I worked as a contractor for MacMillan (they publish nature) and it's hard to believe how much money they spend for no results. The project I was on had been running for a year when I joined. I noped out after three months and I heard it was shut down a few months after I left with nothing to show.
That was 4-6 people full time and my entire floor of 80 people was full of projects like that - projects you never heard of.
The weird thing is that everyone I worked with directly was very smart, and went on to do cool stuff.
Summary: If I had to guess the remaining profit is wasted on silly projects and high manager salaries.
I've read here on HN and elsewhere multiple times, that most of the work done is outsourced to third party labor, which is done essentially for free:
- writing papers
- organising reviews
- reviewing papers