“As I mentioned last quarter, we expect our full year marketing spend for 2024 to be around $6 billion, as we lean into the attractive growth opportunities available to us.”

In context

“ing the MR value proposition to increase the ease of redemption for our card members and also to maintain the economics of the program. In the short-term, those changes drive a very small increase in the ultimate rate of redemption but over time, we are confident in the economics with minimal impact to the VCE ratio. And we continue to invest in our card member benefits to deliver superior experiences for our customers. For example, this year, we've added over [three-entry] (ph) new hotels to the hotel collection program, one of the benefits on the Gold Card, and we see that year-to-date bookings on the program are 6 times higher than five years ago. Marketing expense was $1.5 billion, in-line with our run rate so far this year as we continue to invest at elevated levels versus last year. As I mentioned last quarter, we expect our full year marketing spend for 2024 to be around $6 billion, as we lean into the attractive growth opportunities available to us. Lastly operating expenses of about $3.8 billion were up 5% versus last year. There is some seasonality to operating expense levels, and we expect to see a slight uptick in Q4, consistent with prior year's trend. On a full year basis, we continue to expect operating expenses to remain fairly flat year-over-year, adjusting for the Accertify gain. Taking a step back, total expenses year-to-date are up about 5% relative to 10% growth in FX adjusted revenue. This is a reflection of our ability to invest at elevated levels and drive strong expense leverage. Let me now move to capital on Slide 16. Our CET1 ratio was 10.7%, well within our 10% to 11% range, and we returned $2.4 billion in capital to our shareholders. This is the highest return included -- sorry, this capital return included $1.9”