Techquity
Technology Investor, Fundamental Research
American Express is an incredible business with a strong premium brand, very resilient customers and a model that is hard to copy, strong enough to consider swapping it in for Visa or Mastercard. Demand for Platinum and Gold cards is very strong among people under 35 who love the rewards, bringing in wealthy young customers who can drive growth for a long time. Amex also has room to expand through new partnerships that make its cards accepted everywhere. x.comÂ
American Express's credit risk keeps its multiple below Visa's or Mastercard's, but that persistently low valuation lets management retire shares steadily. At 16x forward earnings it is not especially cheap by its own history; 28% of shares were retired over ten years. Buying here looks more like owning a steady cash-returning compounder than expecting extraordinary returns. x.comÂ
American Express's solid earnings growth makes it worth continuing to buy and hold for years. Q3 revenue rose 9%, net income 28% and adjusted EPS 13%; American Express also raised its full-year EPS guidance. x.comÂ
American Express's continued growth makes its lower forward multiple than Mastercard and Visa a very attractive long-term opportunity. It trades at 16.7x forward earnings against more than 26x for each peer. All three sold off earlier this year, but Mastercard and Visa reached new highs while American Express remains down 15.6% year to date. x.comÂ
Airbnb's turn to American Express suggests it is about to abuse shareholders. American Express is the new Costco, where dying brands go to rot. x.com x.comÂ
American Express ranks top among card companies because it focuses on wealthy clients, which brings higher margins, unlike the extremely low-margin businesses that rely on heavy transaction volume. x.comÂ
Mastercard may be the only scaled, capital-light network benefiting from AI, with bloated technical debt uniquely addressable by coding tools. Nominal inflation-linked recurring revenues and hardware attach add to the case at low-teens free-cash-flow yields. While payments getting bid in a red market probably signals the rally is over, these traits could mean it is not. x.comÂ
American Express looks set for a laggard catch-up trade: it sits near a bear market while Mastercard and Visa are at all-time highs, despite historically tracking them on weekly and especially monthly bases. It is Berkshire Hathaway's second-biggest holding after Apple. The setup resembles Ferrari, a high-end consumer name that stalled and then turned around out of nowhere. x.comÂ
American Express is the kind of company every investor wants, with dividends per share rising as its share count shrinks. A list of high-quality compounders puts it at 18x earnings with a 3.8% shareholder yield, buying back about 2.5% of its shares a year. x.comÂ
Credit-card stocks American Express, Visa and Mastercard are among the best values in the current market. American Express's latest earnings look pretty good, and the charts show plenty of upside potential. x.comÂ
Visa's roughly 30x earnings multiple and $750 billion valuation leave less upside than other opportunities, even if it keeps executing; the best case may be another doubling over a few years. Its once-impenetrable moat may look different in five years, while its reputation as a safe compounder is already priced in. This is a relative judgment, not a prediction that Visa cannot keep rising. x.com x.com x.com x.com x.comÂ
