NEW YORK, April 23, 2009 (AFP) - US finance firm American Express said Thursday it would make further cost-cutting moves following a sharp drop in quarterly earnings.

"We continue to be very cautious about the economic outlook and plan to initiate additional reengineering efforts in the second quarter to help further reduce our operating costs," said Kenneth Chenault, chairman and chief
executive.

"Our goal is to remain in a position to generate profits in excess of our dividend and be able to take competitive advantage of opportunities as the economy begins to rebound."

Amex said net profit in the first quarter fell 56 percent from a year ago to 443 million dollars ($668.35m), or 31 cents per share, amid rising write-offs of credit card debt. After dividends and other adjustments, the profit for shareholders was 361 million dollars.

Despite the drop in earnings, the results were well above the profit of 12 cents per share expected by Wall Street analysts.

Revenues fell 18 percent to 5.9 billion dollars in the quarter.

"We made very good progress this quarter on each of our key priorities - to stay liquid, to stay profitable, and to selectively invest for growth," said Chenault.

"At a time when some parts of the card industry were incurring substantial losses, we remained solidly profitable thanks, in part, to our flexibility in adapting to a very difficult economic environment and the diversity of our
business model."

Chenault said that despite some some recent improvement in delinquency rates, he expects rising write-off rates.

Provisions for losses totaled 1.4 billion dollars, an increase of 57 percent from a year ago.