Amex sees shrinking credit losses

Article Excerpt

AMERICAN EXPRESS CO. $35 (New York symbol AXP; Conservative Growth Portfolio, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 1.2 billion; Market cap: $42.0 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 1.6; WSSF Rating: Average) earned $0.44 a share in the three months ended September 30, 2009. That’s down 40.5% from $0.74 a year earlier. The latest earnings excluded a $0.10-a-share gain related to the restatement of earnings in prior year. This was done to correct errors in the way the company converted foreign subsidiaries’ earnings into U.S. dollars. Revenue fell 16.0%, to $6.0 billion from $7.2 billion. The company wrote off 8.6% of its credit- and charge-card loans, up from 5.7% a year earlier. However, that’s an improvement over 9.7% in the previous quarter. Accounts that are more than 30 days past due also fell from the previous quarter. Moreover, average spending per cardholder rose 6.9% from the previous quarter. American Express is a buy. buy…