美國運通 (AXP) 2016 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the American Express third-quarter 2016 earnings call.

(Operator Instructions)

As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Toby Willard, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Ryan. Welcome. We appreciate all of you joining us for today's call. The discussion contains certain forward-looking statements about the Company's future financial performance and business prospects, which 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 forward-looking statements are set forth within today's presentation slides, and in the Company's reports on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The discussion today and also contains certain non-GAAP financial measures. Information relating to comparable camp financial measures may be found in the third-quarter 2016 earnings release and presentation slides, as well as the earnings materials for prior periods that may be discussed, all of which are posted on our website at IR.americanexpress.com. We encourage you to review that information in conjunction with today's discussion.

Today's discussion will begin with Jeff Campbell, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, who will review some key points related to the quarter's results through the series of presentation slides. Once Jeff completes his remarks, we will move to a Q&A session. With that, let me turn the discussion over to Jeff.

Thanks, Toby, and good afternoon, everyone.

As you can see in this afternoon's earnings release, our earnings per share for the third quarter came in at $1.20, which is 3% below the prior year. These results reflect our continued focus on our priorities of accelerating revenue growth, optimizing investments, and substantially reducing our costs. There is clearly still a lot of work to do, but we are pleased with our performance through the third quarter and our results have come in above the expectations that we shared with you earlier this year.

The favorability was driven by faster-than-anticipated progress on our expense initiatives and steady credit performance. Also, as we have discussed previously, we did take a very balanced approach to our second-half assumptions, given some of the dynamics within the US consumer marketplace, including the portfolio sale last quarter and the overall competitive environment. While the environment continues to evolve, we now have greater clarity after seeing the consistent growth with adjusted billings, loans and revenue that we experienced in the third quarter.

Also, as expected, Q3 included a higher level of investment spending than the prior year, and certain impacts from our ongoing cost-reduction initiatives, including a modest restructuring charge. Finally, we continued to use our capital strength to return a substantial amount of capital to shareholders. Separate from our operating results, this quarter also saw the recent Court of Appeals decision in our favor in the Department of Justice antitrust lawsuit, though I point out that the DOJ has the right to further appeal the decision.

The progress we've made this year gives us confidence to move ahead more aggressively in Q4, with a number of initiatives that we have been working on for some time. These include a renewed emphasis on our platinum card portfolios in the US, which provide a combination of service, access, and benefits that have been the benchmark of value for more than 30 years.

They also include our biggest camping yet to build on the success of Small Business Saturday and drive additional spending at neighborhood businesses in a way that leverages the ongoing expansion of our merchant network in the US through our OptBlue program. In addition, we are going to continue to build upon the digital marketing capabilities that helped to bring on a record number of new card members this year with, expanded acquisition campaigns both in the US and key international markets. Finally, we will be supporting all of these initiatives within extensive advertising campaign.

With these and other initiatives coming together at the start of the peak shopping season, it will be a very active fourth quarter. In support of this, we are planning a substantial increase in our investment spending to bring together and leverage the combined impact of all these initiatives on our card members and merchants during the remainder of the year and to position us for growth in the years ahead. I highlight that the decision to increase investment levels is consistent with how we have run the Company for many years as we seek to leverage earnings capacity to invest for the moderate to long term.

Turning now to the summary of our financial results on slide two, the revenues decreased by 5%, reflecting the decline in volumes in card member loans following the portfolio sale in Q2. I'd note that FX had relatively small impact on our reported results this quarter, the first such quarter in quite some time. Net income was down 10% versus the prior year, due primarily to the lower revenues combined with the higher level of investment spending. These impacts were offset in part by lower rewards and operating expenses.

We again leveraged our strong capital position to provide significant returns to shareholders. Over the past 12 months we have repurchased 72 million shares, which has driven a 7% reduction in our average share count.

This decline in shares outstanding, along with our net income, drove EPS of $1.20 for the quarter, which was just 3% below the prior year. These results include a restructuring charge of $44 million this quarter related to our cost reduction efforts. Since we have provided a 2016 EPS outlook excluding restructuring charges, I would point out that our adjusted EPS, after excluding the $0.04 restructuring charge, was $1.24 in the third quarter and $5.01 on a year-to-date basis. These results brought our reported ROE for the 12 months ended September 30th to 26%.

Moving now to our billed business performance trends, which you see several views of on slide 3 through 6, worldwide FX adjusted billings were down 3% during the quarter, as you can see on slide 3. As we have done the last two quarters, we have also provided a trend of adjusted worldwide billed business growth rates excluding both Costco cobrand volumes at all merchants and non-cobrand volumes on at Costco on slide 4.

By this measure, FX adjusted billings growth was 7%, which was down from 8% last quarter. We saw a number of positive trends within our underlying billings performance during the third quarter. Within the GCF segment, performance amongst both the US and international middle market and small businesses remains healthy.

Our international consumer billings growth rates remain strong, which I will come back to in a minute. In the US consumer segment, while the ultimate outcome will play out over time, we are on track with our expectation to capture at least 20% of the out-of-store spending of the former Costco cobrand card member as a result of our acquisition efforts prior to the sale, which does provide some lift to our adjusted billings growth rates, but we are starting to lap it this quarter. We are also on track with the overall performance trends we had expected across the evolving and competitive US consumer space, in particular seeing strong growth across our US cash back products.

Our adjusted billings performance this quarter also reflected several challenges, which impacted our year-over-year growth rates. The largest driver of the sequential decline in the growth rate versus the second quarter was the end of our network relationship with Fidelity, which moved to a new network this quarter.

As a reminder, the revenue contribution from Fidelity was minimal as we were not the card issuer. US billings growth was also impacted by lower gas and airline ticket prices, which remained headwinds across our US businesses and had a similar impact to the prior quarter. Finally, consistent with prior quarters, spending by large corporations remains weak, with billings declining year over year, reflecting the slow growth revenue environment and cost reduction efforts being undertaken by many large companies.

Coming back to the drivers of total international billings performance on slide 6, the increase in FX adjusted billings growth to 11% during the current quarter was driven by improved performance in JAPA, primarily due to an uptick in growth rates in China. As you know, while China does impact our billings growth rates, it is a very small impact on our revenue and earnings due to the low margin that all networks earn on spending within China today.

Within the EMEA region, our UK business continues to perform very well, with FX adjusted growth of 16% during the third quarter. The weakening of the British pound that has occurred since the Brexit vote at the end of June has been a drag on our reported billings and revenues, but from an earnings perspective as you recall, we are relatively hedged naturally against the pound as the UK serves as the headquarters for many of our international operations.

Turning now to loan performance on slide 7, our loans on a GAAP basis were down 12% compared to Q3 2015, reflecting the sales of the two cobrand portfolios in the first half of this year. To help understand the underlying trends, on the right side of the slide we have excluded the sold cobrand portfolios from the prior year and adjusted for FX. On this basis, adjusted worldwide loan growth of 12% is down from 13% in the second quarter but continues to outpace the industry.

We continue to see opportunities to increase our share of lending from both existing customers and high-quality prospects. Over the last two years, as our cobrand loans have declined, we successfully shifted our mix towards non-cobrand card members. These card members are more likely to revolve their balances, producing good returns for us, though they do have a slightly higher write-off rate. We do not believe that this mix change is driving any significant change to our overall credit profile and it is producing good returns.

Our net interest yield during the quarter was 9.8%, which was up from recent quarters. Several factors influenced this change. The sold cobrand loans had a slightly lower average yield than the rest of our tenured portfolio. In contrast, the non-cobrand card member launch to which are mix has shifted have a higher yield. In addition, some of the new card members from last year have begun to lap their introductory APR periods. These positives were then partially offset by a small increase in the percentage of loans in introductory promotional periods due to our strong acquisitions over the past year.

Turning to provision on slide 8, total provision decreased by 5%, as you can see on the left side of the slide, but this result includes provision in Q3 2015 related to the two cobrand portfolios that were sold earlier this year. When you exclude those credit costs from the prior year, as we do on the right side of the slide, adjusted provision increased 6% versus the prior year. This 6%, however, is a combination of the two different trends.

Charge card provision declined year over year, due to improved credit performance, as both worldwide write-off and delinquency rates were below prior year, with the write-off rate in our US consumer business reaching a new historical low. Consistent with prior quarter performance, adjusted lending provision increased by more than the growth rate in loans. As expected, we are beginning to see some seasoning of our newer loan vintages.

Turning to our reported lending credit metrics, I would point out that they are impacted by the Costco loans that were not sold as part of the portfolio sale. As a reminder, these loans primarily relate to canceled accounts. They are having an impact on our reported write-off rates this quarter, but no provision impact as they were already reserved for at a higher level. Excluding these loans, adjusted write-off rates are relatively consistent with the last quarter and remain best in class among large peer issuers.

Stepping back from the quarterly credit results, I would emphasize there has been no change in or credit outlook and the credit continues to perform better than our Investor Day expectations. Consistent with our previous comments, we expect the continued growth in adjusted loans and some modest upward pressure on our write-off rates, due primarily to the seasoning of loans related to new card members, will both contribute to an increase in adjusted provisions going forward.

Turning now to revenue performance on slide 9, reported revenues were down 5%, while adjusted revenue growth accelerated modestly from 4% in Q2 to 5% this quarter. This level of growth is consistent with our year-to-date adjusted revenue growth performance and the expectations we shared at our Investor Day in March.

As we look at the details components of revenue on slide 10, we see a decline in discount revenue from lower volumes while on an adjusted basis discount revenue increased by 5%. This was driven by the 7% increase in adjusted volumes that I already discussed for the quarter, offset partially by a decline in the ratio of discount revenue to billed business, which I will come back to in a few minutes.

Net card fees growth continues to be strong, up 10% this quarter. We're seeing healthy growth in our domestic Platinum, Gold and Delta portfolios, as well as in key international markets like Japan and Mexico. Steady growth in card fees is a reminder of the strength of our value propositions and our ability to attract and retain fee-paying customers even in the face of in intense competitive environment.

Moving on, net interest income was down 11% on lower reported loans, while up 10% on an adjusted basis. As I mentioned earlier, adjusted loans were up 12% and net interest yield on card member loans increased year over year. These impacts were partially offset in net interest income by higher funding costs related to our charge card portfolio, due to the increase in interest rates versus last year. Last, I would point out that net interest income represents 17% of our total revenues this quarter, somewhat lower than we have seen in recent quarters, given the sales of the cobrand portfolios.

Coming back now to discount rate performance on slide 11, we saw the reported discount rate increase one basis point year over year as lower discount rate volume coming off of the network more than offset the rate pressure from merchant negotiations, including those tied to new regulations in Europe and the continued growth of OptBlue. We did see the ratio of discount revenue to billed business move down by five basis points year over year. The year-over-year decline stems in part from the continued growth from cash back rewards. The greater sequential change in Q3 versus the reported discount rate is due to our billings mix shifting towards GNS or our network business in Q3 as cobrand volumes declined.

Turning now to expense performance on slide 12, you can see that total expenses were down 3% compared to the prior year. I will speak specifically about marketing shortly, so let me start by focusing on rewards. Reported rewards expense declined 11% versus the prior year, much more than the 3% decline in reported billings I mentioned earlier. We first noted this variance in Q2, as the billings from cobrand products that formerly drove rewards expense come off the network and are partially replaced with new volumes that are more likely to earn cash back rewards, which are recorded as contra discount revenue.

Excluding volumes and rewards from the Costco cobrand in the prior year and including the cost of rewards on cash back products, the growth in adjusted rewards was relatively in line with the growth in adjusted proprietary billings this quarter. Looking forward, however, and consistent with our Investor Day expectations, we would expect this trend to change and for rewards, including cash back, to grow faster than billings as we continue to enhance our product value propositions over time, beginning in the fourth quarter due to the recent enhancements to our US platinum products.

Turning then to operating expenses, we continue to feel good about the progress we have made to reduce our cost base by $1 billion on a run rate basis by the end of 2017. We have made faster progress than we had anticipated on identifying and executing the key initiatives behind this effort. In the third quarter, this translated into operating expenses being down 3% year over year despite the $44 million restructuring charge that we took in the quarter.

Moving now to marketing and promotion expenses on slide 13, I would remind you that as we entered 2016 we anticipated that our full-year marketing spending would be similar to prior-year levels of $3.1 billion. On last quarter's earnings call we highlighted that we anticipated full-year marketing expenses would be at least $200 million higher than 2015 as we take advantage of attractive investment opportunities. Consistent with these comments from last quarter, marketing and promotion was up 10% versus the prior year in Q3. As we have discussed, new card acquisitions has been one of the our investment focus areas we did acquire 1.7 million new cards across our US issuing businesses this quarter and 2.5 million in a worldwide basis. This performance remains above our historical average level of acquisitions, though as expected, it is below the levels in recent quarters.

Looking ahead to Q4, the financial performance we have had year-to-date gives us confidence to move ahead more aggressively with a series of initiatives that we have been working on for some time. In particular, we plan to accelerate and leverage the combined progress we have made in several areas. First, providing increased marketing support for the tremendous Platinum Card franchise that we have in the US. We are excited about the changes announced earlier this month which will provide expanded travel benefits for our US consumer and small business Platinum products. These new benefits are just one step in a series of further enhancements that we plan to make to the Platinum product over the course of the next year.

Second, leveraging our many years of sponsoring Small Business Saturday to build upon a success that we have had increasing awareness among small business merchants and card members. Small Business Saturday is a great example of how our closed loop enables us to partner and provide value to both our small business merchants and our existing card member base. We have made significant progress growing our small merchant footprint in the US through OptBlue and believe that a fourth-quarter promotional campaign represents an excellent opportunity to make our card members aware of the millions of new locations where American Express is now welcomed.

Third, further building on the success of our US card acquisitions across all of our products, including the distinct opportunities present in the consumer card segment. Fourth, increasing our acquisition efforts in key international markets to build upon the positive momentum seen in our international business. Last, supporting all of these efforts through an increased brand advertising presence around the globe to drive greater penetration and share of mind with both consumers and merchants.

We believe that the fourth quarter provides an opportunity to bring together and leverage the combined impact from all of these initiatives to best position the Company for growth in 2017 and many years beyond. As a result, we now anticipate that marketing and promotion expenses during Q4 will be significantly higher sequentially and that for the full year M&P will be more than 10% above 2015 levels.

Moving now to capital, we continue to be pleased with our ability to return excess capital to shareholders through share buybacks and dividends. On a year-to-date basis, we have returned 92% of the capital we have generated to shareholders, which has driven a 7% reduction in our average shares outstanding. While we will of course be subject to the annually CCAR progress going forward, we remain confident that the strength of our business model provides us with the ability to return significant amount of capital to shareholders while maintaining our strong capital ratios.

Let me now conclude by going back to the key themes in our results and providing an update on our outlook for the balance of the year. During the third quarter we made progress on our key initiatives to accelerate revenue growth, including driving new card acquisitions across our global consumer and commercial portfolios, expanding merchant coverage and driving momentum on our lending growth initiatives. We also remained focused on our cost-reduction efforts and continue to leverage our strong capital position to create value for our shareholders.

To put the third quarter into the context of our full-year plans, as a reminder, at the beginning of the year our outlook was for full-year 2016 earnings per share to be between $5.40 and $5.70, excluding restructuring charges and other contingencies. We also pointed out that consistent with our history, we expected to use a portion of the portfolio sale gains to fund increased spending on a range of growth initiatives across the Company. We also said that we expected to use the gains to fund spending throughout the year, which would result in some unevenness in our quarterly results.

On last quarter's earnings call, we updated our outlook and said that we expected full-year 2016 EPS to be at the high end of the $5.40 and $5.70 range. We also said that the competitive dynamics within the US consumer space created a bit more uncertainty around our second-half assumptions.

Today, while competition remains very intense and the environment will continue to evolve, we have greater clarity about the trends we're seeing due to our actual results this quarter. This clarity, combined with continued favorable trends in credit and operating expense performance, offset partially by the increases in marketing and promotion and rewards that I discussed, would have allows us to raise our full-year 2016 EPS guidance to be between $5.90 and $6. As a reminder, this outlook excludes the impact of restructuring charges or other contingencies.

Turning to 2017, our outlook for full-year EPS to be at least $5.60 remains unchanged at this time. Given the faster-than-expected progress on our cost-reduction initiatives, we do now anticipate that operating expenses in 2017 will be lower next year than the $10.9 billion dollar shown in our Investor Day scenario. Depending upon our operating performance and the opportunities that we see in the marketplace, we believe that the accelerated operating expense savings we are achieving provide us with the flexibility to have higher levels of marketing and promotion next year than in our Investor Day scenario while still tracking towards our $1 billion cost reduction target, as well as our earnings target for 2017 of at least $5.60.

We continue to believe that we have the right strategy in place to meet our objectives in 2017 and to build a solid base for driving longer-term growth. We're pleased that our results so far this year have provided us with the flexibility to bring together marketing efforts in the fourth quarter around the host of initiatives I outlined earlier, while also raising our outlook for full-year earnings. We are clearly operating in a challenging environment, but are intensely focused on executing the plans we have in place.

Great, thanks, Jeff. Before we open up the lines for Q&A, I will ask those in the queue to limit yourself to just one question. Thank you for your cooperation and with that, the operator will now open the line for questions. Ryan?

(Operator Instructions)

Craig Maurer, Autonomous.

Limiting it to one question, if we do see a rise in interest rates, do you expect there to be any change in the competitive environment, as it would seem low credit -- advantageous credit combined with low rates has allowed what you could call some second-rate players to simply throw cash at the problem in the form of cash back rewards?

Well, Craig, I guess it is two comments. We run the Company and try to make our decisions based on a very long-term view of how we build long-term sustainable value for our shareholders by creating long-term relationships with our card members and merchants. Frankly, when we do that we take a through-the-cycle view of the economics as we make decisions about what we can give good investment returns on and what we can't. That leaves us believing that we should be aggressively investing where we see opportunities, regardless of where we may be in the cycle.

It is a competitive environment right now. What I would say is that in response to that competitive environment, we try to stay very focused on our longer-term goals and on creating the kinds of products, value propositions and offerings to our card members and merchants that bring to us people interested in the same kind of long-term sustainable value and relationships that we are after.

Now, what is a rising interest rate environment mean for that? Certainly for us, I think everyone would recall that given the significance of our charge card franchise, for us, all else being equal, rising interest rates cost us a little bit of money, 100 basis points. All else being equal is a couple hundred of million dollars. On the other hand rising interest rates, in theory, should be accompanied by reasonably good economic conditions and that generally provides some kind of offset.

We feel very comfortable that we have in place a range of strategies and tactics that will thrive and be economically sustainable through whatever economic environment we face due to rising interest rates. What that might mean for the competitive environment, we will have to see, but we try not to make decisions counting on any particular change in the competitive environment.

David Ho, Deutsche Bank.

Just talking about the incremental investment spend, particularly in your Platinum product, how much of it was reactive versus proactive in response to a new entrant late in October? To what extent will this continue and what is the pace of investment? We saw a taste of that due to a recent value prop increase, but what else is next?

I think it is a good question, David. What I would say is we are continually working to maintain and keep vibrant what we believe is by far the gold standard in high-end cards and that's the Platinum product, both in the consumer market and in the small business market. You see as a part of that us steadily and consistently evolving the product. If you think back over the last few years, you every year you have seen steady enhancements to the product from the introduction of the Centurion lounges to expansion of various travel-oriented credits around TSA prechecks and global entry through status that we are able to offer people through things like our partnership with Hilton Honors.

You see a very steady stream of these things and there is a lot of thought and a lot of planning that goes into them. What we have announced earlier this month is the latest in that steady stream and as I said in my prepared remarks, you should expect more. None of those things happened in response to any particular move by our competitors. They are all very long in the planning, but they all do stem from a general view of how we view the competitive environment evolving in general and how we think we can best evolve the product to take advantage of the broad range of brand and service and global reach that we can bring to our customers that are the kinds of things that we think let us stand out and are very difficult for competitors to match.

Bob Napoli, William Blair.

I guess I don't want to beat the rewards thing to death because there are so many other things to focus on, but with the Sapphire card and I would imagine that when you put your planning together that you were aware that you would expect that Costco Citi would have very aggressive marketing programs; but are you seeing -- have you seen an effect on the cancellation rate or lost cards from these new competitive products? The rewards that you've put in place and the changes you put in place, do you think that, that is good enough to slow down any competitive loss and then possibly lead to American Express starting to gain market share instead of losing market share?

Well, there are a couple of good questions there, Bob. Let me start by talking about a couple of different product value propositions. When you look at the Platinum franchise, I would point out to you as I said in my prepared remarks that we have seen very nice growth both in numbers of Platinum members in the US as well as the fee income from Platinum members over the course of the past year and that was a contributing factor in our card fees being up 10%. I'd start there and say we feel pretty good about that franchise and it is part of why we are continually thinking about how we enhance the proposition in response to the evolving environment.

When you look at the cash back environment, we have been very successful and again, in my prepared remarks I talked about the particularly good growth we've seen in the US consumer space with our cash back products, so we feel pretty good about those value propositions. We will have to -- it is far too early to see any impact from things that have only been launched in very recent weeks and months and as I said a few minutes ago, we are in the game for the long term to build long-term relationships with our customers.

We believe we have product value propositions that are about creating the kind of relationship with our Card Members that goes on for many, many years. I would point out that when you look at our Platinum franchise in many ways it is built upon a group of people who stay with us for decades, not for short periods of time. We feel pretty good about all those value propositions.

In terms of market share, we have many, many different products across the consumer small business and commercial segments. When you look at the US market in total across all of those segments, to remind everyone we found ourselves gaining quite a bit of share in the couple of years right after the financial crisis, and ignoring the portfolio sales for just a second, we had some modest share declines in the last couple of years.

First and foremost, we run the Company to create value, financial value for our shareholders. We create product value propositions that we think are attractive to our card members and will create long-term value for our shareholders. Certainly as we make decisions, one factor we consider is what is happening with overall market share. I would say our number one goal is how we create long-term sustainable financial value and market share is just one factor that goes into that.

We're not ever happy or content to see ourselves losing the little bit of market share we've lost in the US over the last couple of years. I would point out outside the US we've been gaining share in almost every market in which we operate. I would close by saying our number one objective, though, is making the right decisions to build sustainable financial value.

Sanjay Sakhrani, KBW.

Jeff, I was wondering if you could help us with the run rate of expenses as we move into 2017. I know 2016 has a lot of numbers, not a lot of stuff in there but maybe you could just help us with how to think about the beginning point for 2017 off of which you will have those expense saves. Secondly as far as the rewards costs are concerned, can you just help us how to think about how to think of the impacts to the rewards rate on the expense line and the discount rate as far as the cash rewards are concerned? Thanks.

There is quite a bit there. Let me take a cut at a few of those. On 2017 expenses broadly, I guess I would break them into three categories: operating expenses, and M&P, and rewards.

To remind everyone, in March at our Investor Day we showed one scenario for how you might get to our EPS target for 2017 of earning at least $5.60. In that scenario, and we did point out there were other ways to get there as well, but in that scenario we had operating expense in 2017 of $10.9 billion. What I am telling you this evening is when we look at the progress we made in identifying and executing on a range of initiatives, we will do better than that. Just how much better we will have to see, but we will clearly do better and we feel good about that and we are continuing to work every day to find more money and get the number as low as we can.

The next thing I said in that Investor Day scenario is that versus a 2015 base of M&P of about $3.1 billion, we thought we could trim as much as $200 million to $400 million. We will have to see on that one. I would tell you that certainly to the extent we can do better on OpEx, to the extent we have revenue trends that allow us to achieve our financial bottom-line targets, I suspect we will probably not pull down M&P as much as we suggested in that Investor Day scenario, both because we may have the financial flexibility not to do it. Look, I'm certainly not going to sit on this call, Sanjay, and try to argue with people that the environment doesn't continue every day to be a very, very competitive environment. Our M&P probably comes somewhat off that 2015 level, but perhaps not as much.

Rewards is certainly a moving target because it is a function both of the new value propositions we put in the marketplace with Platinum as well as the evolving mix across our cash back, cobrand, and proprietary portfolios. On that one, I will tell you other than the directional comment that beginning with the fourth quarter you will see a reversal of the trend we have seen in the last few quarters where in total, rewards have been growing a little more slowly than billings, that will clearly reverse in Q4. It should be clear to you that we have been planning that for some time.

That's why going back as far as Investor Day I said built into the 2017 numbers and the scenarios we showed for what might happen beyond, we had assumed that rewards costs would grow faster than billings. I think, Sanjay, I'm probably going to wait one more quarter until we provide a little more insight into 2017 to be much more specific than that. The Q4 results, I think, will help everyone begin to calibrate as well.

Thank you.

Chris Brendler, Stifel.

I had a question on the UK. You see an acceleration there. I think this is actually is the same question I asked last quarter. It was 10% last quarter, FX adjusted. Now it's 16%. A lot of competitors are reacting to the interchange reductions there. What is your strategy there? Are you gaining share because of you're holding the line on rewards in the face of the interchange reduction? Is there any sort of color you can provide an your outlook for the UK business given that sort of competitive edge at this point? Thanks.

We are pleased by the growth we have seen in the UK, which has been in the double digits, about 10%, for quite some time now. I would also point out, as I said earlier, that, that is typical of the majority of countries outside of the US where we in most countries, not all, but in most, we find ourselves gaining share, albeit starting from a much smaller basis in share than what we have in the US. We have a very flexible business model. You hear us talk a lot about the many different advantages that having a closed-loop model gives us and we talk a lot about the value that we get from the fact every day we have to go out and negotiate with merchants to demonstrate our value. Every day we have to demonstrate our value to card members. That is giving us some flexibility in the UK and across Europe to try to craft propositions for both the merchants and card members that people find very attractive as that environment evolves.

We are pleased with the growth in the UK. I would say that growth has been strong for some time but it does seem to have picked up even a little bit more steam as you look at that this year. We're pleased with that and we are working hard all across the EU to further build on that momentum. I would remind everyone, however, that they are in the nearer-term in offset, which we talk about when we talk about the discount rate is that we are in a multi-year process, probably, of slowly renegotiating many of our merchant agreements in Europe.

As we renegotiate them because of the caps on interchange, there is more pressure on us in many ways to keep the differential similar but bring the absolute rate down, and that's part of what we have been talking about for some time now. That is part of what is putting some unusual downward pressure on our discount rate. That is an offset that we should remember to some of the nice volume performance we're seeing in Europe.

Great, thanks so much, Jeff.

Chris Donat, Sandler O'Neill.

I wanted to ask about the success you talked about in digital marketing with the 1.7 million accounts you added in the US this quarter and 5.9 million year to date. Are you seeing improvements in your cost of acquisition relative to what you've seen in the past? Is that a function of being digital or are you just getting better at acquiring customers than maybe you were a couple of years ago?

There is probably a couple different phenomenon, Chris, worth commenting on. Yes, every quarter we get better, more sophisticated, more thoughtful about how we leverage our closed-loop data in terms of making our digital marketing more effective and that is why across the globe in our consumer businesses the majority of our new card member acquisitions for some time now have come through digital channels. One of the reasons why we believe we can moderate marketing promotional spend over time without losing traction on accelerating revenue growth is every quarter we get a little better bit at digital marketing. It is far more economically efficient than some of the other direct mail, or depending on what country you are in, in the world, we use direct sales channels sometimes in a few countries.

The one thing I would acknowledge that goes the other way a little bit is certainly our relationship with Costco provided a really good source of acquiring new customers and that was a very low-cost acquisition channel. They were good customers attracted to two good brands. We have lost that. One of the things internally that we need to look at and are pleased by is as we have lost that channel, we have effectively had to completely replace that acquisition effort with efforts in other channels. Digital has played a big part of that and we feel we have crossed the threshold, if you will, where our acquisitions now, even though we've lost that one big former channel, we're above what they were in the prior year and we feel good about that mix.

I would say, though, that certainly not all of our card member acquisitions are digital yet and one of the positives to me about that is that is, it means I see many years still ahead of us of getting better every year in that's going give us a little bit better economics every year. Thanks for the question.

Moshe Orenbuch, Credit Suisse.

Most of my questions were asked but I was hoping you could kind of discuss the performance of the global merchant services, the growth rate in revenue. You talked about -- you mentioned Fidelity in your comments. Talk a little bit about the revenue growth and margin trends there, if you could.

Yes, I would remind, Moshe, you and for that matter everyone, as we re-segmented the Company, after Ken reorganized the Company late last year, we created the four new segments. In the new segments, what we call GMS, which is lead by Anre Williams, represents our merchant and loyalty businesses. That business does not have in it the what we call the GNS, or network business, which is the business that goes out and negotiates with third-party issues such as the third-party issuer of the Fidelity cobrand. That business is reported in our international consumer segment for the most [card] part because most of those are relationships are outside the US. Fidelity one was of the small number that were in the US.

With that as background, when you look at the GMS segment, quite frankly, it is really going to track the overall Company, because what you are really seeing in that segment are the acquirer and network economics that go with the issuing done by the consumer and commercial segments. What you see when you look at what we are calling ICNS, or the international consumer network services segment, is the combination of our proprietary issuing businesses outside the US along with the network business. We do provide in the tables some information about the growth in the network side of the business, which continues as it has for many years now, to be the highest growth in terms of billing segment of the Company.

With all that as background, what I would say is the GMS segment really just reflects the overall Company economics and I'm not sure I would add a lot there. When you look at the performance of the GNS, or network business, we continue to be very pleased by growth in that business outside the US.

I would say the business in the US is not a growth business. It was down this quarter, driven by Fidelity and that would be one thing that I would say is not a particular growth opportunity for the Company, at least in the near-term. Outside the US we see very nice growth in Europe, Asia, as well as Latin America. Thank you for the question.

Thanks.

Ken Bruce, Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Surprising quarter in a very good way, so congratulations. My question relates to credit. You talked about competition being intense and most of that is around rewards. One of the other areas that we've noticed is there has been a lot more focus on growing loans across the board and we're seeing some expansion of the credit box. All things being equal, you guys have been growing faster self and you're talking about higher loss rates. I would like you to dimensionalize where you are expanding the credit box versus what you think is just the seasoning within the portfolio without really changing the composition, the overall composition of that loan book. If you could help us with that, that would be great. Thank you.

Good question, Ken. I guess I would say a couple of things. As I said in my prepared remarks, what you have seen is that as our cobrand loan portfolio has shrunk due to the portfolio sales, we have worked very hard to replace the growth that was formally coming from those cobrand card members were not cobrand card members. As a general statement, we find that the non-cobrand card members are more likely to revolve on their balances. They do have higher write-off rates, so the average credit quality is marginally below where it was for the cobrand card members.

We priced for that. That's part of why as I went through the net interest yield, our net interest yield sequentially has gone up a little bit because you are losing the lower yielding cobrand card members and you are gaining more non-cobrand card members where the yield tends to be a little bit better. That is the one area where I would say there is some evolution in the nature of the card members. You add to that seasoning, because you go through a process over the first year or two that you require a revolving card member or they evolve to the credit process and those are the two things going on that have led us for some time now to say we feel good about our loan growth. We think we can grow loans at the kind of rates we have been growing them for very long time and we think we can do it without materially changing the overall credit profile of the Company.

I'd also just remind you the other reason that we've been able to do that for some years now, because remember, we did not just accelerate our loan growth. It's been well above the industry for several years now and you have not seen a change in the relative credit profiles. We are able to grow loans partly because we are focused on it now and we are creating the products that are attractive to consumers in that area. We are creating marketing that actually drives people to the products. Frankly, we just have more focus on it here as a management team.

As you have heard us say over and over again over the last year, we really were leaving a target-rich opportunity for ourselves with our very low penetration into our own card members' borrowing behaviors. That is a key difference, I think, Ken, between us and where others may be, because as we sought a few years ago to begin to accelerate our growth in loans, we really didn't have to figure out, well, boy, we are already capturing our share of our own card members behaviors. How are we going attract new card members?

We had a very different proposition ahead of us. We could just say, boy, what do we do to start tuning our marketing and products so that we capture more of our appropriate share of wallet what we already capture on spend? I think that gives us a very different opportunity set than others may have and I think it is an important component of why we have had several years of growth above the industry while maintaining our relative credit positioning. I hope that helps.

Yes, that does. Thank you.

Don Fandetti, Citigroup.

I was wondering if you could talk a little bit on where your thinking is on the international strategy. It sounds like it's going to be one of the areas of investment that you highlighted. It's been a strong area where some of the US consumer businesses are feeling intense competition. Can you talk a little bit about what you are thinking? Are you getting more aggressive there or is this continuing the pace?

It's a good question, Don, and I do think we are trying to drive even more growth out of our international businesses. I would point out, for some time now with the one challenge we had, Canada aside, we have been seeing really nice growth across our international consumer businesses. Our international small business segment, which is reported in GCS, is -- has consistently for some time now been our highest growth segment in the Company. We feel really good about the growth we have been getting and we will be doing a number of things to try to accelerate it further.

When you say, though, talk about your international strategy, that's always a challenging question because we don't have an international strategy. We have a strategy in the UK. We have different strategy in Germany where we are greatly able to leverage the tremendous strength of our (technical difficulty) business to really nice synergies with the card business. We have a totally different opportunity in Mexico, where we have one of the largest market shares we have outside of the US and a tremendous market position that's growing rapidly. We have a very different strategy in Japan, where due to a relationship we struck with JCB many, many years ago, it is one of the few international markets where we have tremendous coverage. That has been fueling growth rates in the double digits for a number of years right now.

I could go on but I guess my point is, we feel good about the trends that we have seen for a couple of years now. We are trying to provide even more resource and focus to invest in the markets where frankly we see the greatest traction and I just named a couple of them. I could go on but I won't. I don't want to take too much of everyone's time. It is really more about just putting more time, effort, resource, and focus behind the things that we are already doing.

Jeff, just to quickly clarify, I know it's not material, but the China activity tick up, is that outbound coming out of China, is that sort of organic growth or are there new signings of deals?

It is really organic growth and so you do see the growth across all types, including outbound. The biggest chunk is still intra-China, where like all networks, our share we are allotted under the Chinese government's rules is quite modest, to put it mildly. We like to think we've continued to very successfully build a brand and build presence in China. We've been able to do that without putting any capital into China and as the Chinese government inevitably moves towards a more open and competitive market, we hope that, that brand presence that we've been able to create is an asset that we will be able to leverage more over time in the future.

Thank you.

James Friedman, American Express.

I wanted to ask, Jeff, if you had any observations or comments about your incubation strategy. I remember a couple of years ago you sold your Concur out of your portfolio. I think you probably disclosed Foursquare and [VMEN] in China. I was wondering, are there any assets that you are particularly excited about that you think you might monetize over time? Thank you.

That is a good question, James. Certainly, we were pleased in the last couple of years, I would say you saw two in particular really significant investments that turned out quite well for us, the ICBC investment, as well as the Concur investment. We do run, as you would find it, many if not most companies of our size and scale, a venture capital group and we do have very modest investments in a range of companies across the payments and technology spectrum.

I would say our goal there is really about making sure we stay very close to where innovation is happening across all of the spaces that are interesting to us. Our goal is to invest with companies where we can also create working relationships and operating relationships where we can help them succeed and we can also stay with a pulse. Our goal is not to necessarily as the first priority find ourselves making lots of money by buying and selling these stakes. That's not really our goal. Our goal is to not lose money.

From time to time we have one of those companies that takes some kind of exit and there are modest gains that I don't usually even bother to talk about or modest losses. For now it's in that too quite a nice modest positive. As I said, that is not the goal. There's nothing else in the portfolio that I would say is material at this point that an investor should be aware of. There are always investments that are quite small.

Thank you.

Ryan Nash, Goldman Sachs.

Jeff, you gave us a lot of detail in terms of the puts and takes on the expense space, whether it's the below $10.9 billion or the marketing and promotion dollars. Can you just, given all the customer acquisition that you have done this year, can you just help us understand the outlook for revenues? Clearly, you talked about a lot of different areas, small business, clawing back market share, increased lending, what you've talked about on this call; but can you just give us a sense of how you are progressing relative to expectations on revenues and given this increased marketing spend that you are doing, is there the potential we could actually see higher than expected revenue growth?

Well, I think, Ryan, as you would expect me to say, we'll have to see. We are pleased that when you look at Q3 you saw a little bit of sequential acceleration from the 4% you saw in Q2. We're pleased that year to date we are at 5%. I would remind everyone that our scenario that we showed back in March at Investor Day through 2017 had a 5% revenue CAGR, so we are already there. As a management team, we are laser focused on thinking through the best strategies for accelerating revenue growth further into the kind of higher range scenario that we talked about beyond 2017 at Investor Day.

We will have to see. We feel very comfortable and confident in the choices we have made but there is a lot of factors, whether it's the economy or interest rates that someone brought up earlier or the evolving competitive environment. What I'd say is we feel good about the earnings guidance we have given people for 2016 and 2017. We feel good about the revenue trends we have seen year to date. We feel good about the decisions we have made and we will see how all that plays out in 2017.

Thanks.

Eric Wasserstrom, Guggenheim Securities.

Jeff, I was hoping that you just might clarify how we should think about net income for next year? Obviously you have given the guidance on the EPS and we know that there's going to be significant share repurchases and you've talked to a number of the expense line items. But how do we think about the net income and core profitability relative to, let's say, an annualized run rate for the quarter that you just produced?

Well, I'd make two comments. I think you should presume that we will execute upon the CCAR approvals that we have from a share repurchase perspective and so that math will get you to some continued significant uplift in EPS versus net income. When you think about the quarter we were just in, I would say a couple of things. You would expect to see, based on all the comments we made, a little growth in rewards cost relative to the quarter we just saw. On the other hand, we have a lot of operating expense that we are now confident we will get out as we get into 2017.

We also believe we can moderate the marketing and promotional line somewhat. I talked a little bit earlier about the to-ing and fro-ing that we'll debate internally over the next couple of months about just how much. Then clearly we are very focused on continuing to get good revenue growth and our goal is to accelerate it. You can sort of back into what that will mean depending on what you want to believe about where we end up on an EPS perspective. In some ways, I suppose the probably least variable of all the variables I just talked you through would be share repurchase, because you can publicly see what we are going to do, thanks to the feds CCAR process. That's probably the way I would think about it, Eric.

Thanks very much.

Ryan, I think we have time for one more question.

Rick Shane, JPMorgan.

Jeff, you had talked a little bit about the distortion that is occurring as you increase the mix towards cash back between member rewards and the impact on net discount revenue. I'm curious as we think about the fourth quarter and your emphasis on marketing -- or excuse me, on growing the Platinum book, how we should think about that relationship. I am assuming that is not a cash back offer.

Correct. Yes, so it is a good question, Rick. To remind everyone, what I've been trying to do the last few quarters due to the way the accounting rules work, we've put our cash back rewards up as contra revenue and our membership rewards and cobrand rewards generally go down is what you see in the rewards line. We tried to add all of those up and they have been growing somewhat similarly in recent quarters. Rewards have actually been going a little slower than billings.

That will clearly change next quarter because of the Platinum changes. There were also in last year's fourth quarter a couple of true ups, the kind of one-time things you have from time to time that helped lower last year's Q4 rewards line. The year-over-year change will look a little bit more exaggerated in this Q4 than in others. In some ways it might be better to look at the sequential run rate of rewards, Rick, to try to figure out what happens to the rewards line.

The cash back contra rewards sequentially aren't going to do anything unusual than just grow as the products grow. And the two things that will change in the rewards line are the implementation of these platinum changes, which will clearly drive significant cost. How much we will have to see what the take-up is, et cetera, along with this accounting item that I talked about from last year. Hopefully that's a little helpful in how you think about it.

The good news is that the clock is now ticking on anniversarying all of these adjustments. 12 months from now we won't be thinking about this quite as much.

I think everyone will enjoy the October 2017 earnings call, Rick, when I don't have to do adjusted performance. Thank you very much for that reminder. I look forward to -- (Multiple speakers)

Thanks, everybody, for joining tonight's call and thank you for your continued interest in American Express. Ryan, I think we are all set.

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's conference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.