American Express Q3 2026 Earnings Call: Raised EPS Guidance, Restructuring, an OCC Order and AI Questions

American Express reported record revenue of about $20 billion and raised its 2026 EPS guidance, while taking a $336 million restructuring charge and addressing an OCC penalty. Analysts focused on AI-driven rewards optimisation and premium-card competition.

Maz Vantage ·

American Express (NYSE: AXP) is in the news after its third-quarter 2026 results on 23 October. A MarketBeat piece syndicated by Nasdaq on 24 October reported that the stock was the worst performer in the Dow Jones Industrial Average at the open, with attention on job cuts. This article summarises the Q3 2026 earnings call held that day; the views below are those expressed by management and analysts, not Maz Vantage's own.

Key takeaways

  • Revenue was a record of about $20 billion, up 9% year over year. Reported EPS was $5.42 (up 31%); adjusted EPS was $4.68 (up 13%), excluding a $1.11 per share gain on the Global Business Travel Group (GBTG) sale and a $0.37 per share restructuring charge.
  • Management reaffirmed 2026 revenue growth guidance of 10% and raised EPS guidance to $18.30-$18.60 reported, or $17.60-$17.90 adjusted.
  • Net card fees grew 17% FX-adjusted, the fastest-growing revenue line, up from 15% in Q2. Billed business rose 8%, with U.S. consumer spend up 9.4%.
  • The company took a $336 million restructuring charge that CEO Steve Squeri said should remove about 5% of positions globally. The call also covered an OCC civil money penalty and consent order, and a long section on AI and agentic commerce.
  • CFO Christophe Le Caillec said Q4 growth in card member services expense (part of variable customer engagement expense, VCE) should moderate significantly as the Platinum refresh is lapped. He declined to give 2027 guidance before January.

Bull case

  • Spend and fees: Le Caillec said customer behaviour was similar to the past year, with strong spend, especially in travel and entertainment (T&E, up 10%), and high retention. Airline spend rose 13% and restaurants 9%. Spend retention after the U.S. Consumer Platinum refresh was 99%. Squeri cited card fee income of about $3 billion for the quarter, up 17%.
  • Credit: Le Caillec said balances grew 8%, net interest income grew 10% and write-offs grew 3%. He said the delinquency rate had been 1.2% or 1.3% for 15 quarters. He said newer vintages performed better than older ones, and 76% of 3.1 million new cards were on fee-paying products.
  • Operating leverage: He said VCE growth should return to pre-refresh rates, supporting the company's "mid-teens EPS ambition". Underlying operating expense growth was 3% excluding the GBTG gain, restructuring and legal items. Return on equity was cited at around 35% in recent years, against 25%-28% a decade ago.
  • Capital return: $2.2 billion was returned in Q3 ($1.6 billion of buybacks, $0.6 billion of dividends). CET1 was 10.9%.
  • AI positioning: Squeri argued that the closed-loop network, first-party data and trusted brand are advantages in an AI world. He pointed to partnerships with OpenAI and Perplexity, an Agentic Commerce Experiences (ACE) developer kit and a planned Agent Purchase Protection.

Bear case

  • Regulatory: Squeri said the OCC consent order's deficiencies "should not have occurred". Legal reserves rose by $0.51 per share, including the unreserved part of the OCC penalty. Management said the order imposes no asset cap and that remediation costs should not affect 2027 guidance.
  • Quality of earnings: Reported EPS includes several one-offs: the GBTG gain, a $0.29 discrete tax benefit and a $0.24 benefit from CECL model updates. Le Caillec said the last three items had no meaningful net impact on adjusted EPS. Reserve release of $211 million also helped provision expense, which was $985 million.
  • Rewards "maxing": Analysts Sanjay Sakhrani (KBW) and Erika Najarian (UBS) asked whether customers using AI to optimise rewards could raise costs. Squeri said it was too early to judge the VCE impact and pointed to levers such as the $75,000 pass-spend threshold on Platinum.
  • Competition: Don Fandetti (Wells Fargo) and Bill Carcache (Piper Sandler) asked about banks pushing into premium cards. Squeri said competition is intense but not materially different. He said middle-market commercial is where Amex "has not grown the way we want to grow" against Ramp and Brex.
  • Softer growth in places: Commercial spend rose 3% (5% excluding co-brand exits). International spend growth slowed to 11% from 13%. Management said the co-brand exits, including the Amazon portfolio sale, weighed about 60 basis points on spend growth and cut revenue growth by about one point.
  • Conflicting figures: Squeri cited revenue of "$20 billion"; Le Caillec cited $20.1 billion. Management did not reconcile the two on the call.

What management said

  • Steve Squeri, CEO, on AI: "AI gives us the opportunity to make Amex membership even more valuable."
  • Squeri, on AI agents: "We're just not going to let assistants run rogue through our systems."
  • Squeri, on the consent order: "the deficiencies cited in the consent order should not have occurred".
  • Christophe Le Caillec, CFO, on credit quality: "safely but surely the portfolio is getting more and more premium by the day."

Risks

  • Regulatory and remediation risk from the OCC consent order and civil money penalty (Squeri, Le Caillec).
  • Gaming of rewards, possibly amplified by AI agents, and uncertainty over the VCE impact (Sakhrani, Najarian, Squeri).
  • Competition for premium customers from banks including Citi, Capital One and Chase, and from Ramp and Brex in commercial (Carcache, Squeri).
  • Credit: the reserve rate of 2.6% rests on scenarios that include peak unemployment of about 8% (Le Caillec, answering Rob Wildhack of Autonomous Research).
  • Card-network rules: an analyst (Mihir Bhatia, Bank of America) raised the Visa/Mastercard settlement. Squeri said it was too early to tell, and expected honor-all-cards changes to be hard to apply.
  • Execution on the restructuring, and the fact that agentic transaction volumes are still small (Squeri).

Outlook

  • 2026: revenue growth of about 10%, and EPS of $18.30-$18.60 reported or $17.60-$17.90 adjusted. Management said it was on track for 10% revenue growth and mid-teens EPS growth.
  • Q4: VCE ratio expected to stabilise around current levels, with VCE dollar growth moderating significantly (Le Caillec).
  • 2027: no guidance until January. Management said OCC-related costs are not expected to affect 2027 guidance.
  • Not committed to: a 2027 card fee growth rate or quarterly card fee guidance, a target for net interest income or lending balances, or a quantified financial impact of AI-driven rewards optimisation.

Sources