When you have 25% revenue growth, we have 25% billings growth. When you have travel bookings that at all-time highs and continuing to increase quarter-over-quarter, you have to put in place not only the digital capabilities, but the people to make sure that you can handle all that. So from an expense perspective, the reason we’re able to say that we think marketing will be where it is and operating expenses will not grow at the same level that they will because we believe we’ve gotten to that scale component that we now believe that we can grow revenues 15% to 17% get into a 10% growth mode 2020 €“ plus 10% plus growth mode 2024 and beyond with that scale until the point in time. And I don’t know when that is where we have to have another scale jump.
But what you saw from a growth perspective, last year was all about the scale. So Jeff, do you want to talk about credit or anything else or…
Jeff Campbell: No.
Steve Squeri: So that’s how I would think about that in terms of going below sort of the components of revenue and how expenses relate to that revenue.
Operator: Thank you. The next question is coming from Mark DeVries of Barclays. Please go ahead.
Mark DeVries: Yes. Thank you. Sorry if I missed this, but can you talk about how sensitive your revenue guidance is to the macro, kind of what gets you to the high and low end of the range you provided? And are you using at all the same assumptions around GDP and unemployment that you used to kind of set the reserve levels?
Jeff Campbell: Mark, one of the interesting things that I think surprises people is we have looked historically every way you could imagine, trying to find really direct correlations between GDP growth and for that matter between movements in the markets that affect people’s financial wealth. And the, I think, surprising things to many people is we can’t find any direct correlation between those two things. So when you look at our 15% to 17% guidance, it’s really €“ I go back to what Steve and I have both now said a couple of times, driven by €“ our best indicator is what we see with our customers around the globe and how they are behaving. And we certainly are aware of and thinking about various macroeconomic forecasts but you start with what behaviors are we actually seeing.
And I’d also remind everyone that the U.S. remains by far our largest market. The U.S. economy shrank in the first two quarters of 2022, and we just posted revenue growth for the full year, 25%. So when I think about the 15% to 17% range, it’s really not a 15% is a weaker economy, 17%. Frankly, it’s €“ I wish we were more precise about forecasting, but it’s just a little bit of forecast error, I would say, based on the trends we’ve seen and the macroeconomic consensus, which is absolutely. The economy is supposed to slow when you look at that consensus, and that’s factored in here as well.
Operator: Thank you. The next question is coming from Mihir Bhatia of Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Mihir Bhatia: Thank you.
Steve Squeri: Good morning.
Mihir Bhatia: Good morning. I think you said 70% of existing loan lending growth came from existing members. Is there a similar metric you can share on the spending side? Just trying to understand as things normalize and we get into more of a normal cadence how maybe help us project a little bit on spending growth, how that can translate as we look at your last few quarters of strong acquisitions? Thanks.
