Lying to investors is a pretty serious crime, so the numbers are probably correct.

The closest a report like this could be to "incorrect" is poorly planned short-term/long-term tradeoffs. You could, for example, renew an expensive contract with a vendor for a 1 year term instead of 5 years at a lower annual price. This quarter's costs will go down significantly compared to the last time this contract was up for renewal - but now you need to add the same cost to your ledger next year instead of 5 years down the line. Repeat that same short-sighted planning many times over and it's possible to fabricate a profit increase. But that will only last so long. It could work for people prepping for an IPO when they plan to essentially pump-and-dump. Not so much for a mature public company.

One of the selling points of buying shares of businesses publicly listed in the US (and some other countries) is that the probability of the numbers being correct is very high.