Whatever financial flexibility credit cards offer to customers, investors are unwilling to extend the same trust to the companies issuing them.
Across the four biggest standalone credit card issuers in the US — American Express, Capital One Financial, Discover Financial Services and Synchrony Financial — shoppers made $579bn in purchases on their cards during the first quarter, an 11 per cent jump year on year.
That has done little to lift their shares off the discount rail though. All have fallen between a fifth and a tenth since February. On a price to forward earnings basis, all four stocks trade below their three-, five- and 10-year averages.