American Express is eliminating about 5 percent of the positions in its workforce in a global restructuring funded in part by the sale of its stake in American Express Global Business Travel, company executives said during an earnings call on Friday.
Amex chairman and CEO Stephen Squeri in the call said the cuts are an effort to make the company "a more agile and efficient organization." In the third quarter, American Express took a $336 million restructuring charge, which he said is part of the investment from the sale of its stake in Amex GBT. The sale was part of Amex GBT's sale to Long Lake Management, which was completed late last month.
"Earlier this year, I asked the senior leadership team to identify ways to streamline their organizations, align their teams on the most critical deliverables and reduce layers to speed decision-making," Squeri said. "When completed, we believe this exercise will help us operate and execute more effectively and give us greater capacity to invest in our business priorities."
Bloomberg reported the cuts translate to about 3,500 positions eliminated.
Customer spending on the Amex network during the quarter, meanwhile, "looked very similar to what we've seen over the past year, [with] strong and consistent spend growth, especially in the T&E categories," Amex CFO Christophe Le Caillec said.
Among U.S. commercial customers, T&E spending increased 7 percent year over year, as spending on goods and services increased 2 percent year over year, for a combined increase of 3 percent year over year. While that is lower than the 5 percent year-over-year overall spending increase by U.S. commercial customers in the second quarter, Le Caillec said that stemmed in part from Amex's exit from its partnership with Amazon for its co-branded small business portfolio, which during the quarter moved to being issued by U.S. Bank on the Mastercard platform.
Amex has significantly been expanding its own commercial offerings this year, including the Graphite card for small and midsized businesses launched earlier this year.
Excluding the customers on those exited small-business cobrand portfolios, the total Q3 spending increase by U.S. commercial customers was 5 percent year over year, as it was in the second quarter, according to Amex. Not adjusted for those customers, spending by U.S. small and midsized and by U.S. large and global clients, inclusive of T&E and goods and services, each increased 3 percent year over year in the third quarter.
Among international customers, inclusive of both consumer and commercial customers, spending on both goods and services and T&E was up 11 percent year over year in the third quarter, adjusted for foreign currency effects. Inclusive of both T&E and goods and services spending, international SME and large corporation spending also was up 11 percent year over year for the quarter.
Squeri noted that it marked 22 straight quarters of double-digit percentage growth rate in Amex's international business.
Amex reported that across all T&E spending during the quarter, spending on airlines was up 13 percent year over year, and lodging spending increased 6 percent year over year. Spending on restaurants during the third quarter was up 9 percent year over year.
During the earnings call, Squeri spoke at length about Amex's AI strategy, including in making its value propositions more personalized and differentiated, engaging with customers, moving toward secure agentic payments and in its servicing. In late September, Amex launched a new corporate card product that includes expense management software, built from its acquisition of Center, and it is readying AI agents for expense management as part of that offering.
Squeri said that will help Amex's growth with midmarket customers, where "we have not grown the way we want to grow," particularly as it sees increased competition from such fintech providers as Brex and Ramp.
"What they unlocked in this segment was the automation and the expense management piece of this and then obviously, the introduction of agents within," he said. "So, what you'll see from us as we move forward, you will see the introduction into this platform of more agents that will help middle and larger businesses do their work, and you will see us make all of these products and services available to the back book."
Amex reported net income of $3.7 billion for the third quarter, up 28 percent year over year from the $2.9 billion reported in the third quarter of 2025.
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