You are the one conflating dividends and earnings. Even if a company chooses to reinvest retained earnings instead of returning cash to investors [1] it’s good

You are the one conflating dividends and earnings. Even if a company chooses to reinvest retained earnings instead of returning cash to investors [1] it’s good to be profitable. Not just “to prove that you could”, but to avoid being just a money-burning machine (not Amazon’s case, mind you; they do not have “occasional earnings”, they’ve been consistenly profitable for the last 15 years). [1] Either through dividends or through buybacks. The second option has some advantages relative to dividends and results in capital gains for the investors that choose to sell.