This argument is super lazy. Businesses do tons of things which don't raise short-term value. R&D, buying insurance, hiring junior people, laying out money for reserved instances with AWS.
Guess what all of these have in common? The exact thing that security has; eliminating long-term risk. Don't blame the stock holders because your arguments didn't persuade management...
Attitudes about it are much better now than they have ever been, but there are still a lot of folks out there that don't prioritize it.