American Express Co (Amex) plans to avoid job cuts this year as the credit card issuer “rides out the storm” brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, chief executive officer Steve Squeri said in a video message to employees on LinkedIn.
As the virus outbreak hits business volumes, Amex has moved from a largely brick-and-mortar operation to having more than 60,000 employees equipped to work from home and two-thirds of its customer-care professionals working remotely, Squeri said.
Amex said earlier this month that spending volumes fell at the end of February and well into last month as the pandemic wreaks havoc on consumer spending, leading the company to forecast low-single-digit percentage revenue growth for the first quarter.
The virus has upended the retail industry as shoppers stay at home to avoid catching the highly contagious illness and stores remain shut.
Mastercard Inc, Visa Inc and PayPal Holdings Inc have also warned of slowing revenue growth due to the outbreak.
Amex’s volumes last month declined dramatically and continue to decline, Squeri said on Monday.
“The executive committee and I are going through a planning process right now to determine how we can reduce our expenses in the short term as we ride out this storm,” he said.
“As we go through this process, the one thing I intend to avoid is layoffs in 2020,” he said, adding that with everything that everyone and their families are going through due to the crisis, job cuts were not consistent with the company’s values.
Big US banks have also been postponing decisions about staff cuts, with executives saying they are unsure how long the outbreak would hurt the economy.
Amex would also institute a temporary, company-wide external hiring freeze to help cut costs.
Visa on Monday said that its transaction volumes had been hit, leading it to forecast mid-single-digit percentage revenue growth for the second quarter.
The company said transaction volumes fell in the second half of March and there has been a rapid deterioration in cross-border travel-related spending.
Visa, which reported a 4 percent fall last month to date in US payments volume from a year earlier, said that it expects operating expense growth in the high single digits and earnings per share growth in the high end of low single digits.
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