Investors are not a single unified hive mind. Some people don't care about long term profitability - they are just in a relatively short-term position and want profits now in the form of dividends and increased price. Some people want the valuation and/or price to go down because they hold short positions. Some people want the company to forego dividends in favor of investment into long-term expansion while other people are hoping for those dividends as part of their retirement income. This is true for institutions too - they have all sorts of reasons to prefer short term gain as much as they want long term gain.