Jul 31, 2026 · 20 min · 13 segments
Capital One recently shared their Q2 earnings. Their marketing spend was $1.7B, up 23% year over year. Today, we dive into how Capital One used that budget and the implications for marketers in…
Nick, before we get to the details here, this result on their marketing budget growth didn't come out of nowhere.
A quick recap of Capital One's year, and I'm leaning a lot on B of A Global Research.
Back in January, Capital One announced it was acquiring Brex, the corporate spend platform, for about $5 billion.
And they added lost reserves when the street expected a release, partly because they were weighing down downside economic scenarios, you know, a little more heavily.
And so the May and June operating update showed charge-off and delinquencies beating typical seasonality.
So coming into July, you had a company that had been cautious on paper while its actual credit performance kept getting better.
So adjusted earnings was roughly 20 to 25% higher than what B of A and consensus were estimating.
So net income came in at $3 billion, and then most of the coverage stopped at that headline.
We read the press release, the call, the 10Q, the research reports, and we pulled out five things that marketers should actually care about.
Nick, before we get to the details here, this result on their marketing budget growth didn't come out of nowhere.
A quick recap of Capital One's year, and I'm leaning a lot on B of A Global Research.
Back in January, Capital One announced it was acquiring Brex, the corporate spend platform, for about $5 billion.
And they added lost reserves when the street expected a release, partly because they were weighing down downside economic scenarios, you know, a little more heavily.
And so the May and June operating update showed charge-off and delinquencies beating typical seasonality.
So coming into July, you had a company that had been cautious on paper while its actual credit performance kept getting better.
So adjusted earnings was roughly 20 to 25% higher than what B of A and consensus were estimating.
So net income came in at $3 billion, and then most of the coverage stopped at that headline.
We read the press release, the call, the 10Q, the research reports, and we pulled out five things that marketers should actually care about.
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