The phrase "scant profit" is correct and can be used in written English.
It is typically used to describe a small or insufficient amount of profit. Example: Despite all of our efforts, the business only managed a scant profit this quarter.
At first, the publishers worried about the scant profit margin — probably three to five cents per book.
Google would be forgoing Gmail's scant profit, but its actions would be consistent with the idea that the net belongs to its users throughout the world.
However, the adjustment scheme of profit between KEPCO and Gencos left scant profit for generators.
Spoiler number one alert !! — Most companies in mobile make a scant profit, if any at all, on hardware.
The auto industry has long been used to cycles of low volume and scant profits followed by high volume and big profits.
That same year, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing divested Imation, which included data storage and imaging businesses with well over $1 billion in annual sales but scant profits.
As more and more experiences -- musical, literary, erotic -- get translated into downloadable, postphysical entities, what scant profits there are now will dwindle away.
Mr. Hewlett's argument against the merger has been that by purchasing Compaq, Hewlett-Packard would greatly increase its dependence on the brutally competitive personal computer business, with its scant profits.
In a dizzyingly fast move, investors fled new-economy technology and Internet companies, with their big dreams and scant profits, for the safety of solid old-economy titans like Ford and Procter & Gamble.
Clear Channel has taken what was once a struggling business full of poorly funded stations, broken equipment, offbeat characters and scant profits–and turned it into a beacon of predictability.
And by adding Compaq, Hewlett-Packard was increasing its stake in the perilous personal computer market, where competition is fierce and profits scant.
