Walking Through Amex’s Buffett-Like Chairman’s Letter to Shareholders

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Each year when Warren Buffett would pen his annual shareholder letter, investors, including ourselves, would pore over the missive looking for fresh insights from Uncle Warren on the market, the economy, and Berkshire Halthaway's (BRK.B) portfolio. Over the years, others have adopted this format, with some, such as Netflix (NFLX) or Axon (AXON) , delivering their quarterly results this way, often including far more color than the typical earnings press release.

Today, American Express (AXP) Chairman and CEO Stephen Squeri published his 2026 Chairman’s Letter to Shareholders, a group that includes us, so we thought we would share what caught our eye. On Monday, we picked up more AXP shares for the Pro Portfolio at $303.03. After reading Squeri’s letter, which touched on several aspects of our investment thesis plus offered several examples of how Amex is leveraging AI, we have no reservations whatsoever about that trade. Helping with that decision, Amex will pay its next quarterly dividend of $0.95 per share, 16% higher than its prior quarterly dividend, on May 8 to shareholders of record as of April 3.

Now let’s get to that shareholder letter…

"Our business is driven by the value we create through our differentiated Membership Model, with a wide range of benefits, services, and experiences we strategically invest in to enrich the value we offer our Card Members and merchants."

When we first added AXP to the Portfolio, we focused on the differentiated membership business model, calling out how ~70% of Amex’s pre-tax income is driven by net card fees.

"… net card fee revenues grew double digits for the 30th consecutive quarter to reach a record $10 billion for the year… Demand for our premium Card products remained strong globally as we added 12.5 million new proprietary cards, with over 70 percent of new accounts acquired on fee-paying products. Millennial and Gen Z consumers remained our fastest growing cohort, representing approximately 65 percent of new consumer account acquisitions globally, and are now contributing the largest share of consumer spending in the U.S. Our premium value propositions resonate particularly well with younger consumers, with approximately 75 percent of new U.S. Consumer Gold and Platinum account acquisitions coming from Millennial and Gen Z customers. In fact, the average age of new customers we acquired on the U.S. Consumer Platinum Card® and Gold Card in 2025 was 33 and 29, respectively."

We see that trend continuing as Amex’s largest product refresh for the American Express Platinum card continues. As we’ve mentioned before, while the annual cost for that membership has risen to $895, there are numerous perks and savings that combined, more than offset that fee — from Uber (UBER) , Walmart+ (WMT) , Lululemon (LULU) , streaming, hotel, and dining credits.

"In 2025, we renewed and expanded our relationships with key international cobrand partners, including British Airways, ANA, and Air France-KLM, and we introduced new partnerships with fintechs like Coinbase, which launched its first credit card, the Coinbase One Card, on the American Express network."

While the focus on Amex is the Platinum Card refresh, we have to remember the company has other card partners that help contribute to its net card revenue stream and transaction volumes. We see these as nice products, but also ones that can serve as feeders for Amex’s proprietary consumer and business cards and other services.

"In April, we will publish the American Express Agentic Commerce Experiences (ACE) developer kit, which is designed to enable select partners to seamlessly integrate our payment capabilities into their agentic experiences. By making it easy for partners to embed our capabilities, our aim is to play a central role in delivering agentic transactions with the trust, security, and differentiated value our customers expect from American Express."

"… we plan to enable select AI platforms to surface and activate several of our differentiated assets, including Resy’s restaurant inventory search and booking, search and enrollment in Amex Offers®, and hotel search, benefits, and booking capabilities through American Express Travel."

We see these efforts to expand the reach of Amex’s programs helping foster transaction volumes, but also identify new card prospects for the company, serving as a funnel for its higher-tier card offerings.

The letter also discussed a few ways in which Amex is leveraging AI internally to drive its own efficiencies and productivity, which in turn should help lift margins.

"Our travel counselors across 19 countries are using AI tools to deliver faster, high-quality travel recommendations and insights, and our Card servicing teams use an AI-powered chatbot to resolve customer inquiries with more speed and greater accuracy."

"We are using AI agents and other AI tools to streamline campaign creation, enhance content development, and increase personalization. We are also implementing AI-enabled workflows that reduce compliance review cycle times, enabling faster speed to market while preserving strong controls."

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At the time of publication, TheStreet Pro Portfolio was long AXON, AXP, and NFLX shares.