“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.”

In context

“e 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 of last year, including in the OpEx line. I would point out that, what I said earlier that, inflation is having some modest positive impact on volumes, it is also putting some pressure on our operating expenses, but we'll have to wait to see how material any impact might be for the full year. In any event, I still expect to have far less growth in OpEx compared to revenues and see these costs as a key source of leverage. Turning next to capital, on slide 20, we returned $1.9 billion of capital to our shareholders in the first quarter, including common stock repur”