I agree that cheating should be handled more severely -
@MjNaise had a good suggestion to use a phone number in addition to e-mail, which are harder to replace. It would make the cheater go to greater lengths to create another account, so I would sign up to that - it could be a voluntary choice at first to test the feature, similar to CS GO's 'Prime' matchmaking. Obviously, hardware bans would be even better, but the evidence threshold would have to be increased and confirmed that the person did indeed cheat rather than getting super lucky double tapping 2 headshots, which will eventually happen to anyone. I've made sick plays before and I'd be furious if I got reported and immediately banned for nothing.
That said, you are mistaken about stock price moves. Obviously all big companies will release popular titles to increase the price of their stock if they're publicly traded, that's one negative aspect that I think is drowning some high-level developers like Blizzard as Activision is putting pressure on them to make money and actually do not care about the game.
Apex Legends, on the other hand, seems to be created by fans and players, not just developers, and EA seems to have given Respawn enough leeway to do their thing. Contrary to what you believe, cheater-infested game would lose reputation quickly and that would not be good for their share price. Sure numbers are good, but if it gets to that point popular streamers will just stop playing and they bring a ton of eyes to the game. Two guys, Shroud and DrDisrespect alone, can literally decide which game is the most watched on twitch, carrying with them a 100k viewer swing on average at peak times.
Plus Respawn did ban 16k cheaters, but I definitely think the efforts must be doubled. Let's implement one of the suggestions above for starters @EA.
