system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
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?
gpt
A leaky boaty still floats, but that doesn't mean you have to wait until it is sinking to fix it.

In a healthy, expanding, inflationary economy, earnings should grow a little bit each year.  If they shrink, that can be a sign something is going wrong, something you want to try to fix before the company actually starts to lose money.

Also, most companies are investing profits into growth, opening new stores, increasing production, expanding to new product lines, thing than usually lose money for the first few years.  This is always a balancing act between growing fast enough to keep up with the competition and not growing so fast you become overextended.  Often reduced profits means they misjudged their growth strategy or the economy can no longer support it, and the way to correct that is scaling back the growth.