[danieljacksonno]

Punishes? Apple is the most highly valued company of all.

[acdha]

They’re also an outlier and a lot of what they do would be judged more harshly by analysts and activist shareholders if they weren’t so profitable. The question should be how we get more companies like Apple.

[andsoitis]

I wouldn’t want to invest my money, my retirement funds in companies that don’t strive to be highly profitable. Do you?

[ethanbond]

Right, and they are absolutely an exception.

The general expectation for any company is to milk the daylights out of every quarter they can. Either put your money back into growth or hand it back to investors - cash reserves bad even though they obviously allow you to weather things (like we’re discussing here).