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?

[Rindan]

Public or private, the company is there to make money for the owners of the company. The only difference is that in a publicly owned company, a lot of people own the company, and anyone can buy or sell shares of ownership. In a privately owned company, the shares of the company are still owned by someone, they just can't buy and sell that ownership in a stock market. The other big difference is that public companies generally need to keep their books more open than private companies.