American Express Company

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the American Express Q3 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 star and then one on your touchtone phone. You will hear a tone indicating you have been placed in queue. You may remove yourself from the queue at any time by pressing star and then two. 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. Carrie Bernstein. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Daryl, 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 Squary, 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'll move to a Q&A session on the results with both Steve and Jeff. With that, let me turn it over to Steve.

Thanks, Kerry, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our third quarter earnings call. As you saw in our release this morning, we had another strong quarter. Revenues grew 27% on an FX-adjusted basis, and earnings per share was $2.47, up 9% over last year. Our investments to drive customer engagement, acquisitions, and retention once again generated great results, and our credit quality remained strong. Card member spending remained at near record levels in the quarter. Billed business was up 24% on an FX adjusted basis over the record growth we delivered a year earlier, led by the continued strength in goods and services spending and the ongoing strong rebound in travel and entertainment. As we said earlier this year, we expected the recovery in travel spending to be a tailwind for us, but the strength of the rebound has exceeded our expectations throughout the year. In the quarter, total T&E spending was up 57 percent from a year earlier on an FX-adjusted basis, driven by the continued strong demand from consumers and small business customers. Particularly noteworthy is the strength we're seeing in T&E spending in our international markets, which exceeded pre-pandemic levels for the first time this quarter on an FX-adjusted basis. Business travel also continued to recover, and overall activity remained strong through September. Importantly, We're seeing increased customer engagement with the wide range of travel and dining benefits and services we offer as part of our membership model. For example, bookings through our consumer travel business reached their highest level since before the pandemic in the third quarter. And in dining, our Resi reservation platform continues to see strong growth. Since we acquired the platform in 2019, Resi users have tripled to reach 35 million, and we quadruple the number of restaurants available around the world on Resi. Goods and services spending grew 16% year over year. The continued growth in goods and services is supported by the structural shift to online commerce that was accelerated by the pandemic and has been sustained since then. The new online and mobile oriented benefits we added to our value propositions. These benefits are particularly attractive to our millennial and Gen Z customer base, which is our fastest growing customer cohort. The investments we've made in our value propositions also continue to drive momentum in new card acquisitions. We added 3.3 million new proprietary cards during the quarter, our highest quarterly level of acquisitions since the pandemic began. And we continue to see strong uptake of our premium fee-based products with acquisitions of U.S. consumer platinum and gold cards, as well as U.S. business platinum cards reaching record quarterly highs. Millennial and Gen Z customers are powering this growth, comprising more than 60% of our proprietary consumer card acquisitions in the quarter. As we sit here today, we see no changes in the spending behaviors of our customers and our credit metrics continue to be strong, with delinquencies and write-offs remaining at low levels, even as loan balances are steadily rebuilding. Of course, we are mindful of the mixed signals in the broader economy. As always, we have plans in place to pivot should the operating environment change dramatically. And we've been taking thoughtful risk management actions to be prepared in the event of a downturn. But as I've emphasized many times before, we run the company for the long term and make through the cycle investment decisions. Our strong third quarter results show that our strategy investing in our brand, value propositions, customers, colleagues, technology and coverage continues to pay off and our performance is consistent with our long-term growth aspirations. Looking ahead, we continue to see many great growth opportunities, and we will continue to take actions to best position our business for the long term. As you'll recall, our international businesses were among the fastest growing prior to the pandemic. As more countries relaxed their cross-border travel policies and life returns to normal, we see tremendous opportunities for growth in key regions despite ongoing macroeconomic geopolitical uncertainties. To that point, we made an organizational change a few months ago to help seize on these opportunities. We brought together our international consumer, small business, and large corporate management teams under one leader, which will increase our speed, agility, scale, and efficiency in our operations outside the U.S. As a result, you'll see this quarter we've introduced a new international card services reporting segment. Looking ahead, we remain confident that the successful execution of our strategy, driven by our outstanding leadership team and the talented colleagues throughout the company, positions 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. Based on our performance through the third quarter, we also remain confident in our full-year revenue growth guidance of 23 to 25%, and we expect to be above our original full-year EPS guidance range of 925 to 965. With that, I'll turn it over to Jeff to provide a detailed overview of our Q3 results.