It's pretty difficult to go bankrupt turning a profit.

Making a thin 3% profit that can go negative when the wind blows

Making crazy changes like squeezing out every last dollar out of your existing, loyal customers (looking at any PE firm ever) certainly affects the wind I'd wager.

Absolutely, and plenty of companies have made that mistake.

But the point is locking up money in a 3% margin business doesn’t impress investors.

So you either need to improve the margin with lower costs or higher price (or both). Or bail from the market entirely and put your money in something that makes more money.

What makes more money? The investment is all in AI because TINA - There Is No Alternative. There's too much money in the system to cover all reasonable investments, so it fills up all reasonable investments and many unreasonable ones too.

While AI may seem like it’s sucking up all investment, the retail trade industry was 2x the entire IT industry investment according to the BEA

Yes, but making just 3% could mean tomorrow you’re in the red.