American Express Q2 2026 Earnings Analysis

More earnings analysis: https://betafinch.com──────────ALEX: Welcome to Beta Finch, your AI-powered earnings breakdown. Today we're digging into American Express's Q2 2026 results, and Jordan, this one's got some real strategic meat on the bone.JORDAN: It really does. Before we get into it, though — this podcast is AI-generated content for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing we discuss should be considered investment advice. Always do your own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.ALEX: Right, so let's get into the numbers. Amex posted 10% revenue growth this quarter and EPS of $4.53, up 11% year-over-year. Pre-tax income was up 15%. And here's the interesting part — they're actually raising full-year revenue guidance to 10% growth, but keeping EPS guidance steady at $17.30 to $17.90.JORDAN: That's the part that jumps out at me. Normally when a company beats expectations, you'd think they'd flow that straight to EPS. But CEO Steve Squeri was pretty direct about it — he said, essentially, "we have a choice: drop the overperformance to the bottom line, or reinvest it." And they're choosing to reinvest.ALEX: Which tells you something about how confident they are in their growth pipeline. Where's the money going?JORDAN: Mainly three places — customer acquisition, technology investment, and this proposed acquisition of TheFork, a European restaurant booking platform that would add 50,000 restaurants across 11 countries to their dining network. That one wasn't even in the original 2026 plan.ALEX: Right, and TheFork fits into this bigger dining ecosystem play — they already own Resy and Tock. Squeri made an interesting point on the call: they don't evaluate these platforms on a standalone P&L basis. It's not about Resy or Tock making money directly — it's about what he called "closed loops within our closed loop." Card members get better restaurant access, and it becomes a cheaper acquisition channel since non-card-members use these platforms too.JORDAN: And the data backs it up — spend at Resy restaurants is double that of average, and card members have higher ticket prices across the board. That's the flywheel Squeri kept coming back to.ALEX: Let's talk about the real engine here, though: the Platinum Card refresh. This has been running for about a year now, and it's paying off in a big way.JORDAN: Big time. U.S. consumer spending was up 11.4% — the highest growth rate since Q1 2018, excluding pandemic distortions. And CFO Christophe Le Caillec pointed out that Platinum is now the fastest-growing portfolio in their U.S. consumer business. It's coming from three places: new account acquisition, existing cardholders spending more, and people upgrading from other cards into Platinum.ALEX: There's a really telling stat in there too — 65% of new U.S. consumer accounts are coming from Millennials and Gen Z. And internationally it's similar, around 70%. This isn't a legacy-customer story anymore.JORDAN: No, and that matters for durability. Squeri made this point when asked about long-term valuation — he's been at Amex 41 years, so he's seen a few cycles — and his answer was basically: the company used to think of its premium customer as one specific demographic cohort. Now they've built a flywheel that can adapt to whichever generation is coming up next. That's a meaningfully different growth algorithm than the one they had a decade ago.ALEX: Now, on the credit side — this is where it gets almost boringly good, in a good way. Delinquency rates have held between 1.2% and 1.3% for over three years. Both delinquency and write-off rates remain below 2019 levels.JORDAN: And the stress test results reinforce that. In the Fed's CCAR severely-adverse scenario, Amex posted the lowest projected credit card loss rate of any bank tested, with a positive pre-tax ROE over nine quarters. That's the payoff of chasing a more premium, more creditworthy customerThis episode includes AI-generated content.