Earnings guidance drafts

Identifies documents containing references to earnings guidance drafts in Australian contexts. This information type is classified as personally identifiable information under applicable data protection regulations.

Type

regex

Engine

boost_regex

Confidence

medium

Confidence justification

category-aware structural regex with anchor and context constraints replaces phrase-only detection.

Detection quality

Topic false positive

Jurisdictions

global

Regulations

AML/CTF Act (Cth), HRIPA (Cth), IPA 2009 (Qld), My Health Records Act 2012 (Cth), NDB Scheme (Cth), Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), TIA Act 1979 (Cth), GDPR

Frameworks

ISO 27001, ISO 27701

Data categories

pii

Scope

wide

Risk rating

8

Platform compatibility

Purview: Compatible, GCP DLP: Compatible, Macie: Compatible, Zscaler: Compatible, Palo Alto: Degraded, Netskope: Unsupported

Pattern

(?is)\b(?:earnings\s+guidance|guidance\s+draft|earnings\s+forecast|profit\s+guidance|revenue\s+guidance|EPS\s+guidance|forward\s+guidance|market\s+guidance|preliminary\s+results)\b

Corroborative evidence keywords

earnings guidance drafts, earnings, guidance, drafts, mergers, acquisitions, strategy

Proximity: 300 characters

Should match

• earnings guidance — Primary topic phrase match
• guidance draft — Case-insensitive topic phrase match
• earnings forecast — Alternative topic phrase match
• profit guidance — Additional topic phrase match
• DRAFT v6 profit guidance: EBITDA $180-195m; board approval pending; ASX release planned 22 Aug — Versioned draft guidance with forecast range and approval state

Should not match

• unrelated generic text without domain phrases — No relevant topic phrases present
• placeholder value 12345 — Random text should not match topic-specific regex
• merger fundraising — Generic word pair from old broad template should not match
• ASX announcement: final FY26 earnings guidance — Final released guidance carries no draft/pre-release state marker, so enforcement must not fire
• Continuous disclosure policy updated — Final-release vocabulary was demoted out of the primary and must not match at all
• Training draft using fictional EPS guidance — Draft alone is not an authored state term and training content must not enforce

Known false positives

• Common words and phrases related to earnings guidance drafts appearing in policy documents, training materials, HR templates, or compliance guidelines without actual personal data. Mitigation: Require corroborative evidence keywords within the proximity window to confirm sensitive data context rather than general discussion.
• In Australian English, similar terminology used in formal or administrative contexts (education, professional documentation) that does not constitute sensitive data collection. Mitigation: Layer with additional contextual signals such as structured identifiers, form fields, or database column headers to distinguish sensitive records from general references.
• High-frequency pattern matches in large document corpora due to broad regex anchors. Expected match rate is significantly higher than specific identifier patterns. Mitigation: Tune confidence thresholds for bulk scanning. Consider using this pattern primarily as a pre-filter with secondary validation.

References

• https://www.asic.gov.au/regulatory-resources/find-a-document/regulatory-guides/rg-170-prospective-financial-information/
• https://www.asx.com.au/about/regulation/rules-guidance-notes-and-waivers/asx-listing-rules-guidance-notes-and-waivers