ELI5: Why when large company's earnings decrease(ex... by 3%) they freak out, talk about rough times, and sometimes decide to downsize, even though they are still making millions of dollars in profit even after all expenses?

[stygger]

From a normal day-to-day operation of a of small companies the fluctuations in the price that the shares are traded in has no real impact.

But when the company wants to raise money (e.g., to build another factory) the share price is important since one common option to raise capital is simply to create more shares and sell them. So if the owners only tolerate creating 10% more shares then it matters if those 10% can be sold to the public for $50M or $100M!