...NEW YORK (S&P Global Ratings) Oct. 26, 2018--S&P Global Ratings today said that Amazon.com Inc.'s (##-/Stable/A-1+) North American segment posted sustained and decent profitability in the third quarter of 2018 as evidenced by its 5.9% operating margin and segment operating profit of $2 billion. Amazon's North American segment is primarily retail sales and we believe that the margin improvement in this segment is due--in part--to an expanding third-party sales base and slower growth in shipping costs. The company's good-margined third-party seller services revenue is now about 36% of the size of its total online store sales revenue (North America and International). We expect that the growth of Amazon's third-party sales will continue to outpace the growth of its online store segment, which should support its retail margins. The company's shipping costs only increased by 22% year-over-year during the quarter, which is the slowest growth the company has reported in the last nine years and...
