“We continue to see operating expenses as a key source of leverage. And moving forward expect to have far less growth in OpEx relative to our high level of revenue growth.”

In context

“ine, we invested $1.3 billion in the quarter on track with our expectation to have marketing spend that is fairly flat to our full year 2022 expense, $5.5 billion. We remain focused on driving efficiencies so that our marketing dollars grow far slower than revenues as we did for many years prior to the pandemic. Moving to the bottom of Slide 17 brings us to operating expenses, which were $3.6 billion in the first quarter. There is usually some quarterly volatility in this number and this quarter, for example, we saw a $95 million impact from net mark-to-market losses on our Amex Ventures investment portfolio. But you can see based off our first quarter results that similar to marketing, we are tracking with our expectation for operating expenses to be around $14 billion for the full year. We continue to see operating expenses as a key source of leverage. And moving forward expect to have far less growth in OpEx relative to our high level of revenue growth. Turning next to capital on Slide 18, we ended the first quarter with our CET1 ratio at 10.6% with our target range of 10% to 11%. I would note that AOCI already flows through our regulatory capital today. So any unrealized gains or losses on our investment portfolio are fully reflected in the 10.6% that I just quoted. I would also point out that we hold only $4 billion of investment securities, most of which are short-dated U.S. treasuries. In the first quarter, we returned $600 million of capital to our shareholders. With our strong capital position, we have both the capacity and the intent to continue to return to shareholders the excess capital we regenerate, while supporting our balance sheet growth. I'd also note that our liquidity position remains extremely strong as we ended the qu”