sustain. So as we think about 2025, we are assuming at this point a similar spend environment to what we saw in 2024 on a full year basis.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

Moving on to loans on Slide 7. Q4 total loans and card member receivables grew at 9% on an FX adjusted basis versus last year. As a reminder, these growth rates moderated over the course of the year as expected as we lap the period when customers were still building back revolving balances coming out of the pandemic. With that process largely behind us, for 2025, we expect loans and receivables growth to continue to grow a bit faster than spend and we continue to meet more of the borrowing needs of our premium customers. Turning to Slides 89, our credit performance continues to be excellent.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

Delinquency rates and write off rates are stable versus last quarter and are still below levels from 5 years ago. Total provision expense was down from a year ago as we build fewer reserves. These results are an outcome of our premium strategy that attracts high credit quality customers. Combined with our risk management capabilities, this strategy has widened the margin of safety and entered profitable growth. We continue to expect some modest upward buyers to write off and reserve rates over time.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

As we continue to acquire new customers at elevated levels and increase our share of lending from existing customers. Turning next to revenue starting on Slide 10. We saw another strong year over year revenue growth with revenues up 10% on an FX adjusted basis for both Q4 and the full year. Discount revenue grew 8% FX adjusted in Q4 in line with bill business growth. Our cycle of product refreshes helped drive card fee growth to 19% FX adjusted in the quarter and fueled new card acquisition to a record level of $13,000,000 for the new year for the year with around 70% of new accounts acquired on fee paying products.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

We expect card fee growth in 2025 to continue to grow in the mid to high teens, but to moderate as we progress through the year. Turning to Slide 13. Q4 NII was up 13% on an FX adjusted basis. Growth was driven by increases in revolving loan balances and net yield versus the prior year. As expected, growth moderated this quarter as it has over the course of the year.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

An important long term driver of yield is our ability to improve our funding mix as a result of our growing deposits program. Our high yield savings account balances grew 17% in 2024. As with our premium cards, we see that our HiSA product is resonating with younger customers. Millennial and Gen Z customers make up over half of the accounts and about a third of the total balances today. As we think about 2025, we expect NII growth to outpace the growth in total loans and receivables supported by growth in revolving balances.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

And while there is uncertainty in the rate outlook, as a reminder, we are mildly liability sensitive with a relatively small impact from changes to the Fed funds rate. I'll turn next to expenses on Slide 15. In Q4, the VCE to revenue ratio was 43%. Rewards expense in particular grew 15% in the 4th quarter, largely driven by the slow growth in rewards expense in the prior year. In addition, as we mentioned last quarter, we made some small changes to the program that are good for both customers and the overall economics of the program, but drive a very small increase in the URR in the short term.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

Stepping back, we expect overall VCE expenses to grow slightly faster than revenues in 2025 as we continue to invest in our products and drive card member engagement and as our portfolio continues to become more premium. We expect rewards growth to remain a bit elevated in Q1 as a result of the URL model changes from the year ago before growing more in line with the historical trend. We ended the year with $6,000,000,000 in marketing expenses, up 16% for the full year as we invested at elevated levels based on the attractive growth opportunities we saw. Given the significant increase of the investment pool in 2024, we expect a modest increase in marketing expense for 2025. Finally, operating expenses for the quarter were down 1% versus last year at $4,200,000,000 On a full year basis, operating expenses of $14,600,000,000 were down 2%.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

Excluding the gain on sale of the Assertified business in Q2, operating expenses were up 1% for the full year. In 2025, we expect operating expenses to grow in low single digits versus 2024 levels adjusted for the Assertified gain. This continues our strong record track record of disciplined expense management as we maintain the low levels of growth from last year, while still investing in key areas such as technology. Let me move now to capital on Slide 16. Our Q4 CET1 ratio was 10.5% and continues to be within our 10% to 11% range.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

We returned $7,900,000,000 of capital to our shareholders for the year, including $2,000,000,000 of dividends and $5,900,000,000 of share repurchases. In 2025, we also expect to increase our quarterly dividend by 17% to $0.82 per share consistent with our approach of growing our dividend in line with earnings and our 20% to 25% target payout ratio. With this plan increase, we expect to more than double the dividends since the beginning of 2019. We have also reduced the share count by 17%, demonstrating our confidence in the sustainability of earnings of our differentiated model. This brings me to our 2025 guidance.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

We continue to run our business with an aspiration to achieve 10% plus revenue growth and mid teens EPS growth. As Steve noted, for the full year 2025, we expect revenue growth between 8% to 10% and earnings per share between $15 $15.50 The EPS range reflects 12% to 16% growth year over year adjusted for the certified gain in 2020. I'll note that the revenue guidance reflects the balance between the spend environment we saw for the most of the year and the acceleration in spend growth we saw in Q4. If the spend momentum we saw in Q4 were to continue, we would expect revenue growth to be closer to the high end of the range, all else equal. Our guidance also factors in a range of scenarios based on what we are seeing in our business today.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

It assumes a stable economy and reflects what we know today about the regulatory and competitive environment. At the same time, there is uncertainty in the environment whether in tax policy, interest rates or currency movements. Our outlook is based on the FX rates as they are today. As a global company, the strengthening of the U. S.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

Dollar is a headwind to our growth. In closing, as you heard, 2024 was a strong year for the company. We are well positioned to continue our track record of strong growth into 2025 and we feel good about the year ahead. With that, I will now turn the call back over to Kartik and we will take your questions.

Kartik Ramachandran
Kartik Ramachandran
SVP & Head of Investor Relations at American Express

Thank you, Christophe. Before we open up the lines for Q and A, I will ask those in the queue to please limit yourself to just one question.

Operator

Our first question comes from the line of Ryan Nash with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.

Ryan Nash
Ryan Nash
Managing Director - Regional Banks & Consumer Finance at Goldman Sachs

Hey, good morning everyone.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

Good morning, Ryan.

Ryan Nash
Ryan Nash
Managing Director - Regional Banks & Consumer Finance at Goldman Sachs

I didn't want to disappoint you, Steve, so I'm going to ask about revenue growth.

Ryan Nash
Ryan Nash
Managing Director - Regional Banks & Consumer Finance at Goldman Sachs

So you gave a lot

Ryan Nash
Ryan Nash
Managing Director - Regional Banks & Consumer Finance at Goldman Sachs

of different comments, obviously, 8% to 10%, you're exiting at 10%. You highlighted that billings are started the year at an elevated level similar to the Q4. So Steve, maybe just talk a little bit about what could be the potential headwinds to revenue growth that would put you towards the lower end? And I guess given GDP is strong, you've acquired a ton of cards in 2024. Why is 2025 not in line with sort of the aspirational revenue growth given it feels like this

Ryan Nash
Ryan Nash
Managing Director - Regional Banks & Consumer Finance at Goldman Sachs

is sort of the right kind

Ryan Nash
Ryan Nash
Managing Director - Regional Banks & Consumer Finance at Goldman Sachs

of environment where we could see that type of top line growth? Thank you.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

Yes. So I would say that it is in line. I mean, we've got we give a range and that range has our top end. The 10% at the top end is in line with our long term aspiration. Just like this year, we did hit our long term aspiration not only for the quarter, but for the year on a full year basis.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

So what would cause you to go sort of below, middle or at? I think what you have to look at last year is a lot of our consumer customers were building balances. And so you had some pretty strong NII growth. And that sort of moderated a little bit as we got into the year. So if you look at it, it really does come down to a billing story for 2025.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

And I think the way that we've guided is absolutely right. We've guided that if in fact billings are like they were in the Q4, you will see us at the top end of the revenue range. And as Christophe said and I said all else being equal, you don't have any sort of surprises. But and as we've said at your conference, just giving you another plug for your conference, it really becomes billings. And I think if billings continue at where they were in the Q4, then I think what you will see is us at the top end of that revenue range.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

If you see them where they were for the whole year, you can assume we'll be in the middle. And I don't think this will happen, but this is why you give ranges. If they were below last year, you would be at the lower end. So I think it really truly is a billing story. I think we're very confident with card fees.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

We've got 26 consecutive quarters of double digit card fees. We expect that to continue more to the mid teens to the lower high teens. And NII will continue albeit at a little bit of a lower growth rate than you saw in the 1st 2 quarters of last year. So I think the guide is truly in line with what we said. I mean, last year we went 9% to 11% and we came in at 10% and we said it was about billings and we got billings in the Q4, which pushed us over the line.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

So we're just providing guidance that incorporates all those scenarios.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Sanjay Sakhrani with KBW. Please proceed with your question.

Sanjay Sakhrani
Managing Director at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW)

Thank you. Good morning. Maybe just well, thank you, Steve, for getting in front of that question on the revenue guide. I appreciate that. I guess just a follow-up.

Sanjay Sakhrani
Managing Director at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW)

If we were to think about where the acceleration came from in spending. I know Christophe you kind of mentioned it was balanced, but maybe can we get a little bit more deeper into that so that we can figure out like how much could sustain itself over the course of the year? And then so is it more discretionary versus travel type? And then if we think about the upside to the revenues, I mean, do you think that there would be an upside to the EPS range or that's pretty static?

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

So let me deal with the EPS range. I mean, one of the things that we've done over the years is if we've had opportunities to invest, we've invested. And now just take a look at this year. This year, we provided our guidance at the beginning of the year. It was obviously lower than what we ended the year with.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

And our expectation was that we were going to reinvest the certified gain, but we wound up using that to buy shares back. And we increased our marketing by $800,000,000 So we want to keep the flexibility if we have good investment options to invest back in the business. Having said that, if in fact we had a year like we had this year where not only do we have good investment options, but we could also exceed EPS, we would do that. So I think as you start to get to the high end of that revenue range, what winds up happening is management has to make a decision, do we reinvest in the business, do we drop some more of that back to shareholders? And that'll be a decision that we will make on an ongoing basis as we see what the opportunities would be, whether those will be opportunities in technology, whether those will be opportunities in marketing, more value proposition and so forth.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

So we want to leave ourselves that flexibility to be able to make those investments. But having said that, there is a top end of the range is 15.50. It is at 16% growth. And that is more likely to happen if you have higher revenue growth again with the commentary that I made that we could make a decision that we want to invest that back in. So it's plausible that that in fact would happen.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

As far as billings go for the quarter and I'll let Christophe comment a little bit more. I think what you saw across the board, you saw consumer come up. It was 9%, which was 2 points above where we have been running. We saw more organic spend lift in SME, which made SME from 1% to 3%. And that's still not where we want to be from an SME perspective.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

And international continues to perform very, very well both from an SME perspective and from a consumer perspective also picking up 2 points. Travel was higher this particular quarter and particularly airline. Airline doubled sequentially quarter over quarter 13%. The more surprising number I think was front of the cabin up 19% and restaurant continues to be strong. So T and E was very, very strong in the quarter for us.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

And Christoph, I

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

don't know if you want to add anything else.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

I don't have a

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

lot because you covered most of it. The only thing I will say is that the holiday shopping season was especially strong for us. And you asked the question about the sustainability and that's the key word, right? And the team here is looking at whether it's going to expand into 2025. That's the key question.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

And that's a real either it's really hard to answer this in a definitive way. As I said in my remarks, the 1st 3 weeks of January very much looked like in line with what we saw in Q4. But there is like 49 more weeks to come and we don't know how it's going to play. So more to come on this, but what we saw so far looks very strong.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Erika Najarian with UBS. Please proceed with your question.

Erika Najarian
Erika Najarian
Managing Director & Equity Research Analyst at UBS Group

Hi, good morning. Just wanted to continue to unpack the billing story for 2025. When I look at the proprietary net cards acquired, it looked like it slowed down a bit in the Q4 after being up double digits in the second and third quarter, of course, up 6.5% year over year. As we think about what's going to drive the billing strength in 2025, particularly in light of Christophe, your comment about modest increase in marketing expenses, Should we think about what is the split between an increase in new cards acquired in terms of versus that 6.5% versus better spend per account? We noticed, of course, that spend per account was up a little bit in the Q4, up 3% versus 2% for the year.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

Yes. So there's a lot in your question, Erica. Let me try to address most of the points. The first thing is that it's very hard to read a lot in the quarterly distribution of NCA. And there is definitely not a good alignment between the marketing spend in the quarter and the NCA in the quarter.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

There is like a time difference between the two because of the accounting around how we account for the welcome incentives. But the point here is that we invested a lot in 2024 and we got a lot of cards, 13,000,000 cards, which is a record for the company. As you think about how this is going to play out and the math we're doing about the 2025 spend, As you know, the way we think about billing growth is like we split it between what's coming from this recently acquired card members, what's coming from organic, which are either the growth coming from the 10 year card members and the last piece of the puzzle is attrition. The expectation that we have for 25 around attrition is consistent with what we've seen over the last, I would almost say the last 4, 5 years is that it's going to be like very stable, very low. There's not a lot of either attrition going on here in terms of the billing growth.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

Their contribution coming from organic is the one that is the hardest to predict. And that's the source of the softness we saw in Q4. And that's what either is the positive performance that we saw sorry, the softness we saw in 2024. And that's the organic that was stronger in Q4. So it's hard to say how that organic is going to perform in 2025, but it's the source of the volatility for sure.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

There and we provided some of the details in the past, but I would say a good 7% of the billing growth comes from these new customers and the balance is typically the organic spend and the attrition.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mark DeVries with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.

Mark Devries
Mark Devries
Director at Deutsche Bank

Thanks. As we've been discussing, you're seeing accelerating build business growth into year end. We're also getting consumer and business confidence. It's only been climbing. So Steve, I was hoping to hear about what you may have learned both from any conversations you've had with customers recently about kind of their optimism and spend and also just looking at your historic build business numbers and how that is historically kind of responded to rising confidence?

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

Well, I think look, I think we saw rising confidence in the Q4. Certainly, you saw it from a consumer perspective, 9%. And I think as I'll just go back and comment on travel. I mean travel traditionally for us, especially airline in the 4th quarter is not a big number, but it doubled sequentially in front of the cabin. I think front of the cabin is a really good indicator of consumer confidence because what you do is when people don't have confidence, they may not cancel a trip, but they may downgrade downgrade the hotel, downgrade the airlines, the class of service and so forth.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

So I think we're seeing more consumer confidence. We've done a survey of small businesses and the sentiment is really, really good. And it's higher than it's been in a long time. And I think we saw that come up with from an organic growth perspective. International has just been strong.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

International has been a strong story for us since 2 years after COVID. It has just been a it's been marching on. So I think that that's what gives us hope for the year that this will continue. But again, hope is not a plan. And so we do our plan based upon what we saw at the time of the plan.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

And as we look at the 1st couple of months in the Q1, we'll see where we are. And provided that we have this continued growth, we would expect again to be at the high end of the range from a revenue perspective. The only thing that I will throw out there from a timing perspective is that we will have one less day in this Q1 due to leap year. So we'll have to we'll manage that. But we like to look at things on a days mix adjusted basis anyway.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

And so we'll be able to see through that and determine what that will mean for the Q2. So I think there's more to come. But I think the basic story here is, there is consumer confidence at this point. There is small business confidence. We just don't want 1 quarter to color what a whole year is going to be.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

We'd like to see that be repetitive before we do anything with it.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Craig Maurer with FT Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Craig Maurer
Co-Director of Research & Managing Director at Financial Technology Partners

Yes, good morning and thanks. I wanted to I had two questions. The first on SME, we've seen very strong growth from some of your competitors, some newer competitors like Ramp. And I was wondering how you feel about your customer facing tech and SME and whether that might be an area of potential acquisition in the future? And second, Delta had very strong commentary about the cobrand card growth and their expectation for 2025 that that growth will be at least as good.

Craig Maurer
Co-Director of Research & Managing Director at Financial Technology Partners

So I wanted to ask you how that lines up with your thought process on the travel space and how the Delta book has been comping versus the rest of the book? Thanks.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

Yes, I think well remember, look we align very closely with Ed and his team and so we're aligned with that. But also remember that the Delta book is not just what's spent on Delta, it is spent what Delta card members, America's Best card members spend on everything else. And so, look, I think the remuneration that we provide Delta, we would expect that to continue to increase. We're happy to see that increase because that means spending is increases and we're getting our piece of the pie as well. So I think it bodes well for travel.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

And I think that we saw that in the Q4 and we hope that that continues. And I know in my conversations with Ed, he feels very confident about this year and I think that's how he spoke about it during his earnings call. As far as SME Tech, look, we constantly look at ways to improve the customer experience. And obviously, I'm not going to comment on acquisitions or things like that. But we feel good about where we are and the progress that we're making especially with our Cabbage acquisition and so forth.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

And yes, we keep our eye on ramp Brex and everybody else that's out there. They are working from a smaller base, but they have good products and they're making some inroads and we will make sure that we are responsive to that.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Don Fandetti with Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question.

Donald Fandetti
Donald Fandetti
Managing Director at Wells Fargo

Good morning. Steve, it looks like the Capital One Discover merger is going to go through. Any thoughts on the competitive impact? I know they don't have incremental affluent consumers, but it's more scalability to build lounges and they do compete in SME.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

Yes. Look, I think Rich is a really smart CEO and I think it's a really good deal for them. Picks up a debit network and picks up a lot more scale at I think he becomes the largest credit card lender in the United States. With that, Discover is a multifaceted company, not only with debit and credit cards, but with a bunch of loans and what have you from a car student and so forth. So I think it fits very nicely in with their strategy.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

Capital One with Venture X is making inroads within the premium space. I think we continue though to more than hold our own. And look, they're a formidable competitor, but I think also they'll have their hands full with integrating Discover over the next couple of years. And we will continue to evolve our products with our product refreshes and we look forward to competing with them.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Rick Shane with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question.

Mihir Bhatia
Mihir Bhatia
Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Thanks for taking my question.

Richard Shane
Richard Shane
Stock Analyst at JP Morgan

Hey, Steve, one of the key initiatives of your team and your tenure is the increased focus on experiences and incentive versus reward. The impact on account growth has been significant, well understood. Is it fair to say that the other benefit besides growth is that there's higher operating leverage because there's more fixed costs associated with experience than there is with traditional rewards?

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

Yes. I mean, it's a good point. I think that you're absolutely right. I mean, you have you do have more fixed costs when you're doing sort of experiential sponsorships. You have more fixed cost when you're doing lounges and things like that than you do when you're on a variable rewards basis.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

The trick is with that piece of it though is that as you continue to grow, it's just like technology, right? You have X amount of mainframe capacity or servers or what have you. And then as you get big, you need to add a little bit more, but then you grow into that scale. And so I think that's what you're seeing. And as we expand some of our lounges, we'll be making some more investments not only in new lounges, but we'll be expanding some of the existing lounges as well.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

But I think that's part of the calculus for us is that our card members, while they like the rewards, they also like all the experience and the access that we put around it. And so by making sure that we're balancing our investments in these areas, we're able to give people the best of both worlds. And that's what we strive to do. And it also enables us again to lever a little bit more fixed cost across a wider base.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jeff Adelson with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.

Jeffrey Adelson
Jeffrey Adelson
Executive Director at Morgan Stanley

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

Good morning.

Jeffrey Adelson
Jeffrey Adelson
Executive Director at Morgan Stanley

Steve, I was wondering if you could shed a little bit more light into the planned product

Jeffrey Adelson
Jeffrey Adelson
Executive Director at Morgan Stanley

refresh strategy for this year, where

Jeffrey Adelson
Jeffrey Adelson
Executive Director at Morgan Stanley

you might go with that. I know you refresh strategy for this year, where you might go with that. I know you've previously talked about refreshing every 3 to 4 years and platinum, U. S. Platinum is one that's sort of been sitting out there since 2021.

Jeffrey Adelson
Jeffrey Adelson
Executive Director at Morgan Stanley

And Christophe, I was wondering if you could maybe shed a little bit more light into your credit commentary. The credit has been doing pretty well. It seems like it's outperformed what you've been looking for stable this year. Can you talk about why you might be expecting a little bit of a modest increase from here? Is that conservatism on your part?

Jeffrey Adelson
Jeffrey Adelson
Executive Director at Morgan Stanley

Or do you think you could actually see a better result than that?

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

Yes. So I'll disappoint you with the first answer. But so look, we're going to do between $35,000,000 $50,000,000 I'm not going to comment on which ones and preannounce. I think that we'll let you speculate on what's going to happen. But yes, we look to refresh products on an ongoing basis and when we and also when we feel the need that those products need refresh.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

And so you'll just have to wait and see what we come out with. But we got 11 more months to go.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

So good morning, Jeff. On the credit metrics, the first thing that I'm going to say is that we are still materially below where we were pre COVID, unlike I think most of our competitors. So that tells you something about the performance from a credit standpoint. It says as well that all the growth that we generated over the last few years was very much focused in the premium space. So I like that.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

So the comment on the upward buyers, I made a similar comment at the beginning of last year and it turned out that the credit metrics were actually fairly stable, especially towards the later part of the year. I still believe that those metrics should trend up a little bit while either remain best in class. They're going to trend up because we're acquiring a lot of customers, and they're going to be some seasoning happening for those vintages. And the performance, those metrics are so low, so good that to some extent they can only go up a little bit from here. But these are we're very comfortable with the performance on the credit side.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

The premiumness of the strategy is just working and translating really well into credit performance. We're issuing either premium products and that attracts a lot of either very low credit risk customers. And so where we are, it's just like a very good position. And I hope that by the time I get to we get to the end of the year, we're looking at this race and I can say I was wrong and the credit were stable. But I think in the long run, the trend is that you should expect those metrics to trend out a little bit, very modest, but a little bit.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Chris Kennedy with William Blair. Please proceed with your question.

Cristopher Kennedy
Research Analyst - Financial Services & Technology at William Blair

Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Marketing investment has increased a lot in recent years. Can you just talk about how the allocations have evolved between the different buckets such as customer acquisition, general brand marketing and sponsorship activity? Thank you.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

General brand sponsorship has been fairly stable over the past years and the lion's share of the growth that you saw in marketing, so say over the last 12 months, the $800,000,000 between last year and this year, the lion's share of that is going into acquisition. Then we split it between what we call consumer acquisition versus prospect acquisition. Consumer acquisition customer acquisition, sorry, refers to upgrading and companion cars. And these are very attractive investments. So we try to find the right balance between investing and deepening the relationship with our current customers and prospect acquisitions.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

So I don't have the split between the 2, but we typically try to fund first that customer acquisition, which is the most attractive in terms of return. And we look at the opportunities that exist in the market and we maintain our very strict standards in terms of underwriting and returns and try to maximize that. So we have a sophisticated process to optimize those marketing dollars, but either very high level, I think that's the story.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Moshe Orenbuch with TD Cowen. Please proceed with your question.

Moshe Orenbuch
Managing Director at TD Cowen

Great. Thanks. Most of my questions have already been asked and answered. But maybe could you drill down a little more on the SME business? You saw a little bit of acceleration in the 4th quarter.

Moshe Orenbuch
Managing Director at TD Cowen

Any thoughts either about the trends and momentum there more specifically or plans? I know, Steve, you said you didn't really want to talk about plans for refresh, but are there things that we should be looking for in 2025?

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

Well, I think mostly what I would say about SME, which is we still continue to acquire the same amount of SME customers that we've been acquiring and our attrition is the same. It really continues to be an organic story. And organic spending has still not come back to the levels that we saw sort of pre COVID. And so if you look at what's happened from an SME perspective, during COVID, organic spending went all the way down. Coming out of COVID, it really started to ratchet up.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

And then it sort of normalized a little bit. And then you had inflation, higher interest rates and so forth. So I think we started to see the decel of the deceleration of organic spending stop and start to turn around. What I think the story will be with SME is that we can get that back to a 3% organic lift. You will see that you will see SME then be more of a contributor to overall billings than it is right now.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

So it truly is an organic story. And I just have as you pointed out, I'm not going to talk about refreshes. But I think it really comes down to small business confidence. And it's not an acquisition story. It's not an attrition story.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

It truly is still an organic story for us. And I think the industry is still seeing that as well.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brian Foran with Truist. Please proceed with your question.

Brian Foran
Brian Foran
Managing Director at Truist Securities

Hey, good morning. I hate to use my question on FX, but is the 8 to 10 FX adjusted guide or GAAP? And because I think you mentioned you assume the dollar stays here. And then can you remind us the EPS impact? I know there's some expense and hedging.

Brian Foran
Brian Foran
Managing Director at Truist Securities

So is there any appreciable EPS drag we should think about embedded in the $15,000,000 to $15,500,000 range?

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

Yes. So thank you for your question, Brian. The first thing that I'm going to say on this that we talk about FX adjusted and FX reported because we think it is useful to you and to us to think about the momentum that we see say from a revenue from a billing standpoint at either stable currency like once we control for currency movements because that reflects the true momentum in terms of transaction either and either no FX noise. So for that reason, we speak about it in FX adjusted terms. As we think about forecast and predictions, it's impossible for us to predict where we're going to be from an FX standpoint.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

So we cannot talk about it either in terms of FX reported at year end because we don't know which way the dollar is going to go. And therefore, we either we're not trying to. The way to think about the impact of these currency movements, you saw it in Q4, right? Here we have actual movements. The difference from a revenue growth standpoint was 1 percentage point, right?

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

FX adjusted revenue growth was 10%. FX reported GAAP reported was 9%. So the impact is material. It's 1 percentage point of revenue growth. In terms of EPS impact, it's a far more complicated stories because we have expenses spread out across the world.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

We have centers of excellence. So it's really a complicated one. I'm going to refer you, I think it's in the K or in the Q where we have sensitivity and it goes something like this. You can check the numbers precisely, but 10% increase in the dollar or 1% increase the 10% increase in the dollar translate into $136,000,000 negative impact on PTI. And so that's the kind of sensitivity.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

So it's not hugely impactful, but it is a little bit impactful still.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Saul Martinez with HSBC. Please proceed with your question.

Saul Martinez
Saul Martinez
Analyst at HSBC

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Maybe you could double click a little bit on the international businesses you talked about. I think you said each of your top 5 markets you grew mid to high teen the mid to high teen range. Can you just comment on what some of the drivers are?

Saul Martinez
Saul Martinez
Analyst at HSBC

What kind of momentum you're seeing in terms of merchant acceptance? How the sales changes you made a couple of years ago are impacting it? And I guess I'm just trying to get at the how you feel about the trajectory and the sustainability of that kind of growth?

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

Well, we feel really good about the trajectory and the sustainability. Merchant acceptance in international continues to grow. I mean, it's we acquired millions of merchants and the comment that I made is we're at 80% LIF coverage in the key markets. And from a T and E perspective, we're over 80%. You saw that go up by 8 points over the last 3 years.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

So merchant acceptance internationally continues to grow very, very rapidly for us. As far as overall growth, we invest quite a bit in card acquisition, in international and our opportunities in international for card acquisition are still really, really good. And a lot of that growth comes from new cards for us. So we think with less than 6% market share in the top 5 markets and in an SME environment, which is really nascent at this point, we think there's still big opportunities in SME and in consumer for us. And so our expectation is that double digit billings will continue into the foreseeable future.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

And remember pre COVID, that's what we saw. International was the fastest growing part of our business because we added merchant locations and we added more cards. During COVID, it was international, if you recall, was almost more than a 2 year stoppage, but it's right back to where it was pre COVID and we continue to feel that that's going to continue.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Terry Ma with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.

Terry Ma
Terry Ma
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Barclays

Hey, thank you. Good morning. I just wanted to ask about net carb fee growth. I think you guided to mid to high teens growth in 2025 with some moderation. So maybe just unpack that a bit.

Terry Ma
Terry Ma
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Barclays

You've historically had more of a runway to accelerate that kind of growth when you've done major refreshes. I'm just curious why that would actually moderate this year?

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

I mean, the first thing is that this growth rates have been very strong for a very long period of time. As a matter of fact, this quarter marks the 26th consecutive quarter where we've seen car fee growth in double digit. And it's like when I say double digit, I think the CAGR is like 13% over this period of time, right, something of that magnitude, so very strong growth. At the beginning of the year, we started the year at like 16%, and we said we should expect to exit the year with an acceleration, which is exactly what happened, right? We were at 18% last quarter, 19% last 18% in Q3, 19% in Q4.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

So very strong growth, which it's always a complicated there's always a lot of moving factors here. So it's not easy to simplify too much. But the big driver of that acceleration was actually the cycle of product refreshes and we can see it in our models. And therefore, as you think about 2025, that acceleration that we saw in Q3, Q4 is still going to play out in Q1, 2025 and afterwards it should trend a little bit more like what you saw at the beginning of 2024, which is this either mid teens growth rate. So still continuing in a very strong trajectory of card fee growth.

Christophe Le Caillec
Christophe Le Caillec
Chief Financial Officer at American Express

And I just want to remind as well that on this 13,000,000 cards that we acquired this year, 70% are joining the franchise on a fee paying product, right. So that supports that growth together with a very strong renewal rates that we see as well. So it's just a it's been a very successful story for us, not only recently, but over the last 5 years and that success is going to keep on in 2025.

Operator

Thank you. Our final question will come from the line of Mihir Bhatia with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

Mihir Bhatia
Mihir Bhatia
Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Good morning and thank you

Mihir Bhatia
Mihir Bhatia
Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch

for taking my question. Maybe I just wanted to take a little bit of a step back and a big picture question for you just about competition from FinTechs and how that has been evolving. You talked a little bit

Mihir Bhatia
Mihir Bhatia
Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch

about it on the commercial side earlier in response to Craig's question. But maybe just talk

Mihir Bhatia
Mihir Bhatia
Equity Research Analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch

about it on Specifically, I was wondering, we've been seeing some pretty rich cash back offers from some of the newer entrants in the market, if you will. Is that starting to have any impact in drawing customers away from the traditional rewards card? And just what are you seeing on competition there from the FinTech in the consumer side? Thank you.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

I would say I'll go back to the answer I gave before. I think Rick Shane asked the question before about how we invest. I think our card member is a little bit different. And they're really not really focused on cash back. We have cash back products for those that like it, but our card members are more focused on the balance between rewards experience and service.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

And so from a FinTech perspective on the consumer side, we really have not seen anything. Not that we don't look at it, not that we're not aware of it, but again, it's about knowing your customer. And our customer is one that really does value that experience access and service as well as having rewards with it. So and that's not something that the fintechs have been able to really replicate. Again, it is more of a cash back product.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

On the SME side, it's technology integrated with card and we're very aware of that. And as I said, we'll take the appropriate steps to address that. So on the consumer side though, no, we have not seen any inroads at all. And if you look at it, our card acquisition, we don't unpack it, but our card acquisition from a consumer perspective was at record levels as well. So we had high, high consumer cards that we've acquired.

Stephen Squeri
Stephen Squeri
Chairman & CEO at American Express

So nothing to see there at this point, but again, we'll continue to watch it.

Kartik Ramachandran
Kartik Ramachandran
SVP & Head of Investor Relations at American Express

Steve, thank you. With that, we will bring the call to an end. Thank you again 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.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, the webcast replay will be available on our Investor Relations website at ir. Americanexpress.com shortly after the call. You can also access a digital replay of the call at 877-660-6853 or 201-612-7415, access code 1,375,0743 after 1 p. M. Eastern Standard Time on January 24 through January 31st.

Operator

That will conclude our conference call for today. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Executives
    • Kartik Ramachandran
      Kartik Ramachandran
      SVP & Head of Investor Relations
    • Stephen Squeri
      Stephen Squeri
      Chairman & CEO
    • Christophe Le Caillec
      Christophe Le Caillec
      Chief Financial Officer
Analysts
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Earnings Conference Call
American Express Q4 2024
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