Operator: Thank you. The next question is coming from Craig Maurer of FT Partners. Please go ahead.
Craig Maurer: Yes. Good morning. Thanks. And two quick questions. Considering the strength of Delta Air Lines over the last number of years, it’s consistently the top airline. You’ve clearly, benefited a lot from that in terms of new card issuance and likely in spend as they’ve been able to hold fares better. As we see airlines spend slow, does that benefit diminish, and is it something you have to think about? And second, in terms of small business, no, we’ve been pretty flat now for a couple of quarters. Curious what you’re seeing under the covers there is this. Are you still able to issue new cards, or — and are you seeing any reluctance from small business to take additional products that might increase their cost beyond the baseline? I’m just trying to understand the move better small business owners. Thanks.
Steve Squeri: Yes. So from a small business perspective, the drive is really organic spend. We’re not seeing existing small businesses spend more than they spent the year before. And that’s not an American Express phenomenon. That is an industry phenomenon. As far as card acquisition within small businesses, that still remains strong. As far as small businesses, looking at our platform and looking at our loans and so forth, that remains strong and the credit quality remains strong. I think as Christophe said in his remarks, there is this phenomenon of inventory buildup, some interest-rate shock and so forth, and so small businesses tend to be very, very secular. I would be much more concerned if we weren’t acquiring cards, if we weren’t engaging in new small businesses, or if write-offs and delinquencies were higher.
So at the moment as we look at this, we truly believe this is an organic spending issue and it’s not American Express-specific. I’ll let Christophe talk a little bit about Delta.
Christophe Le Caillec: Yes. So the Delta product is still going very, very strong. The total billing growth on the Delta product for the full year was up 15%, and we are originating a lot of new cards as well. And my comment about there either softness in terms of Q4, hard to say whether it’s the beginning of a trend or whether it’s just a blip, time will tell, but it’s still growing very, very strong and the engagement with the partner is very strong — the partnership is going strong. So I don’t see any softness there at all. And I will say as well that their credit quality of those new card members remained very strong. I made comments about, it’s one of the fastest-growing segment on the loan side and it comes with very strong performance. People who travel a lot and who fly a lot tend to have strong credit quality, and we see that on the loan side, on the spend side, on the origination side. So I’m not worried about that at this stage.
Operator: Thank you. Our final question will come from Mihir Bhatia of Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Mihir Bhatia: Hi. Thank you for squeezing me in here. I just wanted to go back a little bit and maybe just unpack the billings growth a little bit. Maybe can you just talk about how much of that is being driven by adding new card members versus winning wallet share? And then just related to that same topic was just how are you thinking about the environment for new card acquisition? Is this 3 million level that you have been out for the last couple of quarters, the right level to think about for the next year? I understand that is dynamic and you will change, but what have you assumed in your planning?
Christophe Le Caillec: Yes. Let me talk about sort of card acquisition numbers. We go out and we look at acquiring card members who really focus on acquiring billed business and we acquire revenue. And consistently now, if you take the first quarter out of last year where it was a little bit more of an anomaly of 3.4 million cards, we’ve been around that 3 million to 2.9 million cards. And we will — as long as we have line-of-sight into high credit quality premium cardmembers, we will continue to be out there aggressively acquiring cardmembers, and that range will be where we see that range today, between 2.9 million, 3.1 million. And we don’t really provide any guidance on that, but with the amount of money we’re planning on spending, I think that’s a — it’s a pretty fair assumption.
And we report that but what we’re really focused on is making sure that we’re getting you know billed business acquired. When you look at the composition, obviously, in a stronger environment, you really looking for more organic growth from your existing cardholders. And I just made the comment, before we are small businesses that’s not what we’re seeing. And so when you look at any growth that you’re seeing from a small-business perspective that is truly from new cardholders acquired. And a lot of the growth from a consumer perspective right now is new cardholders acquired which actually as we think about engaging with our cardholders gives me a lot of confidence going forward because as we continue to engage and not only get more wallet share, but as our cardmembers get back to where they were probably before the third quarter and fourth quarter, we believe there is upside there from a billings perspective.
We’ve talked a lot about millennials over time, and we get on this growth trend — we get on this trajectory with these millennials and Gen Zers, where we start with a higher share of wallet, and we start with that higher share of wallet because they are used to using their American Express card everywhere, and as they move through their lifecycles, their wallets increase. And so we have a lot of confidence in the long-term lifetime value of the millennial base and of the Gen Z base that we’re now acquiring. And you see and even in this fourth quarter that is 32% now of our total spending. So when to think about this right now is — a lot of the growth is coming — that you’re seeing is coming from new card acquisition, but there will be an inorganic step up as the economy gets better.
So — and that gives us a lot of confidence of how we’re positioned for future growth over the long-term, which gives us confidence to say aspiration-ally we should be a 10% plus revenue company. And that’s why you see the guidance that we’ve given this year, both from a revenue perspective and EPS perspective.
