The investor desk

Which company needs attention — and where will the return come from?

For private equity funds, family offices and lenders. The same traced numbers that run each company's own desks, rolled up into the view an investor actually monitors: plan, cash, covenants and value created.

These screens are not a concept — they run today. Inside client systems: performance tracked against targets by region, salesperson and customer; return on equity and return on capital employed computed from audited accounts, each figure opening to the query behind it; leverage and interest cover watched against thresholds; value-creation targets set against best-in-class peers; and agents routing what slips to a named owner. The investor desk is that same engine, rolled up across a portfolio.

Live today running in client systems Prototype built and demonstrable Design ready specified in detail, custom-built for each client

Fig. 1 — How the investor desk works — sources are pulled in, experts' rules and deterministic code produce every figure, and only then does AI explain it.

Live today

Portfolio at a glance

Which company should I call this week?

Every company against its own plan, on definitions the fund sets once
Cash conversion and covenant headroom beside profit, not buried under it
Shows how fresh each company's numbers are, so stale reporting is itself a flag

Fund II portfolio year to date vs planDemo

Company	Revenue	EBITDA	Cash conv.	Covenant room	Data
Kestrel Agro Foods	91%	84%	64%	9%	12 days old
Meridian Lubricants	98%	93%	71%	24%	Today
Solace Diagnostics	96%	102%	95%	No debt	3 days old
Northwind Polymers	101%	97%	88%	18%	Today
Harbourline Logistics	104%	108%	92%	31%	Today

Sorted by attention needed. Cash conversion is operating cash flow ÷ EBITDA.

Kestrel Agro Foods: EBITDA 16% under plan, 9% covenant headroom, and the last numbers it sent are 12 days old.

Live today

Where the ROE comes from

If management fixes what the desks are showing, what does it do to return on equity?

Each lever is a finding from an operating desk, valued in profit and cash
Rebuilds ROE as margin × asset turns × leverage, so you see which part moved
Switch levers on and off — the model recomputes

Meridian Lubricants · ROE bridge annualised, $ MWorking model

Receivable days 61 → 55Frees $2.5M to repay debt · +$180k profit · from the sales desk Inventory days 48 → 45Frees $1.3M · +$96k profit · from the operations desk Pass base oil costs through+40 bps margin · +$468k profit · from the CFO desk Stop discounts above policyRecover half of $624k a year · +$240k profit · from the sales desk

ROE today12.9%

ROE with levers15.2%+2.3 points

Profit after tax$6.6M

Cash released$3.8M

ROE, taken apart	Today	With levers
Net margin (profit ÷ revenue)	3.60%	4.23%
Asset turns (revenue ÷ assets)	1.50x	1.56x
Leverage (assets ÷ equity)	2.39x	2.30x

Revenue $154.8M, equity $43.2M, assets $103.2M. Released cash repays debt at 9.5%; 25% tax.

Live today

Value-creation plan

Is the plan we underwrote actually being delivered?

Each initiative from the investment case, with an owner and a cash target
Value captured is measured from the company's own ledgers, not from the monthly deck
Shows which initiatives are behind while there's still time to act

100-day and year-one plan value captured vs targetDemo

Harbourline · routes$468k of $420k

Northwind · procurement$576k of $720k

Meridian · pricing$252k of $624k

Kestrel · plant use$144k of $840k

Share of each initiative's target captured, on a 0–120% scale; the tick marks 100%.

Kestrel plant utilisation at 17% of target — the same company that is tightest on covenants. The two problems are one problem.

Live today

Covenant watch

Which company will trip a covenant before the next test date?

Every facility's covenants, computed the way each loan agreement defines them
Headroom projected forward on the current run-rate, not last quarter's certificate
Works equally for a lender watching its borrowers

Covenant headroom next test 31 DecDemo

Company · covenant	Actual	Limit	Room now	Projected Dec
Kestrel Agro Debt service cover	1.36x	≥ 1.25x	9%	Breach
Northwind Polymers Net debt ÷ EBITDA	2.05x	≤ 2.5x	18%	11%
Meridian Lubricants Net debt ÷ EBITDA	1.9x	≤ 2.5x	24%	8%
Harbourline Logistics Net debt ÷ EBITDA	1.7x	≤ 2.5x	31%	30%

Kestrel is projected to breach in December. A waiver conversation now costs less than one after the certificate.

Design ready

Exit readiness

How much equity value is the operating plan worth at exit — and how much depends on re-rating?

Splits the value gain into earnings growth, multiple re-rating and debt paydown
Peer multiples refreshed from listed comparables, the same feed the boardroom desk uses
Makes the re-rating thesis explicit, so the buyer's diligence can't take it apart

Meridian · equity value bridge $ MDemo

Earnings — EBITDA $12.2M → $13.2M from pricing and discount discipline; $9.1M at today's 9.8x
Re-rating — half the gap to the 11.6x peer multiple, to 10.7x; $11.9M, and the part most exposed to diligence
Balance sheet — $3.8M of released working capital repays debt

Design ready

Quality of earnings

Is the EBITDA in the teaser the EBITDA we'd actually be buying?

Reads the data room — ledgers, MIS packs, contracts — the way the proposal agent reads a client package
Proposes each adjustment with the ledger lines behind it, for the deal team to accept or reject
Diligence findings carry straight over into the post-deal value-creation plan

Project Tern · EBITDA adjustments FY26 · $ MDemo

Item	EBITDA	Evidence
Reported EBITDA	7.0	Audited accounts, FY26
One-off export incentive booked as revenue	−0.5	Ledger 4120 · March journal
Repairs capitalised as fixed assets	−0.4	Asset register additions
Related-party freight below market rate	−0.2	Freight contract vs 3 quotes
Adjusted EBITDA	5.9	−15.7% vs reported

At the asking 11x multiple, $1.1M of adjustments is $12.1M of enterprise value.

Agents on this desk

The monthly portfolio review, without waiting for the month.

Live today

Market and peer digest

Peer results, news and share-price moves, read against each company's own numbers.

→ Deal partner

Design ready

Plan variance

A note the moment any company falls more than 5% behind plan on EBITDA or cash.

→ Portfolio operations

Design ready

Covenant early warning

Warns a quarter ahead when projected headroom at any company drops below 15%.

→ CFO and deal partner

Design ready

Late reporting

Chases a company whose numbers haven't refreshed within the agreed window.

→ Company CFO

Next desk

Engineering Desk →

Which company needs attention — and where will the return come from?

Portfolio at a glance

Where the ROE comes from

Value-creation plan

Covenant watch

Exit readiness

Quality of earnings

The monthly portfolio review, without waiting for the month.

Market and peer digest

Plan variance

Covenant early warning

Late reporting

Pick the screen you wish you had on Monday.

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