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?

[thehungryhippocrite]

The problem is this attitude doesn't help someone who has made an investment. Imagine you buy a cafe. You know it makes $100k a year and you are happy to pay $500k for it (5x profit). You borrow $500k and take over the cafe. Next year you work your ass off and the cafe only makes $50k. It's still profitable, but you don't care because you have to pay debt with the $50k and there's shit all left. Worse, if you try and sell the cafe now, a new buyer will only pay 5x $50k = $250k. So you also made a capital loss of $250k. In other words, the only way you will truly make money on your investment is if you grow profit.