I’m going to take a closer look at this today but what’s the deal with this stock? I bought this a while back (2011) and sold early. Looks like it’s been in the 90s and down to the 60s. This is a name that is often mentioned by Buffett for durable competitive advantages and moat-effect. I remember reading about Costco disassociating with them this year but other than that, what drivers have forced this stock down?
Looks like they lost their partnership with Fidelity.
On a related topic, if you have a platinum or black card, make sure to hit up the Centurion lounges at certain airports, they are sweet.
Bought a little bit this morning to be more motivated to research ($64.00, if you want to track my success or misery). Will dump if I don’t like it. Off this week, idle hands are the devil’s work shop haha
In the past few months they’ve lost their co-brand card contracts with Costco, Jetblue, and Fidelity. Now with the Starwood/Marriott merger, there is risk to their SPG partnership, since Marriott partners with Chase to issue their co-branded Visa. I don’t have the link handy but shortly after the Costco announcement Amex revealed how many of their cards and spend was on co-branded cards and it was higher than a lot of analysts thought, which I think is a lot of the recent weakness.
On the competitor front, Citi and Chase have really upped their game at the higher end of the market (annual fee ~$100+) which is going after the traditional Amex stronghold.
About the Centurion Lounges, I’m excited for the IAH one to open this year.
“10 percent of the 112 million Amex cards were Costco-branded. Amex shares tumbled 6 percent that day. The magnitude of its Costco business amazed Moshe Orenbuch, an analyst at Credit Suisse who did some math and determined that Amex co-branded cards, which also included Delta, JetBlue, and Starwood Hotels, accounted for 23 percent of $1 trillion in overall card spending last year.”
Now in the interest of full disclosure, I do not own AXP shares. I am simply a customer and have a number of Amex cards including a Platinum card. But over the last 2-3 years, the % of spend that goes on my Amex cards has gone down due to better offers on other cards.