According to a data by S&P Capital IQ, American Express (NYSE:AXP) delivered disappointing earnings results in the 4^th quarter due to which the company’s shares declined 13% in January 2015. The credit and charge company reported revenue of $9.11 billion for the quarter. The quarterly revenue is 7% more than that of the previous year’s revenue during the same time.

The company’s total income increased 11% to $1.4 billion. The company’s adjusted profit per share saw a huge increase of 15% to $1.39 in 2013’ fourth quarter. All in all, the company’s results met the expectations of Wall Street. However, there are some other facets of AmEx’s report that the investors are concerned about.

One of the major concerns of the investors is the increase in the company’s expenses which include the U.S card services aspect. The expenses at the card services aspect of the company rose 11% to $3.1 billion. Total expenses in the international market increased 4%, and when adjusted for the purpose of foreign currency translation, the expenses showed an increase of 10%.

Moreover, American Express (NYSE:AXP) revealed its plan to cut down approximately 4,000 jobs in the year 2015. The reason behind this decision is the rapidly growing expenses of the company which is taking a toll on the company’s wallet. The company has seen a rough beginning in 2015 as far as its financial sector is concerned, and the rise in the expenses and a slower credit growth obviously became a source of displeasure for the investors of AmEx.

However, all has not yet been lost and American Express (NYSE:AXP) has the potential of getting out of the financial pitfall that the company is currently in. The company can act as a lender as well as a payment processor on its credit side, and in this way it can gather interest fees from both its card holders as well as merchants. When the economic environment is strong American Express (NYSE:AXM) has the ability of giving superior growth to its partners.

The 5% growth in the 3 quarter does qualify as a string financial scenario for the company. However, things depend on the currency in Europe as well as U.S. The currency exchange translation, although does not directly have an involvement in the business model of AmEx, it still has a negative impact on the company’s top and bottom lines.

Furthermore, the continuing debts that the company is facing in Europe can also pose problems in the way of the international growth of American Express (NYSE:AXM). The approximately 12 times higher earnings that American Express (NYSE:AXP) managed is something to be appreciated. The management of the company has an aim of gaining a growth rate of 8% which is also impressive and the determination of the company is very intriguing.

Although American Express (NYSE:AXM) will have to face its share of hurdles along the way and the road to betterment will not be smooth, however the chances for the company’s growth seem to be higher than its downfall.

There could be several factors, affecting the 3^rd quarter earnings of the company. If we study AmEx (NYSE:AXP)’s stock, we will see that the company has a core customer section in which a yearly earning of higher spending household is at least $95,000 – $100,000. The average card member, spending in the last quarter saw a year-over-year increase of 9%. In September the spending, buying inclinations of clients and the stability in their incomes reached a new high which resulted in better economy and more substantial consumer sentiment. Therefore the household income and the purchases these people make on their cards are the key factors that affect the overall earnings of the company.

There has been improvement in the factors that affect the growth of credit card companies and AmEx (NYSE:AXP) should also be able to grow and move forward due to these enhancements. In August, the second quarter consumer credit in the U.S rose to $880 billion from $875 billion. During the 3^rd quarter AmEx (NYSE:AXP) expects 4 – 5% increase in loans. AmEx (NYSE:AXP) has been successful in generating low default rates at 1% which is less than the U.S credit card industry average of 2.25%.

AmEx (NYSE:AXP) plans to take its business further through a 3^rd party, by expanding it outside of U.S. The company hopes to find international clients, and therefore AmEx (NYSE:AXP) is looking to become partners with financial services institutes through Global Network and Merchant services. These alliances then provide the clients with AmEx (NYSE:AXP) branded GNS issued cards and play the role of banks for merchants. The company had almost 42million cards by the end of the second quarter. Outside U.S, AmEx (NYSE:AXP) managed to issue about 15 million cards to consumers. The expansion of business outside U.S will definitely help AmEx (NYSE:AXP) grow as a company and will open up new doors for it.

In the second quarter, the two countries that proved to be the main catalyst in the growth of AmEx (NYSE:AXP) were China and Japan. The two countries generated 10% growth in card billed business and 8% increase in cards. FX to some extent balanced the growth and is expected to influence the progress in the 3^rd quarter, especially because of the strong U.S dollar against the Japanese yen.

These key features are certain to make an impact on the performance, revenues and the future stature of American Express (NYSE:AXP).

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) was able to launch its iPhones last week even with all the ups and downs of criticism the company had to face the previous weeks, both its iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are larger in size with a thinner width of 7mm.

As Tim Cook predicted, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) will and all its current phone offerings cost more than $300 and people are no longer switching to the larger iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. The new growth wave is coming from the cheaper phone pfferings available in the market. With all these upgrades analysts predict that Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) may go head to head with Samsung (KRX:005930) this Christmas regarding sales leadership of its smartphones and come out the winner.

Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) smartwatch has been pricier than what others are offering in the same category but with its differentiating factor targeting the rich, its bound to make a lot of profits. The same thing happened with the iPad somewhere around 2010 thus making a category for itself in a market where nothing existed like its sort before.

Google’s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) mobile payments have been in the market for several years with Google Wallet however, it hasn’t gained much attention in the past. But the security breaches at various retailers like Target (NYSE:TGT) and Home Depot (NYSE:HD) caused the US retailers and banks to adopt a different measure of dealing with credit cards and introduced a chip and pin system for payment functionality. POS terminals will have to be adopted in order to fix the security concerns.

Now iPhone 6 is being promoted with this added feature already with Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) negotiating with MasterCard (NYSE:MA), Amex (NYSE:AXP) and Visa (NYSE:V) regarding lower fee payments on every iPhone transaction. The payments will generate a one-time only temp code validated by a fingerprint reader and this won’t give much leverage to hackers.

One perk of an iPhone is the enhanced privacy measures as the company will not record any data on these transactions, including amounts and names of who they bought from etc. This is an excellent little perk where the environment is full of surveillance and keeping track of the customer movements, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) will be giving the user full privacy.

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) is in the market to stay with its constant improvements and extensive ecosystem of various app makers. They create Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) applications first and Android afterwards, even though Android users are much more where numbers are concerned. This is only because of customer loyalty which Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) users profess, even though the numbers have been decreasing slightly.

Hence Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) gets a bigger chunk of market share over Android through a premium as it simply rejects selling to the cheaper market.