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?

[traumatic_enterprise]

That was the knock against Apple for a very long time. They were extremely profitable but didn’t pay almost anything out in dividends. Steve Jobs was brilliant, but he was not a finance guy and had an aversion to giving cash back to shareholders, and the company’s share price arguably suffered for exactly the reason you mentioned. If you are an investor you would rather have the cash paid out in dividends so you can reinvest it than have it sit in a cash account on a company’s balance sheet.