Credit card company American Express said Tuesday that its fourth-quarter profits rose 20 percent from a year earlier, as eager consumers spent record levels of money during the holiday season on the company’s namesake cards. AmEx posted a profit of $1.72 billion, or $2.18 a share, up from $1.44 billion, or $1.76 a share, a year earlier. The results were far better than what analysts were looking for, who on average forecast earnings per share of $1.86. The jump in AmEx’s earnings came entirely from record cardmember spending in the last three months of the year. AmEx customers spent $368.1 billion on their cards in the quarter, compared with $285.9 billion spent on cards in 2020. That comes to roughly $6,351 per cardmember in the quarter, compared with $4,983 in spending a year earlier. AmEx was hit particularly hard in the pandemic when its customers were unable to spend on …