American Express Cash Flow From Operations vs. Retained Earnings

Understanding that American Express' value differs from its trading price is crucial, as each reflects different aspects of the company. Evaluating whether American Express represents a sound investment requires analyzing earnings trends, revenue growth, technical signals, industry dynamics, and expert forecasts. Meanwhile, American Express' quoted price indicates the marketplace figure where supply meets demand through bilateral consent.

American Express CDR Retained Earnings vs. Cash Flow From Operations Fundamental Analysis

Comparative valuation techniques use various fundamental indicators to help in determining American Express's current stock value. Our valuation model uses many indicators to compare American Express value to that of its competitors to determine the firm's financial worth.
American Express CDR is number one stock in cash flow from operations category among its peers. It also is number one stock in retained earnings category among its peers reporting about  1.38  of Retained Earnings per Cash Flow From Operations. At this time, American Express' Retained Earnings are very stable compared to the past year. Comparative valuation analysis is a catch-all model that can be used if you cannot value American Express by discounting back its dividends or cash flows. This model doesn't attempt to find an intrinsic value for American Express' Stock. Still, instead, it compares the stock's price multiples to a benchmark or nearest competition to determine if the stock is relatively undervalued or overvalued.

American Retained Earnings vs. Cash Flow From Operations

Operating Cash Flow reveals the quality of a company's reported earnings and is calculated by deducting company's income taxes from earnings before interest, taxes, and depreciation (EBITDA). In other words, Operating Cash Flow refers to the amount of cash a firm generates from the sales or products or from rendering services. Operating Cash Flow typically excludes costs associated with long-term investments or investment in marketable securities and is usually used by investors or analysts to check on the quality of a company's earnings.

American Express

Operating Cash Flow

 = 

EBITDA

-

Taxes

 = 
18.43 B
Operating Cash Flow shows the difference between reported income and actual cash flows of the company. If a firm does not have enough cash or cash equivalents to cover its current liabilities, then both investors and management should be concerned about the company having enough liquid resources to meet current and long term debt obligations.
Retained Earnings is a balance sheet account that refers to the portion of company income that is retained by the firm. In other words, it is a part of earnings that is not paid out as dividends or otherwise distributed to owners. Retained Earnings are calculated by adding net income to last period retained earnings and subtracting any dividends paid to owners.

American Express

Retained Earnings

 = 

Beginning RE + Income

-

Dividends

 = 
25.49 B
Retained Earnings shows how the firm utilizes its profits over time. In simple terms, investors can think of retained earnings as the amount of profit the company has reinvested in the business since its inceptions. However the methodology to make a decision over how much profit to retain is different between companies in different industries. For example, growing industries tend to retain more of their earnings than more matured industries as they need more assets investment to sustain their growth.

American Retained Earnings Comparison

American Express is currently under evaluation in retained earnings category among its peers.

American Express Profitability Projections

The most important aspect of a successful company is its ability to generate a profit. For investors in American Express, profitability is also one of the essential criteria for including it into their portfolios because, without profit, American Express will eventually generate negative long term returns. The profitability progress is the general direction of American Express' change in net profit over the period of time. It can combine multiple indicators of American Express, where stable trends show no significant progress. An accelerating trend is seen as positive, while a decreasing one is unfavorable. A rising trend means that profits are rising, and operational efficiency may be rising as well. A decreasing trend is a sign of poor performance and may indicate upcoming losses.
Last ReportedProjected for Next Year
Operating Income13.8 B12.9 B
Income Before Tax13.8 B12.9 B
Net Income Applicable To Common Shares10.7 B10 B
Net Income10.8 B10.1 B

American Profitability Driver Comparison

Profitability drivers are factors that can directly affect your investment outlook on American Express. Investors often realize that things won't turn out the way they predict. There are maybe way too many unforeseen events and contingencies during the holding period of American Express position where the market behavior may be hard to predict, tax policy changes, gold or oil price hikes, calamities change, and many others. The question is, are you prepared for these unexpected events? Although some of these situations are obviously beyond your control, you can still follow the important profit indicators to know where you should focus on when things like this occur. Below are some of the American Express' important profitability drivers and their relationship over time.

American Express Earnings per Share Projection vs Actual

Use American Express in pair-trading

One of the main advantages of trading using pair correlations is that every trade hedges away some risk. Because there are two separate transactions required, even if American Express position performs unexpectedly, the other equity can make up some of the losses. Pair trading also minimizes risk from directional movements in the market. For example, if an entire industry or sector drops because of unexpected headlines, the short position in American Express will appreciate offsetting losses from the drop in the long position's value.

American Express Pair Trading

American Express CDR Pair Trading Analysis

The ability to find closely correlated positions to American Express could be a great tool in your tax-loss harvesting strategies, allowing investors a quick way to find a similar-enough asset to replace American Express when you sell it. If you don't do this, your portfolio allocation will be skewed against your target asset allocation. So, investors can't just sell and buy back American Express - that would be a violation of the tax code under the "wash sale" rule, and this is why you need to find a similar enough asset and use the proceeds from selling American Express CDR to buy it.
The correlation of American Express is a statistical measure of how it moves in relation to other instruments. This measure is expressed in what is known as the correlation coefficient, which ranges between -1 and +1. A perfect positive correlation (i.e., a correlation coefficient of +1) implies that as American Express moves, either up or down, the other security will move in the same direction. Alternatively, perfect negative correlation means that if American Express CDR moves in either direction, the perfectly negatively correlated security will move in the opposite direction. If the correlation is 0, the equities are not correlated; they are entirely random. A correlation greater than 0.8 is generally described as strong, whereas a correlation less than 0.5 is generally considered weak.
Correlation analysis and pair trading evaluation for American Express can also be used as hedging techniques within a particular sector or industry or even over random equities to generate a better risk-adjusted return on your portfolios.
Pair CorrelationCorrelation Matching

Use Investing Themes to Complement your American Express position

In addition to having American Express in your portfolios, you can quickly add positions using our predefined set of ideas and optimize them against your very unique investing style. A single investing idea is a collection of funds, stocks, ETFs, or cryptocurrencies that are programmatically selected from a pull of investment themes. After you determine your investment opportunity, you can then find an optimal portfolio that will maximize potential returns on the chosen idea or minimize its exposure to market volatility.

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Israel Wall Street
Israel Wall Street Theme
Cross-sector collection of best publicly traded Israel entities that are expected to continue growing. The Israel Wall Street theme has 73 constituents at this time.
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Other Information on Investing in American Stock

To fully project American Express' future profitability, investors should examine all historical financial statements. These statements provide investors with a comprehensive snapshot of the financial position of American Express CDR at a specified time, usually calculated after every quarter, six months, or one year. Three primary documents fall into the category of financial statements. These documents include American Express' income statement, its balance sheet, and the statement of cash flows.
Potential American Express investors and stakeholders can use historical trends found within financial statements to determine how well the company is positioned for the future. Although American Express investors may work on each financial statement separately, they are all related. The changes in American Express's assets and liabilities, for example, are also reflected in the revenues and expenses that we see on American Express's income statement, which results in the company's gains or losses. Cash flows can provide more information regarding cash listed on a balance sheet but not equivalent to net income shown on the income statement. Please read more on our technical analysis and fundamental analysis pages.