American Express Company

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the American Express Q3 2024 earnings call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press star, then 1 on your touchtone phone. You will hear a tone indicating that you have been placed in queue. You may remove yourself from the queue at any time by pressing star, then 2. 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, Mr. Kartik Ramachandran. Thank you. Please go ahead.

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 Squeary, Chairman and CEO, who will start with some remarks about the company's progress and results. And then Christophe Lecayac, 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 Christoph. With that, let me turn it over to Steve.

Good morning, and thanks for joining us for our third quarter earnings call. We had another strong quarter that reflects the steady earnings power of our business model and our continued investments for growth. Earnings per share in the third quarter were $3.49. and revenues were $16.6 billion, up 8% over last year, marking our 10th consecutive quarter of record revenues. Based on our performance to date and the strong earnings we're generating, we are raising our full-year EPS guidance to between $13.75 and $14.05, up from $13.30 to $13.80. and we continue to expect full-year revenue growth that is within the guidance range we provided at the beginning of the year at around 9%. I feel good about our performance to date and the ongoing strength of our business, and I remain confident in our long-term growth prospects. A key reason for my confidence is the sustainability of our product refresh strategy and the growth it is generating across our portfolio. We have already achieved our plan of refreshing 40 products globally this year, and we expect to do several more by year end. As we do so, we're adding value to our offerings by embedding new benefits and services that reflect the financial and lifestyle needs of our existing premium card members and attract new ones. A great example of this is the U.S. Consumer Gold Card. We talk a lot about the Platinum Card and with good reason, but the Gold Card is also a critically important product in our portfolio. Gold is a very popular product with total U.S. consumer gold acquisitions currently running at about 30% higher than platinum. And it's our number one premium product for millennial and Gen Z consumers, with 80% of U.S. gold cards we acquire coming from this cohort. In designing the Refresh Gold Card, which we launched in the third quarter, we know that millennials and Gen Zs are especially interested in dining. in fact these younger card members transact almost two times more on dining and make up a higher percentage of users on our resi restaurant booking platform than other generations in our card member base with that in mind we enhance the already rich dining benefits that come with gold card membership and as we've done with other refreshes the value of the additional benefits is greater than the annual fee increases while it's very early days we're seeing strong new account acquisitions and continued high retention levels among existing U.S. Gold Card members, indicating that our customers see that real value in the enhancements we've made. This is a pattern we see when we refresh our products. We add value that resonates with premium customers, and we price for that enhanced value, which results in strong acquisition and retention numbers that drive spending and consistently strong growth in subscription-like fee revenues. The gold card is just one example of how dining is playing an increasingly integral role in our membership model. Dining is an important category across our premium customer base. In fact, spending on restaurants continues to be one of our fastest growing T&E categories in our U.S. consumer business, increasing 7% in Q3 versus last year and growing at nearly twice the industry rate overall since 2019. And with total restaurant and food service spend estimated at $1 trillion in the U.S., dining represents a significant opportunity for us to further differentiate Amex membership. This is why we're investing in building out our dining capabilities, first with the acquisition of Resi in 2019, and more recently with the additions of Talk in Rome, both of which have closed since we announced them in Q2. We've made significant progress to date. We've successfully scaled Resi since acquiring a company with over 50 million registered users, and in the last 12 months alone, the platform has seeded over 350 million diners. We're also embedding Resi benefits in several of our value propositions, including the U.S. Gold Card I just mentioned, as well as our U.S. Consumer Platinum Card and the Refresh Premium Delta SkyMiles co-brand cards we announced in February. In addition to the many benefits for card members, Resi strengthens our membership model in other important ways. It connects our restaurant merchants with high-spending premium customers while also providing them with state-of-the-art technology platform that helps them grow their businesses. Furthermore, Resi's large user base gives us access to a pool of potential prospects who enjoy dining but do not yet have an American Express card. Our newest acquisitions will expand on the benefits we offer consumers and merchants, driving value for both. TOC extends our dining footprint with millions of additional users and thousands more bookable venues, including wineries, hotels, and certain events in addition to restaurants. With Roam, hospitality merchants can have access to sophisticated integration capabilities across various restaurant management platforms and the ability to enhance live event and stadium experiences. While the competition is fierce in the dining space, we believe our business model advantages, including our premium customer base, the strong merchant relationship we have with restaurants and other hospitality providers, and our membership model position us well to continue our growth in this important category. As we demonstrated, the investments we continue to make in our value propositions as reflected in our product refresh strategy And in our capabilities, as seen in the example of dining, are fueling our momentum. And these are just a couple of the examples of why I remain confident that our long-term growth aspirations are the right ones. Thank you, and I'll now turn it over to Christoph for a more detailed look at our performance in the quarter.