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“‘If you just go back in the second quarter, we had about 8% overall billings growth. Third quarter, it came down to 7%. And in October, everybody got a little bit skittish, and I think other people have said the same thing that growth wasn’t as strong in October. And we didn’t see growth in October like it was in the third quarter.’”
That’s American Express Co. Chief Executive Stephen Squeri, discussing business trends thus far in the fourth quarter.
Speaking at a Goldman Sachs conference, Squeri went on to say that “there’s a lot going on in October,” mainly related to travel and entertainment spending, but that November trends got back to “sort of what we looked like in the third quarter,” according to a transcript from AlphaSense/Sentieo.
Amex
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benefited from a “very strong” stretch of U.S. shopping from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday, while seeing strength in services as well, he added.
Squeri also discussed the company’s long-term guidance, saying that its “aspirational” target of 10%-plus revenue growth in 2024 and beyond “is absolutely the right growth for us, and we’re focused on that.”
He addressed the achievability of Amex’s forecasts in a less robust economy as well.
“Whether we hit 10% revenue growth or not, we will deliver mid-teens [earnings per share] growth, and additionally, in a full-blown recession, while we probably wouldn’t deliver mid-teens EPS growth, we’re going to do better than the competition because of the customer base that we have,” Squeri said.
He noted that Amex has “natural hedges” in its business — namely rewards costs and marketing — and those hedges have gotten bigger over time, adding to the company’s earnings power.
Amex shares were down 1.6% in afternoon trading Tuesday.
