“On the marketing line, we invested $1.2 billion in the first quarter, on track with our expectation to spend around $5 billion in 2022.”

In context

“n slide 18, we're tracking well against our expectations. And looking forward, we still expect to see revenue growth of 18% to 20% for the full year of 2022. So all of the revenue momentum, we just discussed, was driven by the investments we've been making in marketing, value propositions, coverage, technology and talent. And those investments show up across the expense lines you see on slide 19. Starting with variable customer engagement expenses, the strong spending growth and customer engagement that Steve discussed earlier is driving the growth in these expenses lines. In total, these costs came in at 41% of total revenues for the first quarter and are tracking in line with our expectations for variable customer engagement costs to right around 42% of total revenues for the full year. On the marketing line, we invested $1.2 billion in the first quarter, on track with our expectation to spend around $5 billion in 2022. We feel really good about the strong momentum of our new card acquisitions, as I talked about earlier. And more importantly, about the revenues from those acquisitions, which is trending significantly higher than what we saw pre-pandemic. We continue to see great demand for our products across a wide range of attractive investment opportunities, even beyond those we are currently funding. Moving to the bottom of slide 19. Operating expenses were $3.1 billion in the first quarter, tracking with our expectation to spend a bit over to $12 billion for the full year. While OpEx was up 26% year-over-year this quarter, it is important to note that we were growing over a benefit of $384 million in net mark-to-market gains in our Amex Ventures strategic investment portfolio from the first quarter”