Except accounting-wise, and tax-wise, that is what profit means. Retaining a surplus into future periods is generally going to be a taxable event.

I suppose you could create a reserve against projected liabilities such as warranty returns (which is commonly done in for-profit companies). But that is pretty well explicitly not for a rainy day or the unexpected; it’s for the rather firmly expected.

The simplest definition of profit seems to imply that someone paid more for something than was put into it. How does one get savings with no profit?

edit: I'm trying to ask a question; and I should add, it is my understanding that's how profit is defined. Why would this be downvoted? Do I really have to paste a definition of profit in here?

Probably meant: business should make profit, from that profit the business can save some money for the rainy day. And I agree.

However I don't know who are behind PINE64 - maybe they have some long-term investor backing them up, and they try price at this point as low as possible to get the community going.

Actually, I would be interested in investing to this pine thing.