Profits are a measure of the sustainability of patterns of specialization. When a business that participates in a pattern of specialization earns a profit, the value of its output is greater than the cost of its inputs. That outcome indicates that the business is making a positive contribution to consumer well-being.
-Prof. Arnold Kling ( Specialization and Trade: A Re-introduction to Economics)
In other words, a business is successful at serving others. Progressives hate that truth of voluntary exhange(s) as it shows that top-down command-and-control economic systems are not required (and thus, less open to control by rent-seeking politicians).
(H/T: Cafe Hayek)
