In a development that analysts are calling “refreshingly direct” and “legally concerning,” a publicly traded company opened its quarterly earnings call this week with a formal apology for the earnings themselves, which executives described as “an unforeseen consequence of doing business” and “not in keeping with the forward-looking statements we previously made up.”

The chief executive began the call by expressing “deep regret” that the company had, despite its best efforts, produced actual financial results, which he noted were “categorically less attractive than the guidance” the company had been issuing for the past four quarters. “We had projected aspirational outcomes,” he said. “What we delivered was reality. We take full responsibility for the gap.”

The chief financial officer then walked analysts through the apology in detail, explaining that the quarter had been affected by a series of headwinds, including consumer behavior, competitor behavior, the weather, the calendar, and the regrettable persistence of arithmetic. “Once we stripped out the items we believe are not reflective of the underlying business,” she said, “we are pleased to report that the underlying business is also disappointing, though slightly less so.”

Investor questions reportedly focused on the company’s strategy for the coming quarter. Executives responded with confidence, noting that they had recently completed a comprehensive review of their previous projections and were now in a position to issue updated projections that would also fail to materialize. “We have rebuilt our model from the ground up,” the CFO explained. “It now produces forecasts that will be wrong in a more sophisticated way.”

The call took an unusual turn when one analyst asked the chief executive whether the company had considered simply running the business well, an option the executive said had been raised in a recent strategy session but had been deferred pending further study. “We are not ruling it out,” he said. “We just want to make sure we understand the implications before making any sudden moves.”

Throughout the call, executives leaned heavily on a vocabulary they described as “adjusted.” The company’s adjusted earnings were better than its actual earnings. Its adjusted growth was better than its actual growth. Its adjusted margin, after adjusting for the things that had reduced it, was nearly identical to what it had been before everything that happened. Analysts reportedly found the presentation “internally consistent in ways that defy external verification.”

A new initiative was announced to address shareholder concerns. The company will form a committee, to be chaired by the executives whose decisions produced the situation, charged with determining how the situation occurred. The committee is expected to issue its findings in a future quarter, by which point the findings will have been adjusted to reflect subsequent developments.

When pressed on the company’s outlook, the chief executive offered what he called “cautious optimism,” which he clarified meant “the same forecast we have been issuing for two years, with new graphics.” He emphasized that the company remained “well-positioned,” a phrase he declined to define when asked. “We are positioned,” he confirmed. “The well part is a matter of interpretation.”

The call concluded with the executives thanking shareholders for their continued patience, a quality the executives said they were proud to have cultivated through sustained underperformance. The company’s stock price reportedly responded by going somewhere, in a direction that analysts will explain at length tomorrow.