Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the American Express Q1 2024 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, Head of Investor Relations, Mr. Kartik Ramachandran. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Daryl, and thank you all for joining today's call. As a reminder, before we begin, today's discussion contains forward-looking statements about the company's future business and financial performance. These are based on management's current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements are included in today's presentation slides and in our reports on file with the SEC. The discussion today also contains non-GAAP financial measures. The comparable GAAP financial measures are included in this quarter's earnings materials, as well as the earnings materials for the prior periods we discuss. All of these are posted on our website at ir.americanexpress.com. We will begin today with Steve Squeri, Chairman and CEO who will start with some remarks about the Company's progress and results, and then Christophe Le Caillec, Chief Financial Officer will provide a more detailed review of our financial performance. After that, we'll move to a Q&A session on the results with both Steve and Christophe. With that, let me turn it over to Steve.

Thank you. Q1 was another strong quarter with revenues up 11% year-over-year to $15.8 billion and EPS up 39% to $3.33. The trends we've seen for the past several years continued through the first quarter of 2024. Our double-digit revenue increase was driven by strong spending growth, up 7% overall on an FX-adjusted basis, with U.S. consumer card spending up 8% in the quarter and spending from international card members up 13% on an FX-adjusted basis. Spending by U.S. SME card members continued to be soft, but new customer acquisitions, retention and credit on our small business products all continue to be strong. Fee revenues again grew by double-digits, up 16% on an FX-adjusted basis. We continue to attract high spending, high credit quality customers to the franchise with new card acquisitions accelerating quarter-over-quarter, adding 3.4 million new cards in the quarter. Our fee-based products accounted for approximately 70% of the new account acquisitions globally and we continue to see strong demand from Millennial and Gen Z consumers, who accounted for over 60% of the new consumer account acquisitions globally. Finally, our credit metrics continue to be best-in-class. The ongoing momentum in our business is a result of the great work of our colleagues across the company and the loyalty and engagement of our premium customers around the world. Based on our performance and the trends we've seen through the first quarter, we are reaffirming our full year guidance of 9% to 11% revenue growth and EPS of $12.65 to $13.15. Our first quarter results continue to show that our strategy is working and we feel good about where we are and where we are heading. In 10 days, we'll be hosting our 2024 Investor Day. At that session, we'll have a series of presentations from our senior business leaders that, taken together, will demonstrate why we are confident that our long-term growth aspiration is the right one. We will discuss our strategy for growing our premium consumer base in the U.S. through our membership model, our plans for winning the recovery in the U.S. small business space, our runway for growth in international, our progress in expanding merchant coverage and enhancing our network capabilities globally, how we are driving efficiency, growth and service through technology, and how it all comes together from a financial perspective. We'll end our Investor Day with a Q&A session. Christophe will now take you through a detailed look at Q1 performance.

Thank you, Steve, and good morning, everyone. It's good to be here to talk about the first quarter results, which reflect another quarter of strong results and are tracking in line with the guidance we gave for the full year. Starting with our summary financials on Slide 2. First quarter revenues were $15.8 billion and grew 11% year-over-year. This revenue momentum drove reported net income of $2.4 billion and earnings per share of $3.33. On Slide 3, billed business grew 7% versus last year in the first quarter on an FX-adjusted basis, in line with the overall spend environment we have seen in the past few quarters as we expected. Looking by category, we saw 6% growth in goods and services spending and 8% growth in travel and entertainment spending. There are a few other key points to take away as we then break down our spending trends across our businesses. Starting with our largest segment on Slide 4, U.S. Consumer grew billings at 8% this quarter, with growth across all generations and age cohorts. Millennial and Gen Z customers grew their spending 15% and continued to drive our highest billed business growth within this segment. In fact, we see that younger customers use their cards more overall and this is even more pronounced in certain spend categories. For example, customers aged 35 and under use their cards at restaurants over 70% more on average than other customers in this segment. Looking at Commercial Services on Slide 5, overall growth came in at 2% this quarter. Spending growth from our U.S. small and medium-sized enterprise customers remain modest, given unique dynamics seen by small businesses. Lastly, on Slide 6, you see our highest growth again this quarter in International Card Services, up 13%. We continue to see double-digit growth in spending from international consumers and from international SME and large corporate customers, as well as strong growth across our geographies. Overall, while we do continue to see a softer spend environment, our spending volumes are tracking in line with our expectations to support our revenue guidance for the full year and we are pleased with the continued strong engagement of our customers as the number of transactions from our card members continued to grow double-digits this quarter. Now moving on to loans and Card Member receivables on Slide 7. We saw year-over-year growth at 12%. As we progress through 2024, we continue to expect this growth to moderate, but to still grow modestly faster than billings. Turning next to credit and provision on Slide 8 through 10. First, and most importantly, we continue to see strong and best-in-class credit metrics. We attribute this performance to the high credit quality of our customer base, our robust risk management practices and our disciplined growth strategy. As we expected, our write-off and delinquency rates ticked up a bit, increasing very modestly quarter-over-quarter. Going forward, we expect to see these delinquency and write-off rates remain strong with some continued modest increase in 2024. Turning now to the accounting of this credit performance on Slide 9. The quarter-over-quarter growth in our loan balances combined with a modest increase in our Card Member loans and receivables delinquency rate resulted in a $148 million reserve build. This reserve build combined with net write-offs drove $1.3 billion of provision expense in the first quarter. As you see on Slide 10, we ended the first quarter with $5.6 billion in reserves, representing 2.9% of our total loans and Card Member receivables. We continue to expect this reserve rate to increase a bit as we move through 2024, similar to the modest increases we've seen over the past few quarters. Moving next to revenue on Slide 11. Total revenues were up 11% year-over-year in the first quarter. Our largest revenue line, discount revenue, grew 6% year-over-year in Q1 on an FX-adjusted basis as you can see on Slide 12. This growth is mostly driven by the spending trends we discussed earlier. Net card fees revenues were up 16% year-over-year in the first quarter on an FX-adjusted basis as you can see on Slide 13. We are pleased with this growth and continue to expect to exit the year with some further momentum reflecting our cycle of product refreshes. In the quarter, we acquired 3.4 million new cards, demonstrating the demand we are seeing for our products and the investments we've made. Importantly, the acquisition of our premium fee-based products accounted for around 70% of new accounts and the spend revenue and credit profiles of our new card members continue to look strong. Moving on to Slide 14. You can see that net interest income was up 26% year-over-year in Q1. This growth is driven by the increase in our revolving loan balances and also by continued net yield expansion versus last year. We do expect this growth to continue to moderate as we move through the year. And I would remind you that, for our business model, we would not expect to see a meaningful impact from a lower interest rate environment this year. To sum up, revenues on Slide 15. The power of our diversified model continues to drive strong revenue growth momentum. I would note, as you think about the CFPB late fee rule, that late fees from our U.S. consumer segment make up a small portion, less than 1% of our overall revenue. While we have no specific plans to mitigate as of now, we are always looking at our pricing and policies in the ordinary course of business. Moving to expenses on Slide 16. Starting at the top of the page, variable customer engagement expenses came in at 40% of total revenues for the first quarter. As you look at these costs, I would note that Card Member rewards included a $196 million benefit as a result of enhancements to our remodels for estimating future membership rewards redemptions, some of which we reinvested for growth in our marketing line. Looking forward, I still expect our variable customer engagement expenses to grow slightly higher than our revenue on a full-year basis as we continue to focus on our premium products and drive engagement from our Card Members. On the marketing line, we increased investments to $1.5 billion in the first quarter. We continue to be pleased with the strong, high-quality customer acquisition and engagement we see as a result of these actions, and we are on track to increase marketing spend in 2024 versus last year. Moving to the bottom of Slide 16 brings us to operating expenses, which were $3.6 billion in the first quarter flat to last year's expense and in line with our expectations for the year. When you look at the components of our operating expenses, salaries and benefits grew modestly versus last year compared to the growth we've seen in this line over the past years. This reflects the discipline with which we manage our expenses and is a great example of how we're able to drive efficiency while continuing to grow our business. We continue to see OpEx as a key source of leverage and are focused on delivering low levels of growth as we have historically done. Turning next to capital on slide 17, we returned $1.6 billion of capital to our shareholders in the first quarter on the back of strong earnings generation. Our CET1 ratio was 10.6% at the end of the first quarter, within our target range of 10% to 11%. We plan to continue to return to shareholders the excess capital we generate while supporting our balance sheet growth. We do not expect any material near-term changes to our capital management approach. That brings me to our 2024 guidance on Slide 18. We feel really good about our first quarter results, which are tracking in line with our expectations for the year. These results continue to reinforce that our strategy is working and we plan to continue to invest to support our momentum. As Steve discussed, for the full year 2024, we are reaffirming our guidance of having revenue growth of 9% to 11% and earnings per share between $12.65 and $13.15 and we remain committed to running the business for the long-term. As a reminder, this guidance and the items related to the full year 2024 that I just walked through do not include the potential impact from the sale of our certified business that we previously announced. We expect to realize a sizable gain on the sale and to reinvest a substantial portion of the gain back into our business, as we've done with similar transactions in the past. We still expect the deal to close in the second quarter and plan to provide more detail then. With that I'll turn the call back over to Kartik to open up the call for your questions.

Thank you, Christophe. Before we open up the lines for Q&A, I will ask those in the queue to please limit yourself to just one question. Thank you for your cooperation. And with that, the operator will now open up the line for questions.

Our first question comes from Sanjay Sakhrani with KBW. Please go ahead with your question.

Thank you. Good morning. I guess question for both Steve and Christophe. Christophe, you said that you guys are seeing a softer spending environment. I'm just curious, when you look at the data, what's driving that? Is it inflation? Is it just a bit of tapering off after the post-pandemic spending? And I'm just curious, as we think about what gets that going again, what is it? Obviously, the comparisons get easier as well, so that should help. But maybe you could just walk through that. Thank you.

Yeah. Let me start and then Christophe can jump in. But when you look at overall spending, our overall spending is 7%, but consumer spending is 8%. And I think consumer spending is relatively strong. And when you look at international, international consumer spending is up 14%. And overall, international is up 13%. Where you're seeing some softness is in SME. And so SME is up approximately 1%. And so I think as SME comes back, which we look as an opportunity down the road, as SME comes back, that will drive some stronger spending. And I think the good things that we see from an SME perspective is that we are still acquiring cards, credit looks really good. And even though organic has come down, organic transactions have gone up. So I think in aggregate, we see softness. And I think a lot of that softness is driven from a commercial perspective, but 8% consumer growth in the U.S. is not too bad.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mihir Bhatia with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask about the membership rewards expense. It looks like there's a little bit of a change there with model enhancements and stuff. Can you just talk about that a little more? Did the estimate for the URR, the redemption rate change from the 96% at year-end? Like, should we think of this $196 million benefit as a one-time thing? Or is that going to be continuous?

Hey, Mihir. Thank you for the question. So you should think about it as a one-time thing. And the URR is 96%. It's still at 96%. What we do is, because it's such an important model for us, we, on a regular basis, redevelop the model. And every time we redevelop the model, we try to enhance the model. So we feed the model with more data and try to refine their URR calculation. That's exactly what happened. And when we did that in Q1, we came back with a little bit of a benefit. I say a little bit because you have to remember that the entire membership rewards bank is about $14 billion. It's a bit less than $14 billion. So $196 million is very small compared to the size of the balance sheet. And so it's a one-off, and we don't expect something similar anytime soon.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mark DeVries with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.

Yeah. Thanks. Could you discuss what drove the reacceleration in the new card growth this quarter?

We invested more this quarter. Looking back to the first quarter of last year, we acquired 3.4 million cards. At that time, we faced challenges due to the SVB situation, leading to a pullback both on our end and across the industry, along with some consumer hesitation. As the year progressed, we began to build back up, reaching 3.4 million cards in the first quarter of this year. We increased our marketing investment, as promised, but it's important to note that a significant factor in this growth was the product refreshes we implemented. We've mentioned how these refreshes boost demand and enhance the effectiveness of our marketing efforts. This included refreshes for the Delta product, launches in Japan, a new Hilton small business card, and a British Airways card, all contributing to the 40 product refreshes we planned. These efforts stimulate demand and encourage upgrades, driving the increase in card acquisitions. Overall, we're back to where we were at the same time last year.

The only thing I would add, Mark, is as we increase the NCA, the percentage of new cards that are coming at a fee-paying product remains stable, about 70%, right? So it talks about the quality of this 3.4 million new cards.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Craig Maurer with FT Partners. Please proceed with your questions.

Yeah. Good morning. Thank you. So I wanted to ask about your assumptions on Page 23 of the deck. It looks like for quarters, the second and third quarter, you are assuming a better macro scenario in the U.S. So just curious within combination of the rewards.

Please stand by. We are waiting for our operator.

I'm here.

I wanted to ask why the EPS guidance was held flat despite what appears to be firmer macro assumptions for the second and third quarters and the benefits from rewards. I assume there may be a larger buffer in place. Additionally, could you provide insight into the trends in your loan workout program? Have you seen an increase or decrease in new additions to that program? Also, how is the progress regarding getting consumers on track with good payment plans and maintaining those plans? Thank you.

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Hi. This is Rob. Can you hear me?

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Hi. I can hear everyone. Please stand by while we check. We're experiencing some technical difficulty.

For folks attending the call, we are going to dial back in. So please stay on the line. Or if the call does drop, we ask you to dial back in. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, please remain on the line. The call will resume momentarily. Thank you. Are you able to hear me?

Yes, operator. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Okay. So that last question was from the line of Craig Maurer with FT Partners. Craig, you may have to ask your question again.

Yeah. We didn't hear it.

No problem. Thanks and good morning again. So wanted to ask about the assumptions later in the deck. It looks like you're assuming a firmer economic environment for quarters two and three. So taking that with the benefit on rewards, should we assume there's a larger buffer built into your guide because you didn't raise EPS guide? And second, along the same lines, I wanted to ask about your loan workout program. Are you seeing any change in terms of the pace of loans being added or loans being worked out and how loans are progressing through that program? Thanks.

Good morning, Craig. We are maintaining our EPS guidance and have no plans to change that range at this time. There are several factors that still need to unfold as we approach year-end, and we believe our guidance accurately reflects our expectations at this moment. Regarding the URR benefit, a significant portion was reinvested in marketing, as we anticipated its positive impact during the quarter and decided to enhance our marketing efforts. Overall, this does not substantially affect our full-year EPS. Concerning our financial relief program and modified loans, this initiative is crucial for us. It includes one of the leading programs in the industry and features short-term options that allow card members to maintain some spending capacity and product usage. We believe this differentiates us and supports card members facing financial stress, and the program has proven effective. Additionally, enrollment in the program has decreased in Q1, while the performance metrics of card members enrolled remain very strong. We monitor various metrics, including payment loyalty, and we are encouraged by the results, as card members typically prioritize repaying us over competitors, which positively impacts credit metrics. This aligns with our brand's commitment to supporting our card members. To clarify your specific question, enrollment in this program is indeed moderating in Q1.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of John Hecht with Jefferies. Please proceed with your question.

Morning, guys. Most of my questions have been asked. So I guess I'm going to ask about the Visa and Mastercard settlement, a reduction in interchange rates, and then some steering mechanisms. And I know historically, given your premium brand and so forth, those actions haven't had any impact on the business. But we haven't talked about that for a while. So I'm wondering if you guys just have some updated thoughts about that.

Yeah. Well, it's really hard to say how it's going to play out over time. I mean, this has been going on probably close to 20 years, and it still has to be approved by the courts and we'll see. But what I would say is it really doesn't change sort of our strategy in any way. I mean, we are still focused on premium customers. Our customers still engage with the products. We'll demand to use the products. And we'll still maintain our virtual parity. So we'll see how it all plays out, but we are going to continue to focus on what we control. And the only other thing I would say is that our pricing is policies and structures are fundamentally different than the networks.

Operator? Please stand by. We are experiencing technical difficulties. For folks attending the call, we are going to dial back in. So please stay on the line. Or if the call does drop, we ask you to dial back in. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your patience and standing by. Our conference will resume momentarily. We are experiencing technical difficulties. Please remain on the line. And once again, your conference will begin shortly. Thank you so much for joining us. Okay. You are back in.

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Sure. Our next question comes from the line of Jeff Adelson with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.

Hey. Good morning, guys. Can you hear me okay?

Yeah, we can.

Okay. Good. Yeah, I just wanted to ask on the prior combination you did last quarter about the card refresh plans for this year, 40 card products. I think from a quick count on our end, it seems like you've done eight so far this year with Delta, Hilton and maybe a card on India. Is that right? And maybe you could just talk a little bit about trajectory over the rest of the year, cadence over the rest of the year and what the response has been to some of those refreshes so far. I think more notably, the delta, the big delta one you did earlier this year, would be interested to hear the response you've seen from customers so far on that. Thank you.

The product refreshes will be released throughout the year, although we won't specify exact dates. You can be confident that about 40 will be completed. It's still early to gauge the refreshes as we are in the initial stages, but from a delta reserve perspective, things have gone exceptionally well, exceeding our expectations. The product is strong, and we increased the fee by $100 while providing over $500 in added value. This approach is proving effective, as refreshes not only boost demand but also enhance awareness and engagement with our current cardholders. Our strategy has been successful over the years, and we remain committed to it moving forward. It's essential to drive demand while also reengaging with our customer base, and we prioritize adding the value that truly resonates with what our customers want.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Rick Shane with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. And Steve, it ties in with what you're just talking about, when we think about the life cycle of a customer, it's acquisition, it's engagement, and then ultimately, it's loyalty and retention. And I think the real strength of American Express is on the loyalty retention side. When you talk about refresh, that's acquisition and engagement, can you talk about what you're doing investing on the back office side as the portfolio is growing so quickly to make sure that you maintain the loyalty and retention aspect of the business as well.

I believe this truly creates a positive feedback loop. You are correct that acquiring cards is essential. Once a card is acquired, it’s crucial to engage with the cardholders and encourage them to spend in various areas. During the initial ramp-up period of around zero to 24 months, it becomes vital to treat each customer as a part of our franchise. Our marketing budget is dedicated not only to attracting new customers but also to analyzing how existing customers spend and comparing their spending to similar individuals. This analysis informs our offers for card upgrades, credit line increases, and other products we provide. Continuous engagement, backed by analytics, is key to retaining customers. It’s important to ensure that once we have a customer, they are not left inactive. We gain valuable insights from our commercial and merchant businesses where our excellent account managers work closely with clients to help increase their spending. While it's not feasible to provide personal attention to tens of millions of consumer card members all the time, we can still connect with them through our available communication channels. A significant part of our value proposition is that when customers reach out to us, our customer care professionals analyze their spending and offer opportunities for growth, whether through lending options or card upgrades. Therefore, the behind-the-scenes operations are crucial in sustaining this positive cycle.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Bill Carcache with Wolfe Research. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks. Good morning. Steve and Christophe. Although, you mentioned, Christophe, that the rewards benefit was one-off, are you seeing any evidence of customers deriving greater value from experiential and partner funded rewards. I'm just wondering if there's a possibility that pressure on the rewards rate could potentially abate in a sustained way as customers generate greater value in other ways?

So let Christophe get a little bit more into the detail. But I think you've hit on a really good point and one that really is part of our value proposition, whether it's embedded value that we get from our partners that's embedded in the value proposition and we're seeing that increase over time. And that's also, as you look at refreshes, you see that within the refreshes, but it's also the Amex offers and how we continue to work with our merchant partners to provide more benefits to our card members on an ongoing basis. So I think when you take that entire portfolio of the rewards opportunities that we have, the embedded value that comes within the value proposition and Amex offers all of that together, and it gets back to what Rick's point was, all of that together leads to more loyalty and more retention.

And to build that a little bit on the rewards side, we are constantly trying to innovate on the MR side. On the number of partners engaged in the program, the ease of redemption as well, one of their later innovations that is actually very successful in terms of how many card members are using it is the ability just to select the transaction on your statement, your digital statement, and actually using more points to pay for that specific transaction. And we're seeing a lot of card members using that. So we're constantly trying to make it easier and better for our card members to redeem to make the product, the MR program competitive and more and more economic as well for us. So it's definitely a pace of innovation that is a very dynamic place.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Don Fandetti with Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question.

Yes. Christophe, your international billed business growth continues to be very strong. Do you build that into your guidance at this level for '24 revenue growth? And can you give us an update on how your acceptance initiatives are going?

Yes, the ICS and International segment was the fastest-growing part of American Express before COVID and has remained so for several quarters. The potential for growth internationally is significantly larger for us. We are also investing a bit more in the international brand, which is perceived as more premium compared to the US market. There is a significant opportunity that we are pursuing, and this is reflected in our guidance for the year. It is also considered as we plan for our long-term goals. To achieve this year's guidance and our future aspirations, we aim to increase our growth rate in international markets. This is indeed a great opportunity for us.

So we're going to talk more about international at Investor Day. We'll have a separate segment on that. But we're also going to talk about how we continue to grow international coverage. And if you remember, a number of years ago, we talked about our international city strategy. We talked about industries we're going after. And so we'll provide some updates on that. But the top line is international acceptance continues to grow and continues to improve. And when you look at the international business growing at the rate it's growing and coverage continuing to grow, we see that as a long runway for future growth.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Gus Gala with Monness, Crespi and Hardt. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, guys. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I wanted to dig in and ask, can we talk about the opportunities to lower cost of funding? And similar line of thought here. Can you talk a little bit about the pay overtime feature? Thanks.

Yes. So the pay over time, you mean like how it's performing, how it's growing pay over time?

Yes. Let's talk about the performance and the unit economics if we can.

Pay over time is a service offered on our charge product that many card members are utilizing. It allows them to manage some of their transactions or parts of their balance, and its performance is very strong. This segment of our balances is actually the fastest-growing. From a performance perspective, since this service is linked to our charge card products, typically tailored for premium card members, its credit performance is the best among our lending products. This method allows us to effectively grow balances by extending credit to premium card members. Regarding funding, the funding mix is still evolving towards more deposits, which are the most effective and economical source of funds for us. Deposits are also a stable funding source. We are at about 92% of our deposit direct deposit balances, which are below the FDIC cap. This stable and resilient source of funding is beneficial for our growth plans and aspirations. When looking at the yield mentioned in the lending slide, one of the factors driving year-over-year yield expansion is a more effective cost of funds. This trend has been ongoing for several years, and we expect more positive developments in the future.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Moshe Orenbuch with TD Cowen. Please proceed with your question.

Great. Thanks so much. If you look at your commercial spending, particularly SME growth, it's been particularly weak the last couple of quarters, and you're noticing on Slide 5, the goods and services basically been flat to down for a couple of quarters. And you mentioned things that are unique to small business. But maybe could you expand that a little more and talk about what things we might see that would cause that to start to turn? And how long you can kind of maintain the kind of teens growth in loans while that is kind of flattish. Could you talk about those things? Thank you.

Let me begin, and I'm sure Steve will contribute to this as well. You're correct that the small to medium enterprise billed business has remained in the 1% to 2% range for the past year. We believe this is driven by broader market conditions, backed by extensive data showing that this trend is not exclusive to American Express, as the rest of the industry is facing similar challenges. I want to highlight, as mentioned in our prepared remarks, that on the acquisition front, performance has been robust. There is a strong demand for our product and the quality of applicants is high. However, it appears that the spending of card members in the small to medium enterprise sector is being moderated due to a decade-long trend. We’ll see how that evolves; those card members have been facing numerous challenges and are dealing with the cumulative impact of rising funding costs over the years. They are exercising caution in managing their cash flow and expenditure. Nevertheless, we are committed to engaging with them and are confident in our ability to support them when they are ready to increase their spending.

Yes. Moshe, when you look at this, the SME space has been disrupted over the last four to five years, especially due to COVID, which led to a significant drop for about 18 months. Then suddenly, we saw remarkable and unsustainable organic growth of around 19% and 20% in certain years, with particularly crazy growth in 2021 and 2022. However, after the first quarter last year, that growth began to decline. There are a few reasons for this. There's been a substantial build-up in inventories, and rising interest rates haven’t helped small businesses, especially as they considered purchasing goods and services and stocking them in preparation for potential supply chain issues. On a positive note, our acquisition efforts remain very strong. Transactions, even within our established customer base, continue to increase, though we have seen an organic decline in larger transactions. This decline is partly due to industry-specific factors in construction and not purchasing large inventories upfront. It's crucial for us to focus on continuing our acquisitions and engaging with our customers. When they’re ready to return to spending, we will be prepared to support them. Overall, I feel optimistic about our spending; we managed to achieve a 7% growth despite our commercial business growing at a low rate and small business growth being only at 1%. This reinforces our confidence because of our credit and ongoing acquisitions.

Thank you. Our final question will come from the line of Ryan Nash with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, good morning, guys.

Good morning.

Good morning.

So maybe to bring together some of the pieces of revenue growth. I think you were on the high end of the first quarter, and I think Christophe, you said the expectation that NII was going to slow. Maybe just talk a little bit about how you think about the trajectory of the revenue growth do we need to see spend stabilize to remain in the range? Or can we see the impact of refreshes and card acquisitions be enough to stabilize revenue growth within the range on a quarterly basis? Thank you.

Yes, Q1 unfolded as we anticipated. The billed business was consistent with what we had seen in prior quarters. Card fee growth has slightly decreased from 17% to 16% on an FX-adjusted basis. We expect it to gain some momentum later in the year, supported by the card refreshes and the acquisition of several premium cards. Net interest income, at 26%, is likely to continue moderating due to declining balances. Our full-year guidance remains in the range of 9% to 11%. We will monitor how factors such as late payment charges and interest rates evolve. For now, it's prudent to maintain our full-year guidance of 9% to 11%. Q1 has confirmed the trends and guidance we provided at the year's outset.

With that, we will bring the call to an end. Thank you again for joining today's call and for your continued interest in American Express. The IR team will be available for any follow-up questions. Operator, back to you.

Ladies and gentlemen, the webcast replay will be available on our Investor Relations website shortly after the call. You can access a digital replay of the call at 877-660-6853 or 201-612-7415 access code 13745493 after 1 PM Eastern time on April 19th through April 26th. That will conclude our conference call for today. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.