We're going to get started up next. We're excited to once again have American Express joining us. Amex has continued to deliver strong top-line growth despite a more challenging economic backdrop through increased customer acquisition, benefits of product refreshes, and, of course, leveraging its best-in-class brand. Here to tell us more about the American Express story is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Steve Squeri. Today's presentation is going to be a fireside chat. Steve, thank you for joining us again. It's a pleasure to be here again. So maybe to just start, big picture, 2024 has been a very solid year for Amex. You're on track to generate greater than 15% EPS growth on pace to acquire over 13 million cards. However, top-line growth, while strong, has been a little bit slower than your aspirational target. So maybe just reflect on this year, what's gone well, what hasn't been as strong as you would have liked, and more importantly, how is the company positioned to succeed as we look ahead? Yeah. So again, thanks for having me here. As we think about this year, if you go through to third quarter on an FX-adjusted basis, we have 10% revenue growth. So we're pretty happy about that. And that's with losing Certares. From an EPS perspective, we're running about 20%. What I think has gone well for us is, again, we've really focused on our product refreshes. And I think that really makes a difference in the marketplace. It really gets momentum going. We've been really, really good from a credit perspective. International has done really, really well for us. And we continue to get coverage gains in international. I think when you look at spending, spending has been relatively stable as we moved along. But what probably could have went better for us this year is a better economic environment. I think you see that a little bit with consumer, where we're running about 6%. But small business is one that I think has upside into the future. When you think about how we're positioned overall, we've built this company to a much different scale than it was pre-pandemic. And I think that scale gives us lots of opportunities from a leverage perspective. And we continue to focus on Millennials and Gen Z. And that's really been a big story for us. And it continues to be the story because I think a lot of people thought, is the American Express card member sort of waning and dying out? And that's not the case. And we have great card members, great colleagues. And that is making a difference and makes me feel really comfortable. And when we end this year, we'll probably end at about 9% revenue growth. But EPS will be between 23% and 25%. And we've raised guidance. Didn't want to raise guidance, but we had to raise guidance because otherwise it would have looked like we were making no money in the fourth quarter. And that would have sent off some sort of signals. Great. So maybe to dig in a little bit further, so several years ago, you laid out 10%+ aspirational revenue growth in 2024 and beyond. And as you highlighted, clear, there's been economic uncertainty. We've had higher interest rates and obviously stubborn inflation. Maybe just talk about what you need to see to reach those levels of growth. And has the algorithm changed at all since you first put this target out? No, I don't think so. I think we put this target out right after we had some spectacular revenue growth after the pandemic, and I think for me, what was really important to send the message, not only to our investors, but to send the message to our colleagues, that we are a growth company. We are here to grow, and that's why I think the 10% is the correct aspiration, so what has to happen to have all that right? Well, you probably need high single-digit billings, and we're not at that point. You need to continue to have card fee growth, which for 25 quarters, we've now been 10% or more. For 25 straight quarters, we had 18% card fee revenue growth, and we think about that as sort of recurring revenues, much like a SaaS model. And then from a lending perspective, I think lending needs to grow just slightly more than billings. And we're growing in line with the industry. You put all that together, and you will get to your 10% revenue. Having said that, if you're off on any of those things, the scale that we have right now, whether we grow 8%, 9%, or 10% revenue, I'm very, very confident we will continue to grow mid-teens EPS. And we're proving that this year by exceeding mid-teens EPS. Maybe just to dig in on that a little bit further, you noted that this year, 2023 to 2025, including the Certares gain. Maybe just expand on the comment around scale and how you're able to drive this type of earnings per share growth, even the fact that the top line is a little bit softer. Yeah. I mean, look, technology is a big part of that. I mean, our continued investment in technology, which helps from a servicing perspective. We continue to get lots of expense operating leverage. Obviously, we're growing our expenses, our operating expenses a little bit slower than we're growing our revenues. But I think one of the key things for us is the marketing leverage that we're getting. And we've upped our marketing expenditures to approximately $6 billion this year. And we target the team to be more efficient than it was last year. So for example, if I set a 5% target on $3 billion worth of marketing spend, I'm going to get another $150 million. I set a 5% target on $6 billion, I'm getting an extra $300 million. And I think what's happened for us is our retention rates continue to be strong. And we're just continuing to refresh those products. And those value propositions are really resonating with our customers. And having the scale that we have allows us to pull many different levers to get to that level. Maybe, Steve, a little bit more near -term. You've been describing for the last couple of quarters, as you said, spend has been steady. We're now two months through the quarter. Any update on either billings performance or what are your expectations across the rest of the holiday season? Yeah. So look, I'd say for the last four or five quarters, we've been growing at about 6%. What I would say is through two months of this quarter, we are stronger than we were last quarter. And I know everybody's interested in holiday spending. And so if you look at the week before Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday, our billings are very strong. Retail, we're double digits from a U.S. consumer retail perspective. Our online retail, consumer retail, is mid-teens. And our offline foot traffic is high single digits. So when you look at that, it gives you a lot of confidence in our card members, obviously, because you have that premium base. But to have double-digit growth for that period of time was a very positive sign. Having said that, like in a basketball game, winning the first quarter doesn't really matter. You've got to win all four quarters. So we'll see what the next four weeks brings. But we're happy with what's happened so far. Excellent. I do think my wife helped some of those strengths. I'm sure. So Steve, as I was reading through my questions over the weekend, I came upon this question. I laughed because there's two questions within one. I know you like to belittle me about doing that to you many times a year. Well, you do that on all the earnings calls. We say one question, and you say, I have a question with two parts. Well, the market's obviously showing excitement post the election in hopes of a more business-friendly environment. Maybe just talk about what changes you're expecting at all and if this could impact billings or the overall performance of the company. And then second, is this enough to see organic spend across things like U.S. consumer SMEs to improve? Yeah. There's like four questions there. But look, I think, and I've been asked this question before, I think the regulatory environment will, I hope, rationalize more. Somebody says it's going to be deregulation. I don't think it's going to be deregulation. But I think there'll be a little bit more rationalization. I think that we'll see what happens from a tax perspective. I think everybody with one administration might have been expecting higher taxes. We'll see. We'll see how that all plays out. We'll see what happens with global minimum tax and how that plays out. We'll see what happens with the CFPB. There's a lot of moving parts. And we'll see what happens with Basel III. Having said that, look, regardless of Democratic administration, high taxes, low taxes, what have you, our strategy works irrespective. We've been through many, many types of different governments and what have you. I think as far as organic spending, I can tell you that in a high tax environment, you will not have organic spending. You raise corporate taxes, corporations will still target their EPS. They will maybe not spend as much. They won't spend as much with middle market companies. They won't spend as much with small businesses. And consumers may not have as much because companies may go into layoffs at that point. So I think holding where we are from a tax perspective is good for the economy. We'll have to see how tariffs play into all that. So from an organic spending perspective, I think a more stable environment with line of sight into maybe not a high inflation or high tax environment can help organic spending. And I know everybody's always focused on small businesses, right? From a small business perspective, look, from a small business perspective, we used to grow about 3% organically every year. COVID came. We were down 14%. Then we were up 19%. Then we were up 13%. And now we've been sort of negative about 3%. So what happened during COVID was the best way to pay was to use the card, right? People didn't get in and had their checkbooks. They weren't doing wires and so forth. And the easiest form of payment was the credit card. And people leaned into it heavy. But the reality is there were a bunch of transactions that small businesses and middle market companies put on their credit cards that really weren't right for credit cards. I mean, $5 million, $6 million purchases, we like them. Don't get me wrong. Maybe you should buy your wife some jewelry. Drop two zeros. Okay. I'll approve it. But when you look at that, that's not what the credit card. And so we saw a lot of that. And you're seeing some of that spending come off. And what happens is that depresses organic spending. And so what we say is, look, there's a right payment method for a right-sized transaction. There's a right payment method for the right relationship transaction. And so I think we're seeing a little bit of that clear out. But what's really encouraging for me from a small business perspective is that we continue to retain our customers. And we continue to acquire new customers, which says the value propositions are working. Maybe to spend a minute on T&E. It's been a big driver of growth post-pandemic. It's slowed a bit over the last few quarters from 13% down to about 6%. Maybe just talk a little bit about what is driving the deceleration, whether it's slower inflation, a more cautious consumer, and are you seeing any signs of stabilization or improving? Yeah. So just for the fourth quarter, we're seeing improvement, right? So we're seeing it go up from 6% to 7%. Our fourth quarter consumer travel bookings were higher than they were pre-pandemic. So we feel really good about that. You still had a lot of the revenge travel coming back. The Gen Z and the Millennials got out early. The Xers and the Boomers got out a little bit later. They were a little bit late to the party. So that drove a lot of that growth. Our T&E spending has gotten to such a level that, to be honest with you, that 7%, 6% is not so bad. But when you think about our customer, our customer is a customer that when they're challenged or when they get concerned, they pay their bills, which is why our credit numbers are so good. What they do is they ramp down on their discretionary spending, and there was no greater example of that during COVID when spending went down, but our write-off levels were lower than they were pre-pandemic, so I think that's how they modulate their spending, and I think at that level, we're okay. The other part that's really been booming for us is restaurant. Restaurant continues to take off for us. Got you. So you referenced Millennials in one of the questions earlier. I think spend was up 12% year- over-y ear, double-digit overall growth rate in U.S. consumer. Now makes up a third of U.S. billings. You talked to the investor today, the lifetime value of these customers being 2x older cohorts. Can you just maybe talk about how penetrated you are across this cohort? And does a shift towards Millennials change the economics of your business at all relative to the past strategy in terms of customer acquisition, retention, or growth? No. No. Okay. Next question. Yeah. So let's take a step back, right? So if you think about our business, we have about 5% of the cards in the United States. And if you think about the fee-paying cards, we have about 25% of those cards. That says to me, there's still huge opportunity. When you think about Millennial and Gen Z, we're not taking every Millennial and Gen Z. When you look at the credit profile of the Millennial and Gen Zs that we have, it is at the top. We are taking the cream off the top. And so the nice part about the Gen Z population is that as we go on, more and more come into the workforce. And as we've talked about, we are targeting these card members with either a Gold Card or a Platinum Card. Years ago, we used to target them with a fee-free product. It did not get the engagement level that we needed. So they get engaged with the benefits. What happens with Millennials and Gen Z is that they spend more on them. We get a higher share of their wallet, right? One of the reasons we get a higher share of their wallet is they're not used to having the card not accepted. When you were growing up and I was growing up, you asked, "Do you accept American Express?" You don't ask that question anymore, especially in the United States, where the card is as accepted as Visa and Mastercard. So that's a big deal. That gets us a higher share of their wallet. They don't spend as much right now as a Gen-Xer or a Boomer. They don't borrow as much. We believe they'll have 20 more years of relationships with us. We think the lifetime value is really 2x. The other interesting thing about this cohort is as they go along, we're still an aspirational brand for them. And so while we may not take them as they come out of college or they come into the workforce in a trade or something like that, as they establish their credit, they're still available to us. And that's a really important point because we're trying to take the cream of the crop early. And we try and stay engaged as we go along. So Steve, you and the team like to describe the business as a membership model. Maybe talk about what does that mean? Does it encourage partners to fund value? And how does it impact the company in terms of its overall performance versus peers? Yeah. We like to talk about it that way because it is. We have Member Since on our card. And if you think about it, you're paying a fee. Most of our card members are paying fees. And if you think about what the membership model gives, it gives a very strong value proposition. We give access to great experiences through travel, through dining, through other events, whether it's music or what have you. And we provide terrific service. And when you're charging a fee like that, you tend to engage with more creditworthy, high-income, premium consumers. And our partners love high credit, premium, high spending consumers. And so it really creates this virtuous cycle as our value propositions get better. And they get better because we improve them. But it also gets better because we partner with them. Now, one of the reasons is a couple of reasons people like to partner with us. Number one, we will make their products and services available to people that will spend more money with them. So that's a great thing, right? The second thing is, especially for global companies, we're a global company. It is easier to integrate with us than it is because if you want to roll something out, a great example is Apple Pay. When Apple wants to roll something out, they can roll something out with us in over 30 or 29 proprietary markets. They have to go bank by bank around the world. So it makes it a little bit easier for them to partner with us. But I think ultimately what brands like is they love working with us because we give them access to high-net-worth individuals and high-spending small businesses, which is why we have relationships with Dell, Adobe, and so forth. Steve, you referenced value prop refreshes. This year, you did 40 product refreshes, including Delta and U.S. Gold Card. And I think you've done over 150 refreshes the last five years. Maybe talk about some of the things you've learned from these refreshes. Like an example, gold, I think, tends to skew more Millennial. How does that inform what you do to future refreshes? And was this a big year for refreshes? And how does the pipeline look into 2025? Yeah. Look, I think that that's probably around the right number, whether it's 35-50. And you got to remember, when we're talking about refreshes, we operate all across the globe. And we have a load of co-brand partners, right? So there's always product refresh. One of the things that when I took over, we committed to doing was to refresh these products every three to four years. Why did we do that? Well, obviously, people's needs change. Value propositions need to morph. And we continue to do that. When you invest in a refresh and you invest in a value proposition, the first thing you do is you only raise the fee when you add more value than the fee that you're raising. And that leads to better acquisition results. It makes your marketing dollars work harder. And you get more engagement. And you get higher retention, okay? And so we just did gold. And with gold, we did a couple of things. We raised the fee from $250 to $325. But we added like $400 worth of value. So it's kind of a no-brainer if you want to, if it's $75, you get more value. Now, not everybody uses every dollar of that value, which is why you have to have a varied value proposition. Look, we just added Dunkin' Donuts. And Dunkin' Donuts has been great for us because they've been advertising. When you look at the Gold Card, the Gold Card from a Millennial, Gen Z perspective, we get in our acquisition on Gold Card is 30% higher than Platinum. It is a workhorse product for us. It really is a workhorse product. And I think from a Gold Card perspective, which is also interesting, we launched a white Gold Card. So there was a Rose Gold. There was a gold gold. And there's a White Gold. And I'm just hoping there's another color of gold because people went nuts. I could tell you Cartier does only three. Yeah, I know. Yeah, that I know too. But we need a fourth color of gold. So if anybody has that idea, let us know. And we'll cut you in. But people love it. A lot of people thought that the card was going to go out of style, right? But people really do love the form factors that we've been coming out with. So you bundle all that together. You make some changes to your digital app and so forth. And it really does drive interest in a product. So I wanted to spend a minute just talking about the competitive environment. So I think you're spending $6 billion on marketing this year. That's up over 15%. You've had obviously great customer acquisition. You even had the opportunity to increase it further. But you chose to let the Certares hit the bottom line, which is something that was not a historical American Express practice. So maybe just talk a little bit about the competitive landscape for customer acquisition. Some people have been talking about Chase wanting to make their product more competitive with Platinum. Maybe just talk about how things are evolving in your market and where you're seeing the best incremental opportunity. All right. Let's unpack a couple of things here because I think there's a couple of things to get into. We decided at the beginning of the year we were going to spend $6 billion. We thought that we would need to use Certares to do that. When it was apparent that the machine was generating enough operating income, we chose to drop that to the bottom line, buy back more shares, and stick with that $6 billion. I mean, one of the things that we used to do is when we had overage, we would then look to deploy that as soon as we had it in that quarter. The problem with doing that is you're not getting the most efficient use of your marketing dollars. You're not getting the ROIs that you want because you're just spending it not on a planful basis. So we decided at the beginning of the year, this is what we were going to do. We hoped the Certares was going to go through. We thought we were going to need it. If it didn't go, we were still going down that path. And we'd explain it later. But we didn't need to, right? And so that was really important for us to do. The other important point to take away is that we are spending more to get more. We're not spending more to get the same. That's another important point. That gets that efficiency point that I talked about. And the other thing is it is a highly competitive market. This market has been highly competitive since the great financial crisis. It's dog eat dog out there. And what's great about it is it keeps everybody on their toes. I think consumers wind up benefiting because we're coming out with better and better products and services. And we continue to push each other. And we will continue to do that. And so, but it is highly competitive. We respect Chase. We respect Cap One is in this space now. Citi will be back in the space. Bank of America, Wells, everybody's here. And we don't take anybody for granted. And we just need to continue to raise the level of service and of value that we provide our cardholders. Maybe let's shift gears and talk about international, which continues to be the fastest-growing part of the franchise. It's been growing at a steady 13% for the last five quarters. You've had the top five markets have been growing mid to high teens, Millennials growing 23% internationally. Maybe just give us an update on how things are developing internationally, what's driving the success. Despite low teens growth, can we see more from your international? Yeah. So I'm really bullish on international. International was the fastest growing part of our business pre-pandemic. Obviously, international was locked down a lot more than the U.S. was. And when you think about the international landscape that we play in, there are 15 markets that we play in that represent 57% of the overall revenue pools available in the card business. And the five main markets that we play in, which is Japan, Australia, Mexico, Canada, and the U.K., represent almost a third of the revenue that's out there. What's happened with international is, and we've got a consumer business in international, which is really aspirational, has a heavy T&E focus, not a lot of lending focus. It's just not what goes on from an international perspective. Our international products are much more our international revenues are much more focused on fees and billings. And we're underpenetrated. I mean, we're 5% market share internationally. And when you look at Japan, look at international small business, Japan, for example, we have 9% small business share. Any other market, it's like 3%. So really a nascent opportunity for us. So as we look at international and as coverage continues to improve, I believe that it is still a really strong growth opportunity for us. You mentioned 9% market share in Japan, 3% in some others. Maybe just talk about how the SME strategy internationally differs from what you do in the U.S. Obviously, you're the elephant in the room in the U.S. And on the consumer side, you referenced there's not a lot of lending. But just maybe how do you think about the international lending opportunity relative to? Yeah. I think, look, the most important thing is we're not going to go after lending unless we can get good data, right? And you have a lot of thin credit files internationally. You also have a lot of cultural issues where people just don't borrow, right? And so there are opportunities, I think, for us to grow lending there. But I wouldn't count that as the big driver. I think the big driver for us in international is to continue to increase coverage, which is going to help from a small business perspective as we get more and more everyday spend as they can run their businesses that way. And I think that will increase our small businesses and small business spending and just to continue to drive more card acquisition. So we're investing more marketing in our international markets. As you think about where those marketing dollars go, they will go probably over time a little more disproportionately to international. Makes sense. We talked about lending internationally. Obviously, lending in the U.S., it's a smaller part of your overall revenues. But it's been a solid contributor to revenue growth as you've been on a journey to get more of your customers to do more with you. So you have half their spend, maybe only a quarter they're borrowing. Talk about what is driving the success to bring over more balances, and how comfortable are you that we won't see any credit issues over the medium- term? Yeah. Look, I mean, when we think about sort of lending, our customers want to borrow. I mean, a lot of people are surprised when a Platinum cardholder wants to borrow, but if I'm not offering that lending opportunity, they'll go to Chase. They'll go to Citi. They'll go to somebody else. Why do I want my customer interacting with somebody else, and we're lending to our existing customers, and when you look at how much spending has gone up from pre-COVID to how much lending has gone up, our spending is still outpaced our lending, and when you look at our lending revenue growth, there's two drivers there. One is volume, but the other is rate, okay, and as we've continued to increase our deposit funding, that has lowered our cost of funding, and we're getting even more sophisticated from a pricing perspective. And when you're driving lending revenue from a cheaper cost of funds and from better pricing, that just goes right to the ROE. I mean, you're not using more capital there. That is just profit that we're driving for our shareholders. So that's a good thing for us to do. We're not going to go outside our credit box. We will not go outside our credit box. And as long as our premium longstanding customers want to borrow, we'll underwrite them. And look at our credit numbers. They're better than they were in 2019. And over time, I think they'll kick up as there's some seasoning. But the gap between us and our competitors continues to grow. Maybe we've got five or six minutes left here to hit on another couple of topics. You recently did two acquisitions with the purchase of Tock and Rooam. You've done a handful of really successful strategic acquisitions over the years. Maybe just talk about how these fit into the overall Amex strategy. And when you look across your business, where do you see further opportunities to add capabilities inorganically? I'm waiting for the Goldman guys to tell me. But I'm sure there are others out here circling with great ideas. You've got to build those pipelines. I know. You do. So you think about just go back to the Resy acquisition. You think about the Resy acquisition. Why do we do the Resy acquisition? Remember, we're a closed-loop network. That means we have relationships with our merchants. And we have relationships with our cardholders. So Resy was a great way to bring value to our restaurants, bring value to our cardholders. And I think Resy, when we acquired it, had like 7 million registered users. We're over 50 million at this point. And it's an open platform. So it's also a great tool for us to acquire new cards, right? Because we do certain things for card members on Resy, which we promote global dining and what have you. And if you're not a card member, maybe you want to become one. So that's number one. So why did we do then Rooam and Tock? Tock played at a little higher end, more Michelin star restaurants, wineries, and things like that. So that was a natural fit for us to fill it in. And then Rooam, what Rooam allows us to do is to interact with the point of sale system, Toast, Shift4, and so forth. And that allows us to bring data back to the reservation system so that when you call to make a reservation, you know what the person spent last time. You know they bought the expensive bottle of wine. It really does get into that whole membership model. But now it brings the merchant into it. Kabbage was an interesting one because what Kabbage gave us was a platform that our small businesses could live in and do. We could do small business loans, cash flow analysis, and things like that. We also brought banking on top of that platform, which I thought was really important as well. We'll continue to look at those things that add value and help us grow our organic core over time. I'm not saying what we're looking at. We're always looking at things that increase the value proposition, increase our relevancy to merchants, and increase our relevancy to card members. Steve, so a couple of times we talked about scale and all the investments you've made in the business. You had a handful of years of really significant investment, and more recently, you've been very good at controlling OpEx and driving leverage across the firm. Maybe just talk about where you find the efficiencies. Are you using AI, and how do you balance making investments with the need to grow the overall franchise? Yeah. So I think in this environment, when you're making lots of investment in control management, first of all, I mean, there isn't a bank out there that's not making more investments in operational risk and so forth. We're continuing to upgrade our platforms, which adds more efficiency. And yeah, look, we've been using AI since 2010. There isn't a credit or fraud decision that is made that isn't made with machine learning. I think where the experimentation comes in now for us is really generative AI. And you're seeing that in servicing. We're seeing that with travel reps. I mean, think about it. Being able to look at a cardholder who wants to go to Italy, we can look at that cardholder, see how they compare to other cardholders that spend like them, and create an itinerary for people that have been to Italy. It makes our travel reps a lot more efficient, so we're continuing to squeeze efficiencies again out of our operating expense base from a servicing perspective, and as I talked about marketing, and that marketing is allowing us to drive more revenues. So we talked before. You mentioned you don't think there will be deregulation, but maybe a more calmer regulatory environment. What are the things you're most focused on out of D.C. that you think could have an impact either on the business or how you run the company? Well, I think global minimum tax is a big one. And that's one that we're really focused on. Look through is another big one in terms of how we finance our international operations. I think those are two big things that we'd like to see global minimum tax go away, actually. And we'd like to see global look through continue to exist. And then you look at overall corporate tax, right? And I don't think we're going to see that happen. But from a regulatory perspective, how Basel III winds up playing out from a CFPB perspective, I think you had Brian up here before. I think penalty fees and things like that, that's a big one as well. And then I think what happens with tariffs and how that impacts inflation and overall interest rates and so forth. So it's too early to tell, I mean, what's going to happen. But look, there was euphoria. You saw what happened to the entire market when it was a Republican sweep. So we're optimistic. And I think the other thing is probably easier M&A, probably easier M&A with a change, I think, in the FTC. And from an SEC perspective, probably a little less focus on sort of climate within reporting, which is a big deal. Maybe one question to end with, Steve. So the business model under your leadership has had tremendous success. Stock is hovering at an all-time high for those who haven't noticed. And as you look out, 2025 sounds like it could be a pretty solid year. What are you most worried about as you're looking at the year ahead? What are you paying the closest attention to? And how do you think they could impact your business? Yeah. Look, I mean, for me, I think the pandemic really showed us that sticking with your strategy, backing your customers, and having the best colleagues in the world is a really good winning hand. And so what I worry about is making sure we don't lose focus, making sure that we keep our antenna up on competitors, not just the ones that we know, but the disruptors that are out there. And look, the regulatory environment will be the regulatory environment. What happens with taxes will be what happens in the global world. But the reality is, and I think this played out in the pandemic, if we stick to our strategy and make the appropriate amount of investments and do not panic, everything passes at a point in time. And so for us, it's continuing to stick to our knitting, which is getting the best cardholders in the world and having them served by the best colleagues. Great. Well, we are out of time. But please join me in thanking Steve. Thanks.