Section 5.15 · number guard active
Grounded narrative
Prose is generated from the computed record, never alongside it. Every number in the output must already exist in the analysis, and the guard rejects the sentence if it does not.
Numbers in output
34
All matched to the record
Sentences rejected
3
Rewritten or dropped
Unsourced claims
0
Guard requirement
Generation pass
2 of 2
Second pass after rejects
Executive summary, generated
Northgate Facilities Services Ltd is a Watford-based facilities management contractor with filed revenue of £4,120,000 Verified and reported EBITDA of £521,000 Verified in the year to 31 March 2025. Revenue has grown at 9.92% Calculated a year across three filed years and reported EBITDA at 15.28% Calculated.
The seller presents adjusted EBITDA of £673,700 Seller. The platform accepts four of the six adjustments in full and challenges two, then deducts £72,000 Calculated for the cost of replacing the owner's operational role. Platform normalised EBITDA is £585,200 Calculated, a margin of 14.20% Calculated. The gap between the seller's figure and the platform's is £88,500, worth £300,900 of enterprise value at the selected multiple.
Revenue quality supports the earnings. Contracted and repeat revenue is 68% Management information of the total, free cash flow converts at 63.2% Calculated of normalised EBITDA, and the largest customer is 18.4% Management information of revenue, above the platform's 20% warning threshold but below the 25% refusal threshold. Owner dependency is assessed as moderate.
The acquisition quality score is 72 of 100 Calculated, in the good band. The business passes twelve of the fourteen mandate screens outright, does not meet the stated preference for owner independence, and passes the debt service cover test in the base case while breaching it in three of seven stress scenarios.
At the selected multiple of 3.40× Operator assumption the enterprise value is £1,989,680 and the equity value after the bridge is £1,597,680 Calculated. The maximum price the platform will support is £1,740,000 Calculated, set by the 1.5× debt service cover floor rather than by the return hurdle. The asking price of £1,850,000 Broker produces year-one cover of 1.37× and is not supported.
Recommendation: attractive only below £1,740,000. Next best action: obtain current-year management accounts and a written statement of the owner's operational duties, then open at £1,380,000 with the two challenged adjustments itemised.
Four items were requested and not supplied: the contract expiry ladder, a written description of the owner's duties, current-year management accounts, and the dilapidations position on the leased depot. Each is recorded as an open gap and none has been estimated into the conclusion.
Number guard, this generation
Each numeric token in the draft is matched against the computed record before the sentence is released. No match, no sentence.
| Draft claim | Guard verdict |
|---|---|
| "EBITDA has roughly doubled over the period." | Rejected Vague quantifier with no matching computed value. Rewritten to the 15.28% CAGR. |
| "The business holds around 40 active contracts." | Rejected No contract count exists in the record. Sentence dropped, not estimated. |
| "Comparable FM businesses trade at 4 to 5 times EBITDA." | Rejected No comparable transaction data has been ingested. Fabricating a market range is a hard refusal. |
| "Platform normalised EBITDA is £585,200." | Passed Matches the quality of earnings record exactly. |
| "Free cash flow converts at 63.2% of normalised EBITDA." | Passed Matches the revenue quality record to one decimal. |
Generation rules
- Every number must resolve to a value already computed and stored, with its provenance tag carried through.
- A rounded figure must round from the stored value, and the rounding is shown when it changes the reading.
- Absent data is stated as absent. It is never described in general terms to fill the space.
- No comparable transaction, market multiple or sector benchmark may be asserted unless it has been ingested and recorded.
- No company identity, contact detail or contract name may appear unless it came from a source with an authorisation basis.
- Seller and broker figures keep their tags in prose, not only in tables.
- A forecast is written as a forecast. It may not be phrased as a present-tense fact.
- The recommendation sentence is generated from the screening result, never written independently of it.
If the guard cannot verify a sentence, the sentence does not ship. There is no override in the interface, and no confidence threshold that lets an unverified number through.
Provenance mix in the generated text
Verified
14
Filed accounts, Companies House
Calculated
13
Platform derived
Seller or broker
5
Tagged, unverified
Assumption
2
Operator table v3
No figure in the executive summary is untagged. The Stage 1 deck renders the tags as a legend, the Stage 2 report renders them inline as shown here, and the PDF renders them as footnotes.
Tone rules applied
Required
- Plain statements with the figure attached
- Absent data named, with the request that produced the gap
- Disagreement with the seller stated openly and quantified
- The recommendation and the next best action in the same paragraph
Refused
- Hedging that hides a missing number
- Enthusiasm about the opportunity
- Sector commentary with no ingested source
- Any phrasing that reads as a recommendation to invest rather than an analysis of a price
AcquiScope produces analysis and modelling, not regulated investment advice. The narrative above describes an invented business and is shown to demonstrate the generation and guard behaviour, not to convey information about any real company.