“Looking forward, I expect variable customer engagement expenses as a ratio of revenues to be in-line with this level for the balance of the year.”

In context

“ving on to Slide 14, net interest income was up 20% year-over-year. This growth is driven by the increase in our revolving loan balances, which also contributes to the continued net yield expansion versus the prior year. As we've shared before, we continue to expect this growth to further moderate as we progress through the year. To sum up, revenues on Slide 15, the power of our diversified model continues to drive strong revenue momentum even in a slower growth environment, as our results in this quarter were fueled by growth in all our major revenue lines across each of our different business segments and across geographies. Moving to expenses on Slide 16, starting at the top of the page, variable customer engagement expenses came in at 42% of the total revenues for the second quarters. Looking forward, I expect variable customer engagement expenses as a ratio of revenues to be in-line with this level for the balance of the year. On the marketing line, we continue to invest at an elevated level at $1.5 billion in the second quarter. Given the strong performance in the core business, we now anticipate our full year marketing spend to be around $6 billion or 15% higher versus last year as we plan to invest at high levels to sustain our growth momentum. To put this in perspective, this is an incremental $800 million above what we spent in 2023. At the same time, we intend to deploy those investments in a disciplined way. As I discussed at Investor Day, our investment optimization engine is engineered to make profitability based decisions at the margin and there is a high bar for returns on these substantial incremental investments. Moving to the bottom of Slide 16, brings us to operating expenses. Operating expenses”