00:00I think this is mostly a story about expectations here. The bar was pretty high going into the
00:05quarter. Amex trades 70% premium to many of its peers. I think that people were looking for an
00:12acceleration and they got a deceleration, especially in those card fees, and that's
00:16kind of the secret sauce of the revenue model. So to see that start to slow down, investors start to
00:21ask some questions about the sustainability of the revenue going forward. Ben, with expenses
00:27rising faster than revenue, how should investors think about trade-offs between near-term costs and
00:32long-term growth investments? Well, so I think expenses came in a little bit below revenue,
00:38so there's still a little bit of mild positive operating leverage there. But sort of the
00:45story behind Amex is they have to spend to create the value proposition that attracts Gen Z and
00:51millennial customers to these cards. So investors expect and want to see them spending more.
00:57I think there are some sort of oddities in the numbers there as they kind of lapped the
01:02refresh in the Platinum card, which was launched September 18th. So you could see some of that
01:06kind of smooth out. But by and large, it's the fee and the interest income that really sort of
01:14generates the revenue above what they spend to sort of attract customers to those cards. And so I think
01:20that's why people are a little bit more concerned about the slowing in the fee revenue rather than
01:24like a temporary increase in the expenses.
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