Half-kidding, but where is "growth" in your calculations? A big reason why companies discount their "fixed costs" (e.g. full-time employees' salaries, rent, etc) is because if they can get a marginal profit on their goods, then it's a matter of "making it up in volume". A company can still be losing a tremendous amount of money but have a bright future (I think this is what Amazon did for years): if you're making $0.50 per item, but have $1b of overhead costs, it very well might be possible to get to a profit, it just means you have to move a LOT of items.