Christophe Le Caillec: All right. Let me start and I’m sure Steve will add up to this. So you’re right. I mean the SME billed business has been in that 1%, 2% range for a year now. We think that this is macro driven and we have a ton of data that confirms that it’s not specific to American Express, and the rest of the industry is experiencing similar trends. I will note, as I think, we said in the prepared remarks that on the acquisition side, it’s going very strongly. So the demand for the product is there. Their quality of the applicant is there as well. And as we’ve said in the past, it’s the — I would say, the 10-year base that is moderating their spend. We’ll see how it goes, those card members, the SME, as we’ve said in the past, have been going through a lot.
They’re certainly experiencing as well their compound effect of funding costs for several years now. And they are very careful in terms of how they’re managing their cash flows and how they’re spending. This being said, we are very focused at working with them, as I said, engaging with them. And we’re confident that we have what it takes to win them back when they are ready to spend more.
Stephen Squeri: Yes. I think that, Moshe, when you look at this, the SME has been — this entire space has been sort of disrupted over the last four years or so maybe five years with COVID, where it took a tremendous drop for 18 months or so. And then all of a sudden, you had unbelievable unsustainable organic growth of like 19% and 20% in given years. It was crazy growth in ’21 and ’22. And we saw last year after the first quarter, it really started to wane. And again, a couple — I think there’s, again, a few reasons for that. I think there was a tremendous build-up in inventories. I think interest rates going up did not help from a small business perspective, especially as they thought about purchasing goods and services and buying those goods and services and stocking them in anticipation of another supply chain sort of malady or meltdown.
And what we do like is that our acquisition is still very strong. The transactions, even within the tenured base, continue to go up, it’s the larger transactions that we’ve really seen the organic decline on and a lot of that can be industry-specific construction, a lot of that can also be not buying — not buying big inventories upfront. So I think what’s important for us to focus on right now is to continue to acquire, continue to work with them and engaging with them. And then when they’re ready to come back, we’re there for them as they want to spend even more. As far as — and I started the conversation with this, as far as overall spending, that’s what makes me feel really good about our overall spending because we’re able to grow 7% with our commercial business growing very low and small business is only growing at 1% and it’s an important part of the franchise, and that’s why we feel good because of the credit and of the new acquisition.
Operator: Thank you. Our final question will come from the line of Ryan Nash with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.
Ryan Nash: Hey, good morning, guys.
Stephen Squeri: Good morning.
Christophe Le Caillec: Good morning.
Ryan Nash: 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.
