american express co continued to benefit from strong spending growth in the latest quarter with particular momentum in the travel and entertainment categories the card giant on thursday morning posted firstquarter net income of 18 billion or 240 a share down from 21 billion or 273 a share in the yearearlier period the factset consensus called for earnings of 266 a share amex axp logged 143 billion in total revenues net of interest expense in the first quarter beating the consensus analyst expectation which foresaw revenue of 14 billion in the yearago period amex notched 117 billion in quarterly revenue chief executive stephen squeri called out “particularly robust” spending on travel and entertainment in amex’s earnings release the company benefited from a 16 boost in cardmember spending on a currencyneutral basis in the quarter while witnessing the addition of 34 million new proprietary cards amex saw record quarterly account acquisitions for its us consumer platinum and gold us business platinum and delta cobrand cards millennial and gen z customers made up more than 60 of the company’s new consumer accounts during the period the company posted a 22 bump in consolidated expenses during the quarter reflecting “higher customer engagement costs driven by higher network volumes and increased usage of travelrelated benefits” amex cardholders can redeem rewards in various ways and chief financial officer jeff campbell told marketwatch that redemption on travel is the “highestcost thing” people could do from the company’s perspective the omicron wave impacted travel demand in the first quarter of 2022 but there’s been “particularly robust demand for travel” more recently campbell said that the strong interest in travel is overall ideal for amex even if it means the company has to pay more when consumers redeem rewards on perks in the category “our company has a particular strength in travel” he said “our most premium products … are particularly traveloriented when demand for travel is strong that’s a very good thing for the company overall” see ‘i’m flying first class most of the time’ 5 travel hacks to beat the summer crowds and high prices from the archives november 2016 ‘the points guy’ has 30 credit cards and a credit score of 805 and lets us in on his secrets amex disclosed that the total provision for credit losses was 11 billion “reflecting higher net writeoffs and a net reserve build of 320 million” campbell said that writeoff trends remain very strong relative to prepandemic levels the company reiterated its fullyear outlook for 15 to 17 revenue growth and 11 to 1140 in earnings per share and campbell told marketwatch that amex’s management expects earnings to sequentially strengthen in moving through the year campbell said that amex is watching growth in goods and services spending which slowed a bit in the us as the quarter went on but “overall our customers continue to show resiliency in the face of the clearly slowergrowth highinflation environment that we’re in” squeri noted in the earnings release that american express is “confident in our ability to achieve our longerterm growthplan aspirations”