Equinox Partners, L.P. - Q2 2006 Letter
Dear Partners and Friends,
Managing Liquidity and the Launch of the “Equinox Illiquid Fund”
The reduction in global stock market liquidity during the late spring downturn restricted our ability to add to our best ideas at bargain prices and reminded us of just how quickly trading volume can dry up when markets fall. Our difficulty buying meaningful amounts of our favorite stocks at the short-lived market bottom proved modestly frustrating. Had, however, we been forced sellers as opposed to opportunistic buyers during this period, our frustration would have been more than modest.
Smaller, less liquid stocks are more apt to be significantly misvalued than large easily-traded ones. Accordingly, the maintenance of sufficient liquidity in Equinox Partners often conflicts with the maximization of the fund’s long-term absolute performance. At the fund’s current size, we have been able to maintain a focused portfolio of superior, under-valued businesses as well as an acceptable level of liquidity.
The investment time horizon of our client base has always been a significant structural advantage for the Equinox Partners. Because of your long-term absolute return focus, we don’t waste our time trying to manage short-term performance, and we don’t keep an unnecessary level of liquidity in the fund. Despite our confidence in our limited partners’ long-term perspective, we remain generally concerned about the unrealistic return expectations of hedge fund investors and the possibility of a rapid flight of capital from hedge funds and their intermediaries. Should such a scenario arise, our authority to determine the cash/security composition of redemptions as well as our avoidance of the most illiquid ideas will have proven wise precautions.
Over the years, we’ve been gradually raising the bar when it comes to acceptable size and liquidity of new investments. While this process has been necessary to maintain a sufficiently liquid and concentrated portfolio, it has resulted in our passing over some exceptional investment opportunities. To capture more of these small but attractive opportunities going forward, we’ve decided to launch a new fund, Equinox Illiquid Fund. This fund, a hybrid fund of funds/hedge fund without the double layer of fees, will allow us to leverage relationships we have with experts in specific, opportunity-rich market niches around the world, while placing a minimal incremental burden on our scarce time and resources. The initial sectors for investment will be illiquid stocks in Brazil, South Korea, Africa and mining. This portfolio will have long-dated redemption terms, such as a two year lock-up and a one year redemption notice. Whenever possible, the submanagers, not us, will be making the decisions to buy and sell. We believe this strategy will produce excellent, risk-adjusted absolute returns for the patient investor, albeit on a relatively small amount of capital. Those interested in investing in Equinox Illiquid Fund should contact Imaan Kabir at (212) 832-1290.
The “Other” Market for Natural Resource Companies
The stock market’s unwillingness to use the futures curve in its valuation of resource businesses has opened the door for another price setting mechanism -- corporate acquisitions. Tellingly, many of this year’s corporate transactions for resource companies have been for cash, not stock, which suggests attractive absolute, as opposed to just relative, values. Anadarko Petroleum’s recent purchase of Kerr-McGee, a cash transaction, is an interesting example. We’ve followed Kerr-McGee ever since April of 2005 when Carl Ichan took a significant stake in the company and prompted a share buyback. Despite a doubling of Kerr-McGee’s share price since Ichan’s initial purchase, Anadarko is paying only $20 per barrel for reserves in the ground and 4.5 times sustainable annual cash flow using future curve prices. Put another way, Anadarko is buying an asset at with a 22% annual cash flow yield. With interest rates currently near 5%, this acquisition certainly looks attractive -- especially given the difficulty North American gas producers are having replacing production with the drill bit. Perhaps this explains the flurry of North American natural gas acquisitions witnessed in recent months despite the decline in near month gas prices.
If the futures curve is to be believed, base metal companies are by far and away the most undervalued acquisition targets. One of the most frenzied rounds of bidding we have seen in some time has just occurred in the nickel mining industry. A friendly and largely stock deal between Placer Dome, Inco and Falconbridge was thwarted by cash bids from Xstrata and CVRD. Xstrata has locked up Falconbridge, and CVRD’s all cash bid for Inco looks the likely winner as of the writing of this letter. If these deals are consummated and the strip proves accurate, Xstrata and CVRD will have paid less than 4 times next year’s cash flow for Falconbridge and Inco respectively. Put another way, if commodity prices don’t collapse from their current levels, Xstrata and CVRD will be generating 25%+ yields on their cash investments.
Equinox continues to invest only in companies extracting resources whose prices we believe will hold up well during the next recession, which has meant largely avoiding base metal companies despite their compelling valuations. If base metal prices do not collapse, and soon, our caution will have proven ill-advised. Should today’s elevated base metal prices persist through 2007, several of the companies that we’ve decided to take a pass on will have, ceteris paribus, accumulated more than 50% of their market cap in net cash and our caution will have cost our partners a great deal of money.
Administrative
Our portfolio’s extremely low turnover can make it difficult for us to maintain good working relationships with the brokerage houses that cover us. In the fist half of this year, for example, Equinox Partners L.P. paid just seventeen basis points commissions to the sell-side. To maintain these important research relationships, we will make hard dollars payments to some key sell-side firms in the future.
On 1 January 2007, Olympia Capital will assume administrative duties for our funds. While Olympia’s services are a little more expensive than our current arrangement, we believe the improved timeliness and accuracy of our reported figures will more than compensate for the two additional basis points of cost that Equinox Partners will incur on an annual basis.
On August 23rd, Equinox Asset Management LLC claimed an exception from registration as a commodities pool operator. We claimed this exemption, so that Equinox Partners and Kuroto Fund could, if we deem it appropriate, take positions in futures contracts and options on futures contracts.
Sincerely,
Sean Fieler
William W. Strong









