American Express earnings shock: growth slips to 7.8%!

A record quarter that is growing a little slower

American Express set its highest quarterly revenue in the three years of data here in 2026Q3. Revenue is what the company keeps after it pays the interest that funds its card balances. It was up just 0.2% from the quarter before, so the record arrived by a hair.

Here is the part the headline misses. Revenue grew 7.8% from a year earlier in 2026Q3. That is down from 8.6% in 2026Q2, and the growth line has eased since its peak in 2025Q4. Over the past three years revenue grew 6.2% a year on average, so the pace is still above that longer run rate, just no longer speeding up. The figures here run through 2026Q3, the last quarter in this data.

Which line of the business did the work? The segment split and the expense breakdown behind it are not available here. That leaves the pace of the top line, and nothing more than that. On this evidence, the top line is the whole story.

The shares did not join the party that day

Before the release, American Express ran 1.7% ahead of a basket of its peers over the days leading into the report. The basket holds 5 peers, including Visa, Mastercard and Bank of America. Then the report landed. On the day of the release its return ran -2.4% behind that basket. Two things happened in the same window, and nothing here says one moved the other.

Fewer trading days have passed since the release than the full window needs, so the after figure covers only the days available. A single day is a thin read on anything.

Priced below one card peer after a weak year

After the move, American Express traded at 17.6x trailing earnings. The median for peers with usable earnings was 22.9x, which puts Amex -23.1% below that median. Only 2 peers had earnings data usable here, because the others were missing a comparable quarterly figure, so treat the median as a rough marker rather than a verdict.

A full year tells a different story from one quarter. The same amount put into the stock a year ago is now down -10.8% through 2026-10-23, while the same amount in the market is up 14.4%. My reading: growth held up while the share price lagged, and that combination is what a lower multiple looks like.