We spend an inordinate amount of time carefully crafting the language around our guidance. Dozens of hours. And most analysts do their own thing anyway (or flat miss what we say). Consensus is pretty accurate though.
It is still “forecasting.”
Back when I toiled for wages, one of my duties besides selling was to estimate costs for the machinery fabrication we produced. We were in our Monday Morning Meeting (MMM) when one of the bosses blurted out. “Cut the bullshit Abbott!! Exactly how much will it cost us to build it?”
My reply: “I don’t know. If I KNEW, it would be called “knowing” instead of “estimating. And if I knew, I would be working for myself and getting rich.”