AmEx Renews Credit-Card Partnership With Delta Through 2029

(Bloomberg) -- American Express Co. renewed its 23-year partnership with Delta Air Lines Inc. for an additional 11 years, a big win for the credit-card issuer that counts the airline as its largest co-brand partner.

• The Delta portfolio represents 8 percent of spending on AmEx’s cards and more than 20 percent of its loans, AmEx said in March. As part of the agreement, Delta will continue to allow AmEx’s membership rewards to transfer into its SkyMiles loyalty program, the two companies said in a joint statement Tuesday.

Key Insights

• Delta and AmEx have been expanding their co-brand cards, rolling out a no-fee card in 2017 to lure millennials. That helped the two companies add 1 million new card members last year as spending on the firms’ cards grew by “double digits,” according to the statement.
• AmEx has become an important partner for Delta in recent years, with the partnership contributing $3.4 billion in revenue for the airline in 2018. With the latest renewal, the airline said it now expects the AmEx partnership to contribute nearly $7 billion to revenue by 2023.

Market Reaction

• Delta climbed 3.9 percent to $54.22 at 9:49 a.m. after announcing the deal with AmEx and after reporting preliminary first-quarter adjusted profit of 85 cents to 95 cents a share. That topped analysts’ estimates of 80 cents. Shares of American Express slipped less than one percent to $111.05.

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• AmEx said it still expects adjusted profit of $7.85 to $8.35 a share for 2019. The firm also still expects revenue growth of 8 percent to 10 percent for the year.
• Read the statement here.

To contact the reporters on this story: Jenny Surane in New York at jsurane4@bloomberg.net;Mary Schlangenstein in Dallas at maryc.s@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Michael J. Moore at mmoore55@bloomberg.net, Steve Dickson, Daniel Taub

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