Why would any company admit to having so many variables that could hurt their performance

Answer: By companies I assume you mean profit oriented business - that is organisations that are not NGOs. Most profit oriented businesses would not admit having variables that could hurt their performance to shareholders or to the general public in order not to discourage potential investors

Explanation: Employers or upper management may explain/expose variables that are hurting the company's growth to employees in order to make them feel like part of the team/decision making process and also to encourage them to do more work. In rare cases a company might expose their negative variables in order to discourage being bought over by their competitors or garner public sympathy. However this almost always backfires.