American Express Company

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the American Express Q1 2022 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press 1, then 0 on your touchtone phone. You will hear a message indicating you have been placed in queue. You may remove yourself from the queue at any time by pressing 1, then 0 again. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up the handset before pressing the numbers. Should you require assistance during the call, please press star, then zero. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, Head of Investor Relations, Ms. Vivian Shull. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Alan, 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-gap financial measures. The comparable gap 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 will begin today with Steve Squarey, Chairman and CEO, who will start with some remarks about the company's progress and results, and then Jeff Campbell, Chief Financial Officer, will provide a more detailed review of our financial performance. After that, we will move to Q&A on the results with both Steve and Jeff. With that, let me turn it over to Steve.

Thanks, Vivian, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our first... quarter earnings call. At our investor day last month, we took you through a detailed discussion of our strategies for driving sustainable growth across our businesses and explain why we are confident we can achieve our growth plan aspirations for 2024 and beyond. As we said then, our confidence is based on three interrelated factors. The success of the strategy we've been pursuing over the past several years, which focuses on investing in our brand, customers, value propositions, coverage, technology, and talent to build share, scale, and relevance, the momentum we've been generating through the effective execution of that strategy, and a number of structural shifts in the payment industry that are contributing to our momentum. The strong first quarter results we announced today are tracking in line with our expectations for the full year, despite the uncertain macro environment, and they reinforce our confidence in our ability to achieve our longer-term aspirations. For the quarter, Revenues were $11.7 billion of 29% year-over-year, and earnings per share were $2.73. These results reflect continued momentum in our core business in areas that are critical to sustainable long-term growth, including customer acquisitions, engagement, and retention, as well as outstanding credit performance. New proprietary card acquisitions remain at their strong pace, reaching $3 million this quarter which continues to be driven by strong demand for our premium fee-based products, particularly among millennial and Gen Z consumers and small and medium-sized businesses in the U.S. We had an all-time high in acquisitions of U.S. consumer platinum and gold cards, as well as U.S. business platinum cards this quarter. Delta card acquisitions reached an all-time monthly high in March, an indication of the growing demand for travel-related products and services. Regarding customer engagement, we look at a variety of indicators to measure progress. For example, card member engagement with our digital capabilities continues to grow, with daily active users across the web and mobile up double digits over the last year. We're also seeing strong engagement with the new benefits we added to our recently refreshed consumer Platinum card, particularly among millennial and Gen Z card members, nearly half of whom have used at least one of the new travel and lifestyle benefits to date. And we continue to see an acceleration in customer engagement with our Resi dining platform, including strong double-digit growth over the last quarter in a number of Amex cards on file and a number of restaurants participating in our global dining access program. March was one of Resi's best months on record for reservations, up nearly 16% over February. Ultimately, the key metric to gauge customer engagement is spending growth. Overall bill business grew 35% in Q1 global year over year, on an FX-adjusted basis, and we saw our highest volumes ever in March, surpassing our previous highest of December of 2021. Spending growth was led by the acceleration of volumes from millennial and Gen Z consumers of 56%, and SMEs up 30% on an FX-adjusted basis over last year. Goods and services spending continued to accelerate in the quarter, growing 21% on an FX-adjusted basis over last year. Travel and entertainment spending was up 121% globally on an FX-adjusted basis year over year, driven by strong growth in consumer travel spending. Customer retention remains at the very high levels I mentioned that investor day, an indication of the value our customers continue to place on Amex membership. A major contributor to our success across all of these areas is the ongoing expansion of many partnerships, which go well beyond our strategic partners like Delta, Hilton, and Amazon. We continue to extend relationships with a variety of companies that are adding differentiated value to our membership model. For example, last week we announced a new financial advice service with Vanguard, exclusively for our U.S. consumer card members, which brings together Vanguard's digital financial planning and investment management expertise with our industry-leading membership rewards. This is just the latest example of how we're expanding our value propositions beyond our traditional card offerings to meet more of our customers' financial lifestyle needs. In addition, we're accelerating our focus on FinTechs to drive more innovation, including our new partnership with I2C, which will enable FinTechs to more seamlessly and quickly issue new products on the American Express network. We also continue to make progress on our ESG initiatives, which are important components of our overall business strategy because we recognize that when our customers, communities, and colleagues thrive, so does our company. On a diversity, equity, inclusion front, we are more than three-quarters of the way towards our goal of investing $1 billion in a wide range of actions by 2024, including increasing spend with diverse suppliers, providing resources and financial assistance to minority-owned SMEs in the U.S., and maintaining pay equity across genders globally and ethnicities in the U.S., among other efforts. Our DEI progress was cited as one of the key reasons, along with our flexible work policies, for our number eight ranking on Fortune's 2022 list of the best U.S. companies to work for, which was announced last week. This is the third consecutive year we've been in the top 10, which helps us attract and retain talent. And we recently announced a series of initiatives coinciding with Earth Month that are designed to engage our customers, community partners, and colleagues in our climate efforts, including the goal of significantly expanding the use of recycled plastic in our card products. These initiatives build on the work we've already done and continue our efforts to reduce our own carbon footprint, including our commitment to net zero carbon emissions by 2035. In summary, with this solid start to the year and the continued tailwinds we expect from the ongoing recovery from the pandemic, we're reaffirming our full year guidance of delivering revenue growth in a range of 18 to 20 percent and earnings per share between 925 and 965. Furthermore, we remain confident that successful execution of our strategy will position us well as we seek to achieve our long-term growth plan aspirations of revenue growth in excess of 10% and mid-teens EPS growth in 2024 and beyond. I'll now turn it over to Jeff for a deeper dive on the quarter. Thank you.