I expect a company to turn and stay profitable, by doing their core business, prioritizing product quality, customer service and sustainable development. Not to end up as an over leveraged financial construct riding on extracting more and more of their customers. Optimize the business quality not the shareholders returns.

Would you (or do you) invest in that company over a different one whose share prices appreciate by a greater amount?

Would you accept less compensation if your employer cannot keep up with competitors?

This is a strange argument. A profitable company that isn't growing (selling more stuff, hiring more people, etc) can have a stable (low) P/E and still pay a nice dividend.

The point is that when you go to invest your money for your retirement, you are going to pick whichever business’s shares give you the highest ROI.

You, as a shareholder, are not optimizing for

> keep your customers happy, get your money, enjoy your life...

So why would you expect businesses to behave in a way other than maximizing ROI?

> So why would you expect businesses to behave in a way other than maximizing ROI?

If I had invested in a company, I would prefer them to maximize my return over a span of decades, not over the next quarter by inevitably undercutting their long-term performance. For some reason, the market currently favors short-term gains in a way that inevitably compromises long-term results.

Because maximizing ROI hurts their business long term? Only CEO's on a short stint of 2-3 years, with compensation based on stock market valuations go for maximizing ROI...

Reducing R&D investment is maximizing ROI in a way...

Plenty of people, myself included, don't pick investments based solely on what has the highest ROI. Some even pick investments based in part on whether or not they agree with the way the company is run.

This is true but all the same is true for privately owned (eg VC backed) companies; maximising return (within whatever risk parameters shareholders are happy to accept) leaves plenty of room for disagreement about what the right way to do that is.

But often a change in ownership can also mean a change in risk tolerance, investment horizon and potentially in management incentives or management team. Some of these changes could align negatively with some customer interests and therefore caution from customers (especially those who worry they might not be seen as future core customers) is understandable when what has changed is unclear.

An excellent teardown of modern capitalism.

I comment on the decisions of the company management/ownership, not on the investment criteria of users of the stock market.

Yubico is free to do what they want with their business model. As an existing Yubico customer, I will be taking my business somewhere else, if they deviate from my priorities. They had a nice thing going on, and I am suggesting they consider their next steps. I know I will now keep them under increased scrutiny.

> I comment on the decisions of the company management/ownership, not on the investment criteria of users of the stock market.

The purpose of my questioning is to shine light on the fact that these two things are related, which answers your original question of

> Why this need to always make more and more money?

I am sure Yubico’s owners and employees also want to maximize their compensation, but the fact that there are many investors in the public market pretty much only looking at ROI is what enables the business model of milking users.

I would stop buying from a company that "decides to go public" (for me, it's just code for "we're now OK with whittling our product's quality to make profits for some people that have found a captive market").

Yes, I tend to do this as well, for the same reason. Also, equivalently, when companies get purchased by public companies, holding companies, investment companies, etc.