The company doesn't have to pay dividends in any particular time period for a share in the ownership of the company to have value. If the company grows in value

The company doesn't have to pay dividends in any particular time period for a share in the ownership of the company to have value. If the company grows in value then you should be able to sell shares for more than you bought them for. It's worth reading Benjamin Graham to get a really good understanding of fundamental valuation, however the short answer is that a company is a stream of (potential) future earnings. That stream is funded by debt and equity. If you price that future earnings stream and discount it back to today, you get a sense for the net present value of the company. If you subtract the debt and the cash on hand what is left is the equity component. Theoretically this should be identical to the market cap of the company but of course there are all sorts of reasons these will diverge (investors will have different risk tolerances and will therefore assign different values to the discount factors etc). From a management perspective, the share price is important for several reasons. Firstly for equity raises etc. Secondly some of the executives personal compensation will be tied to metrics that are in some sense linked to share price. Eg they might have a bonus that is related to return on equity. High ROE will tend to cause the price to rise. Finally if the price multiple trails peers, investors will get antsy and you could have shareholder activism etc.