美国运通 (AXP) 2026年第三季度业绩电话会：EPS指引上调，卡费增长17%lg...

核心要点

• 美国运通公布2026财年第三季度营收创下201亿美元的历史新高，同比增长9%。报告每股收益（EPS）增长31%至5.42美元，调整后每股收益增长13%至4.68美元。
• 按固定汇率计算，净卡费增长17%，较第二季度的15%有所加速。管理层将这一增长部分归因于美国白金卡的升级改版。
• 整体刷卡消费额增长8%。其中，美国消费者刷卡额增长9.4%，旅游与娱乐消费增长10%，国际业务刷卡额增长11%。
• 美国运通在本季度新增310万张卡，其中76%的新账户选择了收费卡产品。全球商户覆盖量达到1.9亿家以上，高于去年同期的1.6亿家。
• 公司重申全年营收增长10%的指引，并将报告每股收益指引上调至18.30-18.60美元。调整后每股收益目前预计为17.60-17.90美元。
• 美国运通计入了3.36亿美元的重组费用，并预计将在全球范围内裁减约5%的岗位，以精简组织架构并将资源重新投向长期优先事项。

核心财务数据

报告每股收益包含因出售 Global Business Travel Group 投资带来的每股1.11美元收益，以及每股0.37美元的重组费用。调整后每股收益还包括每股0.51美元的法律准备金增加、每股0.29美元的离散税务优惠，以及每股0.24美元来自 CECL 模型更新的收益。管理层表示，这三项在合并后对调整后每股收益没有实质性影响。

业务与运营表现

可选消费依然是核心增长驱动力。旅游与娱乐消费增长10%，其中航空消费增长13%，餐饮消费增长9%。Resy 合作餐厅的消费额增长18%，而 Fine Hotels + Resorts 和 The Hotel Collection 的消费额激增50%。

美国消费者消费额增长9.4%。在美国个人白金卡完成升级改版一年后，管理层表示组合消费留存率仍保持在99%。

商业消费额增长3%，剔除退出联名卡组合的影响后增长5%。管理层重点指出了石墨卡（Graphite Card）的强劲普及率，同时指出中型市场商业客户是美国运通未达到预期快速增长的领域。公司计划利用收购 Center、Nova 平台、商业储蓄账户以及企业现金回馈产品来强化其费用管理产品组合。

国际消费额增长11%，标志着连续第22个季度保持两位数增长。管理层表示，美国本土以外的新客获取继续主要由千禧一代和 Z 世代驱动。

信贷指标保持稳定。逾期率已连续15个季度稳定在1.2%或1.3%。管理层将2.6%的准备金率和良好的信贷表现归因于资产组合持续的高端化转型，以及较新客户客群的高质量。

美国运通还概述了其人工智能战略的五个领域：价值主张、新客获取、客户互动、支付与服务。具体举措包括与 OpenAI 开展更深度的整合、AI 驱动的旅游与餐饮探索、智能体支付（agentic payments）管控，以及旨在提升客户服务和纠纷解决效率的工具。

管理层业绩指引

美国运通重申了2026财年全年营收增长10%的指引。

公司将报告每股收益指引上调至18.30-18.60美元，将调整后每股收益指引上调至17.60-17.90美元。管理层表示，公司仍有望在2026年实现15%左右的每股收益增长。

管理层预计第四季度可变客户费用（VCE）的绝对额增长将显著放缓，因为美国运通已完全跨过美国白金卡升级改版的一周年对比期。公司未提供2027财年指引，表示计划在明年1月份公布该前景展望。

管理层还表示，持续的风控与合规投资已包含在费用运行率中，预计额外的整改成本不会影响其2027财年指引。

风险与关注领域

本季度计入了较高的法律准备金，包括最近公布的 OCC（美国货币监理署）民事罚款中未计提的部分，以及一项不相关事项的预期和解准备金。管理层强调将对解决同意令中指出的缺陷负责。相关指令并未设定资产上限。

退出部分联名卡组合使报告的刷卡消费额增长减少了约60个基点，使营收增长减少了约1个百分点，同时对净利息收入增长造成了估计约2个百分点的拖累。

管理层承认，高端卡客户以及中型市场商业领域的竞争非常激烈。管理层还将潜在的权益套利（rewards optimization）以及 AI 智能体对权益的自动套刷识别为新兴课题。美国运通表示，将利用经批准的 API 或 MCP 通道、基于风险的访问控制和消费门槛，来保护客户、商户和产品经济模型。

分析师问答环节要点

• 权益套利与智能体商务：管理层表示，美国运通并不单靠积分竞争，也不依赖权益未兑换收益（breakage）。公司预计其闭环网络、第一方数据、服务与安全性将继续构成差异化优势。可能会使用消费门槛及其他控制手段来限制套利行为。
• 费用轨迹：管理层预计，在跨过白金卡升级改版对比期后，VCE 增长将大幅放缓，从而支持公司每股收益实现约15%增长的长期框架，尽管公司尚未发布正式的2027财年展望。
• 高端卡竞争：美国运通表示，多年来竞争一直相当激烈。公司的策略继续侧重于单一客户营收、费率收入、刷卡消费额、信贷和信用质量，而不是单纯追求账户份额。
• 信贷增长：管理层表示，循环信贷渗透率保持稳定，核保标准未发生变化。公司并不要求客户产生借贷行为才实现客户关系的盈利，也未针对特定的净利息收入或贷款余额设定目标。
• 网络战略：美国运通表示，公司正优先考虑与中小型银行及特定品牌建立合作伙伴关系，而不是寻求大型银行合作。管理层预计未来还会有更多此类网络合作。
• 银行业务产品：约10%的美国客户拥有美国运通的存款账户。管理层预计银行业务将在客户互动与新客获取中发挥更大作用，包括通过近期推出的商业储蓄账户。

业绩电话会议完整文字记录

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完整财报电话会议逐字稿

管理层陈述

Operator

Welcome to the American Express Q3 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now turn the call over to Kartik Ramachandran, Head head of Investor Reasons.

Kartik Ramachandran

Thank you, Donna, and thank you all for joining today's call. 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.

Today's discussion also contain non-GAAP and financial measures. Comparable GAAP financial measures are included in this quarter's earnings materials as well as the prior period earnings material discussed today. All of these are posted on our website at ir.americanexpress.com. We will begin today with Steve Squeri, Chairman and CEO, followed by Christophe Le Caillec, Chief Financial Officer. After their remarks, we'll move to Q&A.

With that, I'll turn it over to Steve.

Stephen Squeri

Thank you, Kartik. Good morning, and thanks for joining us. We had another strong quarter with record revenues of $20 billion, up 9% and EPS of $5.42 reported and $4.68 on an adjusted basis. Given our strong performance year-to-date, we are reaffirming our revenue growth guidance of 10% and raising our EPS guidance to between $18.30 and 1860 on a reported basis, or between $17.60 and $17.90 on an adjusted basis. There are no discrete items in this quarter's results. Christophe will go through them in detail. I'll highlight a few of them.

First, with the closing of the Global Business Travel transaction in the quarter, we're dropping 2/3 of the gain to the bottom line. Excluding the impact of the gain as well as the portion of it we're using for restructuring, adjusted EPS was $4.68. Second, adjusted EPS includes an expense for legal matters, which includes the unreserved portion of the recently announced civil money penalty levied by the OCC. The filing does not impact our full year 2026 guidance. The orders do not impose an asset cap on the company and the costs associated with the remediation are not anticipated to affect 2027 guidance.

More importantly, the deficiency cited in the consent order should not have occurred, and we are accountable for addressing them thoroughly. This is critical to our future and to maintaining the trust that our customers, regulators, colleagues and investors place us. We have earned the trust over many years, and we can never take it for granted. Also this quarter, as I mentioned, we used a portion of the gain from the Global Business Travel transaction to continue positioning the company for long-term growth.

Our strong business performance throughout the year has enabled us to step up our marketing and technology investments, so we decided to use some of the game to invest and make the organization more efficient and better prepared for the future. As a result, we took a $336 million charge for restructuring in the quarter, which is expected to result in the elimination of approximately 5% of our positions globally. Because this quarter's charge is somewhat larger than what we typically do I'll take a moment to provide a bit more context.

We've got good momentum, but to accelerate innovation and win over the next few years, we needed to become a more agile and efficient organization. With that objective in mind, earlier this year, I asked the senior leadership team to identify ways to streamline their reorganizations, align their teams on the most critical deliverables and reduce layers to speed decision-making. When completed, we believe this exercise will help us operate and give us greater capacity to invest in our business priorities.

I'd also like to highlight the latest example of how we're continuing to invest in our membership model, to enhance its value to our card members. Yesterday's announcement of our exclusive partnership with Airbnb, which follows the recent announcements of new and expanded Centurion lounges, our next-generation corporate card and expense management program. We know that card members enjoy the exceptional variety and scope of Airbnb's network of unique locations, and we're excited to bring over 1 million listings globally into our Annex travel program as well as expanding travel benefits for eligible U.S. card members.

Next, I'd like to talk about how we're thinking about AI and the AI assistance. There's been a lot of talk about how companies are using AI to increase productivity, automate processes and generally make their organizations more efficient. We're using AI to do all of those things, too. But I want to talk about AI and agentic commerce from the customers' perspective, how their experience will evolve and what it means for American Express. It's still early in the game. Agenetic transaction volumes are still small, but the direction is clear.

AI is fundamentally changing how consumers and businesses discover, compare, beside, pay and manage their finances and their lives. But while AI agents are able to act on customers' behalf, that doesn't change who the customer is. Our customer remains the card member and the job remains the same, deliver differentiated value and have their back. The way I think about AI is simple. AI gives us the opportunity to make Amex membership even more valuable.

We are well positioned to do just that. Our differentiated assets, closed loop network, first-party data and brand built on trust, security and service are even greater advantages in an AI world. Our goal is to have membership travel with our card members throughout these new AI-powered experiences shaping recommendations, securing payments, activating the right value and supporting the customers actually. In other words, we want to become even more essential to our customers. continuing to embed Amex membership where decisions happen. That's the key idea between the 5 key areas we're using AI to enhance the customer experience.

First, value propositions. Amex membership is all encompassing. It's a combination of the unique access, benefits, experiences, rewards, convenience, world-class partnerships and great service we offer our card members. AI is the opportunity to take our value propositions much further combining the proprietary insights from our closed loop, our partner relationships and access to membership experiences to create entirely new forms of value that are more personalized and differentiated than ever before.

Take dining. Through resi and our restaurant partnerships, we are already giving elite card members access to sort after restaurants and exclusive experiences. We're now using AI to combine that ecosystem with our understanding of individual card members haste and preferences. Our dining companion, for example, uses insights from card member spending to make personalized restaurant recommendations.

Looking ahead, we can imagine using AI to better understand the kinds of experiences different card members would enjoy and then working with our restaurant partners to create distinctive experiences tailored to those interest at a level of personalization and scale we couldn't achieve before. That's the opportunity. taking something American Express already does exceptionally well and leveraging cutting-edge technology to make it even more personal, relevant and differentiated.

Second, customer acquisition. As AI changes how customers search and choose financial products, our ambition is to help shape the discovery and decision-making process. ensuring that the full value of American Express membership is clear and compelling wherever prospective customers are exploring options. We're evolving how we reach prospective customers in this new environment. rethinking traditional search and digital channels, optimizing how our products and benefits are discovered and represented by AI platforms and developing new ways to reach customers through LLMs and ages.

At the same time, we're transforming our marketing and acquisition engine. By combining AI in our proprietary data, we can better identify the right prospects, match them with relevant products and offers and create more personalized shopping product application and onboarding experiences. Our goal is to make becoming an American Express member increasingly seamless and tailored to the individual helping us attract more high-quality customers, improve conversion and make every marketing dollar work care.

Third, engagement. AI gives us the opportunity to fundamentally change how card members experience membership, making it more proactive, personalized and relevant throughout their lives. While we'll do this within our own channels is through partnering with leading AI companies to make our membership assets available through their platforms, customers use to discover, plan and make decisions.

Let me give you a few examples. We're deepening our partnership with OpenAI to continue bringing Amex card membership into chat GPT. Earlier this year, we launched resi restaurant discovery reservations in chat GPT and are working with OpenAI to launch an Amex plug-in that will enable card members to discover and enroll in Amex offers. We continue to collaborate closely on the future of payments and have built proprietary dining and hotel conversational experiences that use open AI models.

In our own channels, Wishlist Builder and our travel app uses AI to help customers discover hotels and plane trips. And through our partnership complexity, eligible business card members can now access Amex curated AI tools for test like cash flow forecasting and creating marketing campaigns. Our vision is for Amex membership to become an intelligent, personalized experience, proactively bringing the right experiences and benefits to card members at the right moment wherever their journey begins.

Fourth, payments as AI agents begin to transact on behalf of customers, trust and security become even more important. Our ambition is to make American Express the trust way to pay across AI ecosystems. -- ensuring that card members remain in control and that the protections and differentiated value they expect from us extend into this new way to pay.

Right now, we're helping to shape the standards for trusted genic payments. The principal is straightforward. We need to know who the age is, what the customer has authorized it to do and have a secure way to complete the payment. The transaction of the future will carry more than a payment credential. It will carry context. We outlined the capabilities we're building in our agentive commerce experiences or ACE developer kit we published in the second quarter, and we're working with several leading AI companies on integrating ACE into their platforms to enable agent power transactions.

Earlier this month, we also released our intent intelligence framework that sets forth a standard to help ensure customer purchase intent is authenticated and preserved. And we're developing agent purchase protection to extend the backing of American Express to eligible purchases when registered agents share intent data and then make mistakes. As both a network and an issuer, we're uniquely positioned to connect the card member, the agent and the merchant throughout the transaction journey.

Our near-term focus is on building these capabilities and integrating with leading partners, but the longer-term opportunity is much bigger, ensuring that whenever and however customers choose to transact, they can do so with confidence, control and the membership value and backing they expect from American Express. And fifth, servicing. Service has always been a defining part of American Express membership. We intend to combine AI speed, personalization and proactive capabilities with the empathy, expertise and judgment of our colleagues. So customers get faster, more seamless service when their needs are straightforward and exceptional personal support when it matters most.

We've been deploying a growth suite of AI tools that help our colleagues access the right information, understand customer needs, develop personalized recommendations and resolve issues more effectively. We're also expanding the use of AI to strengthen our capabilities in areas like complaints and disputes, to identify it earlier, understand root causes, improved decision-making and resolve problems faster. And we recently launched our first few conversational AI voice agents.

Looking ahead, we want to move beyond responding to requests to anticipating and resolving customers' needs end-to-end. That means delivering even more seamless service across channels, addressing issues before customers need to reach out and using insights from every interaction to continually improve the customer experience. Ultimately, we see AI as a powerful accelerator of our long-term growth strategy. It gives us new opportunities to make membership more valuable, attract, engage more customers, drive more of their spend and serve them more effectively.

We're still in the early stages, and we'll continue to invest with discipline, but we believe AI enables us to build on the competitive strength we've developed over decades and drive sustainable, profitable growth for years to come. To wrap up, the company continues to perform well. We are fortunate to have a premium customer base, which continues to show great strength and stability. We have good momentum, and our financial results continue to be strong. The progress we're making across the business together with our talented colleagues who are focused on delivering the best customer experience every day gives me great confidence in the future.

We are on track to deliver another year of 10% revenue growth and mid-teens EPS growth and more importantly, we have momentum to sustain strong results in the years ahead.

I'll now turn it over to Christophe.

Christophe Le Caillec

Thanks, Steve, and good morning, everyone. Q3 was another strong quarter, and we continue to see good momentum across the business. Customer behavior looks very similar to what we've seen over the past year. Strong and consistent spend growth especially in the teen categories, balanced growth in line with spend, high retention rates and excellent credit performance. The strength and stability in customer behavior drove revenue up 9% year-over-year with net car fee growth accelerating to 17% FX adjusted. This quarter reflected stable DCE engagement, disciplined operating expenses and continued investment in Futura.

We reported GAAP EPS of $5.42 this quarter, up 31%. Before getting into the business trends, let me walk through EPS in more detail. There are several adjusted and notable items this quarter, and I want to be clear about their impact on our results. First, the sale of our investments in the Global Business Travel Group resulted in a gain of $1.11 per share. Second, as we previously said, we expected to use a portion of the gain to support the company's long-term growth and consistent with our objective, we have taken a restructuring charge of $0.37 per share.

Adjusting for the Global Business Travel Group gain and the restructuring charge, was $4.68, up 13% year-over-year. Adjusted EPS includes 3 other notable items this quarter. First, an increase in legal reserves of $0.51, which includes the remaining portion of the OCC penalty that was not previously reserved for as well as a reserve for the anticipated settlement of an unrelated matter. The second item is a discrete tax benefit of $0.29 per share. And finally, a $0.24 benefit from the most recent updates to the CECL reserve models. Combined, these 3 items had no meaningful impact on the adjusted EPS this quarter.

Turning to bill business. Overall spend was 8% this quarter. in line with the trend of the past 4 quarters. This quarter included about a 60 basis point year-over-year impact from the core exits that I previously discussed with the Amazon Core Bank portfolio sale happening midway through the quarter. Sequentially, spend growth also saw a small impact from quarter's Amazon Prime Day and other promotional retail days in the U.S. These impacts were mostly concentrated in goods and services, which grew 7% this quarter.

Discretionary spending was strong with T&E up 10% year-over-year. Airline spending accelerated to 13%, while restaurants, our largest T&E category, suspend growth of 9%. U.S. consumer spending was up 9.4% this quarter reflecting the continued strength in our premium customer base. While growth moderated slightly through Q2 it was in line with Q1 and continues to run above the levels we saw in 2024 and 2025. In fact, Q3 is the third highest quarterly growth rate in 3 years. One year after the U.S. consumer Platinum refresh spend retention remains at 99% for the portfolio.

Turning to commercial. Spend was up 3% this quarter. Excluding the impact of the Excluding the impact of the co-brand portfolio exits, spend growth was 5% for the second consecutive quarter. We're seeing strong take-up on the graphite card that we launched earlier this year. and looking ahead, our new corporate cash back card and integrating integrated expense management capabilities will give us additional opportunities to drive engagement and spend growth. Spend growth in international was up 11%. Merchant coverage now reaches over 190 million locations globally, up from $160 million a year ago.

Outside the U.S., the number of applications accepting Amex has more than doubled over the last 4 years. We are pleased with the outcomes of our investments in customer acquisition and driving greater engagement from our existing card members. We acquired 3.1 million new cars in the quarter with 76% of new accounts on fee-paying products.

Turning to balances and credit on Page 10. Total balances increased 8% year-over-year in line with Bill business. Importantly, we continue to grow balances from our premium customer base while maintaining best-in-class credit results. This is very much by design, reflecting our focus on attracting highly creditworthy customers who both spend and borrow with us. And the quality of those customers is reflected not only in our credit performance but also in the economics of our lending business. In fact, this quarter is a good illustration of this dynamic. Balances grew 8%.

NII grew at a faster rate at 10% and ride on dollars only grew at 3%. Delinquency rate remained very low and stable. For the last 15 quarters, the rate has been either 1.2% or 1.3%. And overall provision expense was $985 million, using a reserve release of $211 million. The reserve release was driven by enhancements to our seasonal models. We feel very good about the quality of our credit performance and the stability we see in the portfolio.

Turning now to revenue. Revenue was $20.1 billion, up 9% year-over-year. Revenue growth would have been about 1 point higher, excluding the impact of the small business core brand portfolio exits. Net interest income was up 10% this quarter, continuing to grow faster than balances. NII growth in the quarter had about a 2 percentage point impact year-over-year from the core brand portfolio exits. Net car fees continue to be our fastest-growing revenue line. As expected, we've seen an acceleration in growth to 17% FX-adjusted this quarter, supported by the very strong results we've seen on the platinum -- on the U.S. Platinum refresh.

Turning now to expenses. The VCE to revenue ratio was 44.3% this quarter. We are beginning to see growth in car member services moderate following the step-up from the Platinum refresh last year. Looking ahead, we expect VCE growth to moderate significantly in Q4 as we fully lap the platinum refresh. Returning to growth rates more consistent with what we saw before the refresh. We are also continuing to evolve our value propositions in ways that enhance the customer experience and support active product economics. For example, we recently introduced membership rewards redemption for statement balances, which has been strong -- which has seen strong adoption. This feature provides card members with greater flexibility in how they use rewards while also supporting the overall economics of the program.

Marketing expense was up 11%, reflecting the additional investments we made in customer acquisition following our strong performance in the first half of the year. On Page 18, we can see expenses were down 3% year-over-year, reflecting the notable items, including the Global Business Travel Group gain, restructuring and legal items, underlying OpEx growth was 3%, and as Steve said earlier, we have invested significantly in strengthening risk and controls in the past few years, and we will do what's needed to establish a favorable and effective program that meets our own and our regulators' expectations. The ongoing investment are in our run rate, and we do not expect the additional cost to impact our 2027 guidance.

Before closing, let me address 1 of the most recurring questions we get about our margins and how they have evolved over the past years, especially as we ramp up marketing and technology spend and invested in richer value propositions via the VCE expenses. The decisions we make are profitability base and aim at maximizing risk-adjusted returns and capital generation. Page 19 shows our ROE over the last 16 years.

As you can see, we have increased the ROE from an average of 25% to 28% 10 years ago to around 35% more recently. And over this period of time, we are on track to more than double the size of our revenue and triple EPS. At the same time, we have also reduced the share count by over a quarter. This performance can be tracked back to our spend and fee-based model characterized by high loyalty and engagement, greater differentiation versus competitors, lower credit risk, including a distress, lower capital intensity and higher operating leverage from scale. These results in very strong capital generation that will be returned to shareholders.

In Q3 specifically, we returned $2.2 billion of capital to shareholders, including $1.6 billion of share repurchase and $0.6 billion of dividends. And we ended the quarter with a CET1 ratio of 10.9%, reflecting the gain from the sale of GBTG that happened at the end of the quarter. That brings me to guidance. Given our performance year-to-date, we are reaffirming our full year revenue growth guidance of 10% and raising EPS guidance to a range of $18.30 to $18.60 and $17.60 to $17.90 on an adjusted basis.

With that, I'll turn the call back over to Kartik, and we'll take your questions.

Kartik Ramachandran

Thank you, Christophe. We will now start the Q&A session. Operator?

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is coming from Sanjay Sakhrani of KBW.

分析师问答

Sanjay Sakhrani

Steve, definitely appreciated all your comments on the Agentic commerce and all the initiatives you guys have. I guess one of the concerns that I've been hearing quite a bit about from investors is just how people might gamify rewards and allocate their spending to the highest rewards benefit. So to the extent that, that would happen, right, how would you guys adjust your model? Or is there something that you guys can do offensively to stay on the offensive?

Stephen Squeri

Thanks for the question, Sanjay. I think, look, customers have always had the ability to optimize across cards. And our strategy really hasn't been to really compete simply on points or rational rewards. And I think the other thing that's important to understand is we really don't have a breakage model. So we don't benefit when people don't use our rewards. I think that when you think about the closed loop and the ability to even match our card members' desires and our merchants' desires, I think that gives us a huge advantage.

And I think our overall model is so much more about -- than just about points. it's access, it's service. It is security, which I think service and security in this -- in AI is going to be even more important. And it's one of the reasons that when I decided what we're going to talk about today, everybody talks about AI from an efficiency perspective and expense reduction, productivity, which is very, very important. But what I wanted to do was to sort of demonstrate across the 5 key dimensions how it will actually be an accelerator for us.

And the last thing I'll say is when we've had gamification or when we've had people that do certain things, we have levers within our model, and we've shown this with the Platinum Card, where we can get to spend thresholds that require those benefits to be made, which then sort of eliminates that ability to game the system. So I do have a lot of tools at our disposal, but I think the most important tool we have at our disposal is our card members that love our product and love what our product does for them. So -- but like anything else, we'll see a plays out.

Operator

The next question is coming from Ryan Nash from Goldman Sachs.

Ryan Nash

So great to hear. So as you think about spend comp, Chris, obviously, you spoke about the strength versus history. Maybe just talk about what you're seeing, can you maintain this kind of level? And then given Christophe's comments regarding the moderating of VCEs, can you maybe just talk a bit patient about the potential for meet teens EPS into next year and your confidence in it?

Christophe Le Caillec

So I'll -- let me start with that. So on the VCE, so the BC is performing as we expected. And as you know, this quarter is the quarter we're going to lap the platinum refresh, which is the event that created the step-up in the VCE ratio. So as you think about going forward, and Q4 is going to be a good example of that. You should say that VCE ratio to kind of stabilize in this kind of rate -- but the growth rate in terms of the VCE dollars to moderate significantly and either to be more insistent with why we saw pre refresh. And we're not going to get into guidance for 2027 at this stage.

You're going to have to wait for January to that. But either like that is going to help us just like maintain that mid-teens EPS addition that we have been using for years to think about the performance of the company. So I feel good about that. And I will say -- I will add 1 more point of either on the VCE on Steve's comment here, we introduced this quarter an amount-based redemption, which is like a very convenient way for car members to redeem their ports, and we saw a very strong take-up for this.

So convenience is also a very important feature here in terms of those VCE and our ability to control that expense. In terms of the spend, Listen, we -- no. There is a bit of noise this quarter because of the impact coming from the sale of this co-brand portfolio. So that creates this continuity in the trends. Obviously, we have a lot more information that you have. When we control for that, we're very pleased with that with those trends in the U.S. consumer segment, we're reporting this spend growth is the third highest we've seen over the last 3 years, and that is despite the timing of the Amazon Prime Day, and it's not only Amazon as a matter of fact as retailers kind of follow a similar schedule.

So despite that headwind that kind of like created a lift in Q2 and a bit of downward trend in Q3, we're seeing 9.4% billing growth and very strong growth in discretionary categories, such as T&E and airlines. So a lot of momentum and strength in our billings. Yes. The only other thing I'd say is that as Kirsi airline spending is was really high. Restaurant spending continues to be high. It was up 9%. It's the largest tea category. But just to highlight, resi restaurants were up 18%. And when you go and look at the fine hotels and resorts and the hotel collection that's up 50%. And so that's just another example of when you marry our card members with our merchants through our programs, how -- you just get more than 1 plus 1 equals 2. And so those are the kind of things that I think will continue to help drive growth for us as well.

Operator

The next question is coming from Don Fandetti of Wells Fargo.

Donald Fandetti

Steve, if you look at the banks, they're just continuing to press hard into the premium segment, adding billions of marketing budgets. I wanted to just get your sense on how you're thinking about market share in U.S. consumer. And then can you comment on the moderation in the international bill business?

Stephen Squeri

Yes. Let me go with the second 1 first. Look, it's 22 straight quarters of a double-digit growth rate in international. We went from 13% to 11%. We'll see how that plays out, but 11% growth is still very strong growth. And the demographic from a core acquisition perspective, which still continues to be strong, it's predominantly millennials and Gen Z. As far as the competitive frame the competitive frame, it really hasn't changed all that much.

I mean, people is a lot more I think there's a lot more talk about it now, but it's been a battle for 10 years and people continue to step up the game, but we continue to set up our game as well. And so obviously, we've increased our marketing budget over time. But as a result of that, we've also increased our revenue. And let me also be clear about one thing. When we look at the companion segment, we're looking from a revenue perspective. And what we're looking for is sort of that really [indiscernible], right?

Obviously, we spent which a tremendous acquired fee income. We're a $3 billion for the quarter, up 17% year-over-year, and we continue down that path. And so -- and then obviously, our big card members were involved and they are revolving and we're the advantage of that. And not only we then manage that, but we take advantage of that with best-in-class credit performance. And so I think the challenge or the thing that we continue to face is continue to innovate.

And I think -- we've been doing that. We've been doing that, as you see, across multiple segments, whether it's how we're embedding AI within some of the value propositions, the Airbnb announcement yesterday, which we're very excited about. And then you just look from a corporate and a small business perspective. And so, yes, it's bad and we continue to do well when we get any share revenue the and the resets that.

Operator

And then the question is coming from Erika Najarian with UBS.

L. Erika Penala

Steve, really appreciate it. I guess I'm wondering given that AI that some financial institutions that are from the allow your members to ex. Is there of AI I guess thinking about this, right?

Stephen Squeri

I'll just try to summarize some of the -- but I think when you take that, you have AI. And you have to and you have to what your customers want to do. Having said that, I think in terms of -- you heard a lot about banks that are blocking. And look, we're going to take a risk-based approach, too. We're just not going to let citizens run road through our systems. That's not going to happen. We need to protect our customers, merchants, and we're only going to allow agents to access our systems that are either approved through API or MCP channels. We're also focused on providing a very consistent membership experience, meaning we don't want AI agents to be paying resi every 4 seconds and disadvantaging our other partners. So we Okay. Anyway, so we're going to be selectively looking at agents and how they act.

Having said that, I think in terms [indiscernible] Lot about banks that are blocking -- and look, we're going to take a space approach, too. We're just not going to let assistance run rode through our systems. That's not going to happen. When you need to protect our customers, merchants and we're only going to allow agents to access our systems that are approved to API or CDP channels.

We're also focused on providing a very consistent marshal experience meaning we don't want AI agents to be paying resi every 4 seconds, and it is advantaging our other partners. This all Okay. Anyway, so we're going to be selectively looking at agents and how they act. Having said that, and as I said with in my remarks earlier, I think there's going to be opportunities for us to embed our own ages within AI platforms. We're doing that today. And what we wanted to do is make sure that the AI platforms, our assets are as severable, much like what we're doing with open eye with resi and like we'll do our own things like wish builder.

I think in terms of rewards maximization, we've got a lot of gaming today that goes on. And it's part of the overall mix. But I think with as it might allow people to gain a little more, it also will allow us to manage it a little bit better as well by using AI who understand what people are doing and then how do we modify our value proposition, and you've seen us do this. You've seen us do this with $75,000 limit in terms of the pass for the plant you'll see other controls that are put it into the decision. I think it's a little too early to gain to determine what the impact will be on a VCE.

But what I also would say is when we look at the entire model, harder engagement is so forth to us. And as people continue to engage with our benefits, we tend to get a higher share of wallet -- we get better accretive benefit as of this and I think ultimately, engagement led to a better outcome for our trust.

Operator

Next question coming from [indiscernible].

Unknown Analyst

So you guys have faced many ways of competition for premium card members in the past, but I'd love your thoughts on any changes you might be seeing in the competitive intensity in the herd environment need for today particularly with players like Capital One, how operating close loop generating higher returns and having historically demonstrated a willingness to set up investments to prioritize their long-term positioning even of compromising our profitability. Just really love the insights you can share on what you're watching there that would be great.

Stephen Squeri

I mean look, I think City Capital One case, everybody is sort of playing in this space. To be honest, we really don't see much difference than what we've seen. It is highly competitive and highly competitive, and our some remain highly competitive I don't think because it's a very profitable segment of the card base. The other thing I think is a conversation does, which a lot of people focus on, there's upturns that have premium characteristics, but we don't limit themselves as a premium card necessarily.

And so we did introduce more people into that part of the TAM, which may not have been an error they're creditworthy enough, but they were taking -- that they weren't participating in with those products and services. And I think that's what we do for everybody.

Operator

Next question is coming from Rob Wildhack from Autonomous Research.

Robert Wildhack

I wanted to ask about the allowance coverage ratio in the context of the growth in NII lending balances down to 2.6 now. the small adjustment making or borrowers and this area and the back of the deck, but I guess the question is how much is the flat and conservative with respect to the broader environment or maybe ask a question on the way. Is there any color to think about a normal environment allowance over [indiscernible] ration might be?

Christophe Le Caillec

So I'll take that question. So yes, in the appendix, we're showing in a simplified way the scenarios, the economic scenarios we're using, and I guess you're focusing on the downside scenario, I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I think we're assuming that some kind of like peak unemployment in the like 8% range, right? And so it's a pretty aggressive scenario. The fundamental dynamic here and why their reserve rate is at 2.6% and it's below where we were when we introduced CECL.

I think it was in -- the key dynamic here is the premiumization of the portfolio. As we focus more on fee paying card members, we focus more on VCE. We are attracting card members and that have a great credit profile, and that slowly improving the credit metrics across the portfolio. You see that as well in the write-off rate that we're reporting this quarter and the delinquency rate. The delinquency rate are not only best in class. They have been stable at 1.2%, 1.3% for quarters, right?

And when you look at by vintage, the new hedges are performing better from a credit standpoint that the past vintages and you can track that again to the positive selection that happens in our acquisition marketing engine. Another metric that we report every quarter is the percentage of those new accounts joining the franchise on a fee-paying product, which is good indicator as well of the premiumness of that vintage, and it's the highest I think we've seen since we reported that metric at 76%, right?

And so fundamentally, Rob, what's happening here is that, of course, we are they're disciplined in our underwriting decisions, but safely, but surely, the portfolio is being more and more premium by the day. And we keep -- we haven't changed the kind of like economic scenarios that we use in terms of the conservative scenario over the past years. And that's what's driving the performance on CECL.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is coming from John Pancari of Evercore ISI.

John Pancari

Just on the card front. I know you noted last quarter that card fees should grow in the high teens in the fourth quarter. You didn't seem to put that in your slide deck this quarter, but I believe, Steve, you just mentioned that you should continue down that path in that you mentioned the 17% in the third quarter. So is there any change there in how you're thinking about the fourth quarter? Or how you think about maybe if you can also elaborate on I know you're not giving '27 yet, but how you're thinking about that piece as you progress through '27, just given the dynamics that you're seeing in the space.

Christophe Le Caillec

Yes. So I'll take the question, John. So on the card fee, you might remember, we entered the year saying you should expect a downward trend or a moderation in terms of the growth rate. And then in the end of the year, the second half of the year, you should expect an inflection point and exit in the high teens. We saw that inflection point this quarter, right? And you saw it like we were at 15% in Q2. And this quarter, we are at 17% FX adjusted. So that's the inflection point that we were expecting and that we saw. I'm not going to give you guidance about how to think about this 2027 card fee.

Again, you're going to have to wait until January for that. And we also don't give quarterly guidance on card fee. But if you take a step back, performance on this line has been amazing since 2019, since we started focusing more of our energy investments, innovation towards premium products and fee paying experiences and customers. And that 17% is amazing. The fact that we are able to accelerate the game is remarkable, and it's the fastest-growing line we have in the P&L, and it's definitely a key contributor as well to their very strong ROE performance.

So we're going to keep focusing on this, and we'll update you in terms of how to think about that growth rate when we get to 2027 and at the beginning of the year.

Operator

The next question is coming from Terry Ma of Barclays.

Terry Ma

So you've talked in the past about the opportunities to capture more borrowing share from your existing premium customers. Are you seeing any meaningful change in revolve behavior? And just how much more runway do you see to grow lending faster without changing the credit profile of the franchise?

Stephen Squeri

Yes. So in terms of the borrowing, I don't think we report regularly our penetration rate here, but it has been stable, I would say, over the past years. What matters to us is that we meet the needs of our card members, right? If they want to borrow, we there for them if the normal to borrow, then so be it. We don't need them to borrow for us to have a profitable relationship. That has been our mantra for years. It remains our mantra.

And of course, NII plays an important role in our economics, but we're not changing our underwriting approach here and what we've seen as well in terms of penetrating the wallet of our card members, is that the better -- like the more spend we capture and the more premium the product is, the more likely we are to capture the revolve and to meet the revolving needs of our cut members. So our strategy remains the same, right? Serve our customers the best way we can, focus on premium customers meet their borrower needs when they have some, and that's our approach. We are not kind of like targeting a specific number in terms of NII or in terms of AR balances.

Operator

The next question is coming from Darrin Peller of Wolfe Research.

Darrin Peller

Can you just touch again on the competitive landscape around commercial for a moment? I know you mentioned a bit more about premium, but just revisiting your initiatives what kind of progress and milestones you'd like to see in terms of some element of an acceleration potential in the overall segment volume? And then maybe just business milestones as well as you integrate more of the platforms you brought on?

Christophe Le Caillec

Yes. So I think that when you look at the commercial space, there's really 3 segments. One we call SME, but it's really small, and it's also middle and then you've got corporate. I think small continues to perform very, very strong and we're doing quite well there. I think our Cashback product that we launched a couple of quarters ago or last quarter was -- it has performed -- the graphite product has performed a lot better than we even anticipated in performing. I think then you have the large in the multinational and that continues to be a real sweet spot for us, and it's growing exactly as we would expect it to grow.

I mean, that's traditionally a T&E piece. I think where the competitive piece is really within the middle market piece there. And that's where I think -- from our perspective, we have not grown the way we want to grow, and that's why we did the Center acquisition. And with the Center acquisition and the platform that, that sits on is Nova, the launch of our business savings account, the launch of our corporate cash back program, corporate liability within that segment. These are things that we needed to more effectively compete with ramp and with Brex.

And I think those are 2 of the big competitors that are out there. And what they unlocked in this segment was sort of the automation and the expense management piece of this and then obviously, the introduction of agents within. And so what you'll see from us as we move forward you will see the introduction into this platform of more agents that will help middle and larger businesses do their work. and you will see us then sort of make all of these products and services available to the back book.

And so I think it will take a little bit -- it will continue to take a little bit of time, but we feel we are not only better position than we were at this time a year ago. But we've also got the road map as we move forward here to continue to make these capabilities available to a wider base of our middle market and large customers.

Operator

The next question is coming from Mihir Bhatia of Bank of America.

Mihir Bhatia

I wanted to maybe touch on the Visa Mastercard settlement. That's been in the news again this week with expectations that it might get approved soon. I wanted to ask specifically for you -- in terms of -- I guess the 2-part question. One is just in terms of the settlement and if it relaxes -- as it relates to on all card Japan store charging, do you expect there to be a change in merchant behavior from that? And how are you thinking about the competitive implications proposed from that settlement?

And part of the reason I ask is, it feels like there's been momentum in your network business this year with more pure network type. Deals being announced, where there was NFL or Lowe's, and I think it was another 1 last week. So just wondering if you're rethinking your network business and if the and the implications of the settlement?

Stephen Squeri

Okay. So I think from a network perspective, I think we've really pivoted from a strategy in that we're looking at I'll try and say this the best way possible, but we're not looking to partner with the bigger banks. I think we made a lot of efforts to attempt to partner with some of the bigger banks that didn't really pay off for us. And I think whether we're now partnering with Synchrony or we're partnering with Bread Financial or we're partnering with others, I think it's allowing us to reach more segments of the population that we trade wouldn't reach.

And so we continue to -- we will continue to see, I believe, more and more of those deals be done, not bigger deals with big banks, but probably some smaller to midsized banks with specific entities. And so people like the brand. And we offer a lot of value. And I think with Bread Financial, the synergy there between our NFL deal and their NFL partnership, it just made all the sense in the world for us to do business with them, and we respect them a lot.

As far as the Visa, Mastercard settlement, we're going to have to see how that all plays out. surcharging is pretty much a fact of life. It's small businesses right now doesn't really appear to have affected anybody's business. If anything, it's not a great experience for consumers and it aggravates consumers when they see it. And so that's #1. But I don't think that really has affected anybody's momentum at this point. As far as [indiscernible] cards, good luck. It's going to be really hard, I think, for people to differentiate and if you want to see a consumer backlash, if you think about 1 VisaCare over another Visa card, Mastercard, so forth and so on, I think you'll have a lot of consumer outrage with that.

But Again, we'll see how that all plays out in the marketplace. But more to see here.

Operator

you. Our final question today is coming from Cris Kennedy of William Blair.

Cristopher Kennedy

I think maybe 10% of your U.S. customers have a deposit account with American Express. And I recall, digital banking was a key area of an investment for you guys. Can you just talk about that journey and kind of the role of banking products going forward?

Stephen Squeri

Yes. Well, you have the statistic exactly correct. I think 1 of the things that we're really trying to do with our customers is expanding organic core. And banking services are part of that core. And if you think about understanding someone's credit worthiness, understanding and building a bigger relationship with them, I think banking services is more important. We're on a journey as it relates to banking services. You want to make sure you get this right. You want to make sure you have the right controls in place and everything else.

And so I think you'll see this continue to play a bigger part in our overall strategy in not only engaging with our card members, but acquiring card members. And I think there's more to come here, but even with just the launch this quarter of the business savings account for our small business customers, it's another step in that direction.

Unknown Executive

With that, we will bring the call to an end. Thank you for joining us and for your interest in American Express.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

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