With a commanding grip on market share and an established, thriving online marketplace, North America’s largest e-retailer may as well be printing money.
In the fourth quarter of 2015, Amazon.com Inc. posted a profit of $482 million, more than double its previous highest-earning quarter. In the two quarters since, profits continued to rise, to $513 million in the first quarter and $857 million in the second quarter. In the first six months of 2016, the company’s combined profit was $1.37 billion—no other half in Amazon’s history is in the same universe.
