I know companies have to do everything to continually increase profits, but it sounds like they were intent on killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. The journal can't be expensive to run and must bring in vast quantities of cash. They wanted to make further cost cuts, in a way that would cost the journal the credibility it relies on to make any money at all.
Does Elsevier have some four dimensional chess going on, or are they just bad at making money?