Equinox Partners, L.P. - Q4 2017 Letter

Dear Partners and Friends,

PERFORMANCE & PORTFOLIO

Equinox Partners declined -0.8% in the fourth quarter of 2017 and gained +11.5% for the full year. Through January 19, the fund is down      -0.8% for the year-to-date 2018.[1] 

Our global operating businesses and precious metals miners were responsible for more than all of our gains last year. Our operating companies appreciated 41% in 2017 while our mining companies were up 14.5%. Our fixed income shorts generated a small loss while our E&P companies declined 19%. The price of our E&P companies fell sharply as their multiples compressed and the price of natural gas in Western Canada fell.


Throughout the year, we actively sold shares in our best performing companies as they approached full value. We redeployed this capital into significantly undervalued companies as well as new short positions. As a result, we reduced our weighting in global operating businesses from 43% to 33%. Our E&P weighting also declined from 29% to 21% despite our purchases in the sector. We increased our weighting in gold and silver mining from 41% to 46%. And, on the short side, we increased our short bond positon from 77% gross to 83% gross, inclusive of our corporate bond shorts. 

 

We sold significant portions of two of our largest positions during the year, Aramex and Ferreycorp. As a result of these sales, Aramex is no longer a top five position. Amongst the positions in which we invested additional capital, Crew Energy topped the list. Crew remains one of our largest long positions, and we invested aggressively in this company as its share price fell last year. 


TOP-FIVE HOLDINGS


With our four largest equity positions accounting for 32% of partners’ capital and our fixed income short position equivalent to -68% (net), this top-five letter offers insight into our decision-making process as well as the portfolio as a whole. With the exception of Aramex, the portfolio’s top positions are the same as last year. We did not, however, include our fifth largest long equity position, Bear Creek, but instead included a write up of our short fixed income position which is, on an absolute basis, our largest position.

Mag Silver   -   9.5% of the fund


MAG Silver, through their JV partnership with Fresnillo, is the 44% owner of the best undeveloped silver mine in the world. Juanicipio is among the highest grade deposits in the world as shown in the graph below.[2]

Last fall, MAG announced the expansion of the Juancipio mine plan from 2,400 tonnes per day to 4,000 tonnes per day. This rightsizing of the mine incorporates the expanded orebody while preserving a 19-year mine plan. While this expansion is an enormous positive development, the updated feasibility required the companies to push back the construction timeline by six months. Under this new timeline, we expect the Juancipio feasibility study to be released early in 2018 and a construction decision in the first half of 2018.  More importantly, the Juanicipio mine is on track for production by early 2020.  


MAG’s preliminary economic assessment demonstrates the value of its stake in the Juanicipio JV. This study incorporates the exploration success of the last few years and shows a resource 250% larger than the previous study released in 2012. There are now 172m oz of silver and 600k oz of gold in the joint venture mine plan. The study estimates that MAG will receive just over $100MM in the early years of the project at current silver prices. Accordingly, with a market valuation of just $1 billion, we think MAG remains undervalued.


The higher throughput for the Juanicipio mine increased the initial capital required for the project. As a result, the MAG board elected to raise an additional $48MM in equity in order to fully fund their portion of the development capital. While we believe the company could have raised the capital more cheaply had they waited until construction began, we continue to hold MAG’s board in high regard.


Going forward, we expect the Juancipio orebody will grow further and that new mineralization will be discovered on the MAG-Fresnillo joint-venture property. With decades of free cash flow ahead from Juancipio and the likelihood of new investment opportunities, we are encouraging the company to communicate a clear capital allocation policy for the future. We believe that a clear articulation of MAG’s corporate position as an investor, not an operator, of high-quality assets is the best way for the company to obtain the premium valuation it deserves. 

Paramount Resources   -   7.8% of the fund      


Paramount entered 2017 with a large, high-quality land package, 12k bpd of production, and a $566MM cash balance. As of the end of 2017, Paramount was producing 95k bpd and carrying more than $500MM of net debt.  As its strong share price suggests, Paramount’s rapid transformation occurred on incredibly favorable terms.


Having entered last year in a position of extraordinary financial strength, Paramount was perfectly positioned to take advantage of the distressed market for E&P assets. The result of their effort was two major transactions. First, Paramount purchased Apache’s Canadian operations for just 3.3x annualized cash flow. Paramount followed up this purchase by merging with its sister company, Trilogy, which held assets adjacent to the property sold by Apache. Simultaneous to these two transactions, Paramount began to develop some of its own high-quality acreage.


Paramount is now on track to grow its production to over 200k bpd by 2021 while reducing financial leverage. This desirable combination of growth and deleveraging is possible because Paramount’s mix-shift towards more liquids production will drive corporate margins higher. This year, we expect liquids will account for three-fourths of Paramount’s total revenue. As a result, when production doubles, the company’s cash flow should triple. Through Paramount, we own self-financing high-rates of production growth trading at 6.4x estimated 2018 cash flow and 2.4x cash flow at 200k bpd. 


Given the challenges of going to scale, Jim Riddell, Paramount’s CEO, has rightly focused his attention on improving Paramount’s operational performance. Jim has brought in young talent with experience in the U.S. and has revamped the team structure so as to better incentivize performance and innovation. Thus far, the drilling results have been solid. While the company’s stock has performed well on a relative basis, the transformation at Paramount has yet to be fully recognized by the market.


Crew   -   7.6% of the fund


In the fourth quarter of 2017, the futures contract for 2018 AECO natural gas was basically cut in half. At current AECO prices, Crew cannot internally finance production growth and will struggle to maintain its 2017 exit rate of production. 


AECO gas prices have long traded at substantial discounts to Henry Hub and other North American markets. The differential from Canada to the U.S. has historically been less than $1/mcf. More recently, this differential has widened to almost $1.80/mcf as shown in the graph below. This widening is a result of insufficient local natural gas infrastructure. 

To address this infrastructure bottleneck, TransCanada has scheduled an expansion of takeaway capacity which, in the short-term, has resulted in periodic shutdowns of the system. While these efforts will improve the gas price differentials over time, they have substantially widened the differential in the short term. With the precise timing of a remedy uncertain, the future price of gas in Western Canada is reflecting a never-ending series of repairs. 


The market is also ignoring the growing likelihood of Canadian LNG as a response to these price differentials. Two projects, one led by Shell and another by Chevron, are nearing their final investment decision, and we should know as early as this year whether they will go ahead. If just one project goes ahead, it has the potential of reversing the discount Canadian producers receive, thereby increasing their cash flows tremendously. Even without LNG, several new pipelines are slated to be built in the coming years, which will result in more capacity and improved pricing.

 

Crew’s short-term situation would have been far worse had the company not systematically diversified their end markets for gas and improved their capital structure. As a result of these steps, less than half of Crew’s gas is directly impacted by the AECO differential, and $300MM of their $340MM of debt is in the form of a covenant-lite bond that is not due until 2024. The remaining $40MM of debt is a result of their partial drawdown on a $235MM bank line. Even at today’s gas prices, Crew’s overall debt to cash flow of just under 3x is not problematic. 


Rather than simply waiting for their realized gas prices to improve, Crew is in the process of divesting several non-core properties to fund profitable growth. We believe the undeveloped assets the company could sell are alone worth more than the entire market cap of the company. Accordingly, were they to even partially monetize their land portfolio, we believe the market would quickly revalue the company. In addition, Crew is wisely focusing its capital spending on the most liquids-rich opportunities in the Septimus area, which generate north of a 50% IRR at current prices.  By focusing exclusively on these high IRR liquids-rich wells, Crew can return to growth even at today’s depressed natural gas prices, albeit at a much slower pace than envisioned previously. 


Going forward, Crew stands to gain from both the company’s own efforts to unlock value and from the closing of the differential for Canadian gas.

Ferreycorp   –   7.3% of the fund


Ferreycorp is the exclusive Caterpillar dealer in Peru. The company boasts high market share in its core product categories, an extensive distribution and support network, and a highly profitable parts and services business. We estimate that the company’s earnings were essentially flat in 2017. While a rebound in commodity prices saw some improvement in sales of mining trucks, political infighting in Peru prevented a material increase in infrastructure spending and dampened private-sector construction demand. Heavy flooding in March of 2017 further weighed on economic activity in the country. In light of Ferreycorp’s strong share price performance, lack of earnings growth, and outsized weighting in the portfolio, we sold approximately half of our Ferreycorp position in October.

 

Over time, we expect the political situation in Peru to improve and the mining investment cycle to turn. While the failed effort to impeach President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski late last year highlights the current fractious state of Peruvian politics, the Peruvian economy remains fundamentally sound. Moreover, Ferreycorp’s opportunity to grow earnings and improve returns on capital by cutting costs and selling non-core assets is largely independent of the political and macroeconomic environment in Peru.

 

In our first quarter 2017 letter, we detailed the significant changes shareholders made to the board of directors at Ferreycorp last March. Over the past nine months, the board and management began to take important steps in the right direction. While the progress with respect to capital allocation has been slower than we had hoped, the company has stopped selling its treasury shares into the market. This was a highly visible decision and clear evidence that the new directors are committed to improving capital allocation at Ferreycorp.

 

Going forward, we expect the new directors will push the company to deemphasize less profitable businesses, streamline the balance sheet, and drive returns higher. With their strong market share, a large, recurring service business, and the strength of the Caterpillar brand, we believe that Ferreycorp can achieve a high-teens ROE. We hope to see further evidence of these improvements in 2018 which should lead to both growth in earnings and a higher multiple on those earnings.

Bond Shorts   –   (68.4%) net of the fund

As the bond bull market enters its 34th year, it is shocking to put the length of this rally in historical context.  Recently published research from the Bank of England shows that we are living through the second longest bond bull market in recorded history and the longest since the 17th century.[3]

Despite offering low or nonexistent returns and with no guarantee that current exceptional monetary conditions will persist, government bonds at the center of this bull market are still regarded as a safe haven.  Investors’ continued willingness to own these bonds under such conditions reflects a combination of excessive faith in the power of central bankers and a lack of experience with bond bear markets.


By way of preview of what a worldwide reversal of the current bull market in bonds might look like, we believe 1965-1969 provides a useful guide. There are striking parallels between the monetary environments of the mid-1960s and today. First, inflation was low and stable in the mid-sixties, hovering around 1.5% through the end of 1965. Second, the unemployment rate slid from 5.5% at the end of 1963 to 4% in 1965 and just 3.6% by the end of 1966, with active debate about the degree of remaining slack along the way. Third, the Kennedy tax cut enacted in February 1964, Great Society programs of 1965, and the Vietnam War produced an ill-advised fiscal stimulus. Fourth, the Federal Reserve raised rates tentatively.


It is worth emphasizing that in the period leading up to 1965, inflation estimate trends were stable and only began rising sharply in 1966. One of the more notable features of narrative accounts from the 1960’s is just how suddenly the public’s confidence in price stability was lost. Given the popular complacency regarding pent-up inflationary forces, we believe that conditions are present for a significant depreciation in the price of Treasuries, analogous to what happened in the late 1960s.  And, given that the market is still pricing in a perfect execution of QE unwinding by central banks, the sovereign bond shorts remain a top 5 position.

 

We recently added a handful of corporate bonds to what remains our largely government bond short position. This addition reflects our expectation that not only will rates raise, but corporate spreads will increase as well. Given that the Federal Reserve’s bond buying led to tighter corporate credit spreads, it stands to reason that the Fed’s plan to shrink its balance sheet by ~$400 billion in 2018 will likely lead to wider corporate credit spreads. Moreover, corporate credit spreads are extraordinarily low. Using broad measures, investment grade spreads are back to 1997 levels.  But, this is not a like-for-like comparison as a much larger fraction of today’s investment grade index is composed of BBB credits than in the past. These low-yielding, barely investment grade credits, have been the focus of our expansion into corporate bond shorts. 




Sincerely,


Sean Fieler        Daniel Gittes 


END NOTES

[1] Exposures as a percentage of 12.31.17 pre-redemption AUM. All values as of 12.31.17 unless otherwise noted.Performance contribution derived in US dollars, gross of fees and fund expenses. Interest rate swaps notional value and P&L included in Fixed Income. P&L on cash excluded from the table as are market value exposures for derivatives. Unless otherwise noted, all company data derived from internal analysis, company presentations, or Bloomberg.


[2] Mag Silver Company Presentation September 18,2017


[3] Bank of England. Staff Working Paper No. 686

By Kieran Brennan October 31, 2025
Dear Partners and Friends, PERFORMANCE Equinox Partners Precious Metals Fund, L.P. rose +36.2% in the third quarter of 2025 and is up +90.2% for the year-to-date 2025. By comparison, the Junior Gold Mining Index GDXJ rose +46.6% in the quarter and is up +132.7% for the year-to-date. Exploration stage companies were the best performing segment of the portfolio, appreciating +55.0% in the quarter. The spot gold price rose +18% in the quarter and is up +47% for the year-to-date. The letter that follows provides our thoughts on the outlook for the gold price and implications for the portfolio holdings. gold The gold bull market, initially driven by central bank buying, has evolved into an investor-driven dollar debasement trade. This second phase of the gold bull market is more explosive than the first because it draws on the approximately $470 trillion of the world’s wealth as opposed to the roughly $35 trillion of central bank balance sheets. If President Trump fans the dollar debasement fire by forcing a politicized Fed to cut rates, gold could rapidly displace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. However, if President Trump takes a more nuanced approach to the Fed, gold should still displace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency over time with the competition between gold and the dollar taking longer to play out. Gold investors warning about fiat currency debasement is nothing new. That, after all, is why gold investors own gold in the first place. There’s also nothing new about most American investors ignoring these warnings. The dollar’s relative stability has long made concerns about dollar debasement appear quixotic. Since the early 1980’s, American inflation has been largely tolerable, the dollar has outperformed almost all other fiat currencies, and U.S. government bonds have been the safest asset to own in an economic downturn. The dollar has sloughed off so much criticism for so long that Janet Yellen likely did not imagine the chain of events that freezing Russia’s foreign exchange reserves would set into motion. With confidence in the dollar’s inertia and a bit of hubris, in our opinion, Secretary Yellen engineered the freezing of $300 billion of Russia’s foreign exchange reserves and put the world’s central banks on notice that their use of dollar reserves depends upon the tacit approval of the U.S. Treasury. Foreign governments, shocked by this policy change, sought to reduce their dependence on the U.S. Treasury and doubled their gold purchases to roughly $60-80 billion per year (potentially $100 billion in 2025). This increase in central bank gold demand drove the gold price up over +50% from March 2022 to March 2025. This bull market, in turn, gave gold the additional scale necessary to function as a more viable alternative to the dollar and damaged the dollar’s air of invulnerability. This two-fold outcome is problematic because inertia and a lack of alternatives were fundamental to the dollar’s stability. On the back of gold’s appreciation, long-ignored arguments of gold investors began sounding more plausible. Financial professionals accustomed to deriding gold investors and referring to them as insects began to worry that gold’s price action is telling them something important. Jamie Dimon aptly summed up the change of heart: “This is one of those times where it is semi-rational to own gold.” His comment captures both his continued distaste for gold and his willingness to own it. Despite the broadening acceptance of gold as an investment, markets remain skeptical of the underlying dollar-devaluation narrative. Inflation, a broad measure of the dollar’s strength, is just 2.8%. The 10-year U.S. Treasury yields 4.0%, indicating the bond market’s indifference to the dollar debasement narrative. Furthermore, the decline in the trade weighted dollar has partially reversed since early July. At this moment, the dollar debasement trade appears to be waiting for additional macroeconomic and geopolitical events to play out. Of these, none looms larger than President Trump’s effort to bend the Federal Reserve to his will. In January, the Supreme Court will likely allow President Trump to remove Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook, making the selection of the next Fed Chair even more important. If Trump nominates a loyalist like Kevin Hassett who appears more committed to pleasing the President than price stability, we could see broadening concern about the dollar’s store of value and a growing asset allocation into gold. In this hyper-politicized Fed scenario, gold could quickly become a $100 trillion dollar asset and displace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. However, if Trump nominates an institutionalist like Chris Waller, the dollar debasement trade will likely remain in limbo for a while as markets suss out how much control Trump really has over the Fed. Either way, the U.S. bond market will not be allowed to freely adjudicate the outcome at the Fed. We expect both Treasury and Fed to proactively manage the yield curve during the particularly politically sensitive period when the Fed is cutting rates while inflation is above their stated 2% target. Treasury will keep longer-dated bond issuance to a minimum while coercing banks to keep the Treasury market well bid. JP Morgan increased its holdings of Treasuries by $80 billion in the first half of this year, and we expect other banks to follow suit. The Fed, for its part, has announced an end to quantitative tightening and its intention to shift its balance sheet from mortgage-backed securities to Treasuries. Given the likely extent of the coordinated intervention of the Treasury and Fed, the bond market will not be a good indicator of the market’s confidence in Trump’s economic policies. Gold will be. To the extent that investors sense that the bond market is not providing a reliable price signal, they will begin paying more attention to gold. And, should the gold price becomes the accepted indicator of U.S. financial health, the Trump administration will take action to influence it. At the very least, this will entail the Trump administration encouraging other central banks to stop buying gold or even sell gold. But the anti-gold policy options are limitless. Needless to say, the U.S. government pushback on gold will not solve the dollar’s long-term structural problems. Nor will it mark the end of gold’s challenge to the dollar. It will simply mark the next phase of financial repression. Our Gold Mines The second phase of the bull market in gold has been broadly positive for our portfolio, as a portion of the investor money flowing into gold has bid up gold mining equities as well. Where central banks buy the physical gold bullion, private wealth investors allocating to gold will also buy gold mining stocks. The GDXJ Junior Mining Index is up +132.7% for the year-to-date through September 30. Even with this year’s rapid rise in the gold mining portfolio, valuations remain cheap at spot gold prices. Our in-production portfolio trades at a 24.0% IRR as compared to a 23.4% IRR on March 31. The most dramatic mis-valuation among our gold miners continues to be in the pre-production companies. While these equities have appreciated more rapidly than our producing companies for the year-to-date 2025, they began from such a low valuation that even at twice or three times their January price, they are still undervalued. Troilus Gold, a junior gold mining company with an 11.2 million ounces gold-equivalent resource in Quebec, Canada, is a case in point. Troilus Gold shares have more than tripled in 2025, rising from C$0.31 to C$1.35 per share. The company still trades at an IRR of 30%, 0.2x price-to-NAV (using a 10% discount rate), and a price per ounce of recoverable gold of $63. When Troilus goes into commercial production in 2029, we expect it will generate annual net income roughly equal to its current market cap. Troilus historically traded at an extremely low valuation because the market did not believe that the company could finance the project's upfront capital expenditure of $1.3 billion. Throughout 2025, Troilus began addressing these financing concerns by signing an offtake agreement with a European smelter and a related letter of intent for $700 million of debt financing on attractive terms. If Troilus Gold raises the necessary equity and signs a streaming arrangement to fully fund the mine’s construction, we believe the stock will trade much closer to its NAV (using a 10% discount rate and the spot gold price) of $2.5 billion.
By Kieran Brennan October 30, 2025
Dear Partners and Friends, PERFORMANCE Equinox Partners, L.P. rose +24.5% net of fees in the third quarter and is up +54.4% for the year-to-date 2025. By comparison, the S&P 500 index rose +8.1% in the third quarter and is now up +14.8% for the year-to-date 2025. Our quarterly performance has been almost exclusively driven by our gold and silver miners. In the third quarter, the spot gold price rose +18%, and the fund’s mining portfolio returned +40%. As of this writing, 78% of Equinox Partners’ capital is invested in the gold and silver sector. The letter that follows provides our thoughts on the gold price and our gold mining holdings. Gold The gold bull market, which was initiated by central bank buying, has evolved into an investor-driven dollar debasement trade. This second phase of the gold bull market is more explosive than the first because it draws on the approximately $470 trillion of the world’s wealth as opposed to the roughly $35 trillion of central bank balance sheets. If President Trump fans the dollar debasement fire by forcing a politicized Fed to cut rates, gold could rapidly displace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. However, if President Trump takes a more nuanced approach to the Fed, gold should still displace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency over time with the competition between gold and the dollar taking longer to play out. Gold investors warning about fiat currency debasement is nothing new. That, after all, is why gold investors own gold in the first place. There’s also nothing new about most American investors ignoring these warnings. The dollar’s relative stability has long made concerns about dollar debasement appear quixotic. Since the early 1980’s, American inflation has been largely tolerable, the dollar has outperformed almost all other fiat currencies, and U.S. government bonds have been the safest asset to own in an economic downturn. The dollar has sloughed off so much criticism for so long that Janet Yellen likely did not imagine the chain of events that freezing Russia’s foreign exchange reserves would set into motion. With confidence in the dollar’s inertia and a bit of hubris in our opinion, Secretary Yellen engineered the freezing of $300 billion of Russia’s foreign exchange reserves and put the world’s central banks on notice that their use of dollar reserves depends upon the tacit approval of the U.S. Treasury. Foreign governments shocked by this policy change sought to reduce their dependence on the U.S. Treasury and doubled their gold purchases to roughly $60-80 billion per year (potentially $100 billion in 2025). This increase in central bank gold demand drove the gold price up over +50% from March 2022 to March 2025. This bull market in turn gave gold the additional scale necessary to function as a more viable alternative to the dollar and damaged the dollar’s air of invulnerability. This two-fold outcome is problematic because inertia and a lack of alternatives were fundamental to the dollar’s stability. On the back of gold’s appreciation, long-ignored arguments of gold investors began sounding more plausible. Financial professionals accustomed to deriding gold investors and referring to them as insects began to worry that gold’s price action is telling them something important. Jamie Dimon aptly summed up the change of heart: “This is one of those times where it is semi-rational to own gold.” His comment captures both his continued distaste for gold and his willingness to own it. Despite the broadening acceptance of gold as an investment, markets remain skeptical of the underlying dollar-devaluation narrative. Inflation, a broad measure of the dollar’s strength, is just 2.8%. The 10-year U.S. Treasury yields 4.0%, indicating the bond market’s indifference to the dollar debasement narrative. Furthermore, the decline in the trade weighted dollar has partially reversed since early July. At this moment, the dollar debasement trade appears to be waiting for additional macroeconomic and geopolitical events to play out. Of these, none looms larger than President Trump’s effort to bend the Federal Reserve to his will. In January, the Supreme Court will likely allow President Trump to remove Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook, making the selection of the next Fed Chair even more important. If Trump nominates a loyalist like Kevin Hassett who appears more committed to pleasing the President than price stability, we could see broadening concern about the dollar’s store of value and a growing asset allocation into gold. In this hyper-politicized Fed scenario, gold could quickly become a $100 trillion dollar asset and displace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. However, if Trump nominates an institutionalist like Chris Waller, the dollar debasement trade will likely remain in limbo for a while as markets suss out how much control Trump really has over the Fed. Either way, the U.S. bond market will not be allowed to freely adjudicate the outcome at the Fed. We expect both Treasury and Fed to proactively manage the yield curve during the particularly politically sensitive period when the Fed is cutting rates while inflation is above their stated 2% target. Treasury will keep longer-dated bond issuance to a minimum while coercing banks to keep the Treasury market well bid. JP Morgan increased its holdings of Treasuries by $80 billion in the first half of this year, and we expect other banks to follow suit. The Fed, for its part, has announced an end to quantitative tightening and its intention to shift its balance sheet from mortgage-backed securities to Treasuries. Given the likely extent of the coordinated intervention of the Treasury and Fed, the bond market will not be a good indicator of the market’s confidence in Trump’s economic policies. Gold will be. To the extent that investors sense that the bond market is not providing a reliable price signal, they will begin paying more attention to gold. And, should the gold price becomes the accepted indicator of U.S. financial health, the Trump administration will take action to influence it. At the very least, this will entail the Trump administration encouraging other central banks to stop buying gold or even sell gold. But the anti-gold policy options are limitless. Needless to say, the U.S. government pushback on gold will not solve the dollar’s long-term structural problems. Nor will it mark the end of gold’s challenge to the dollar. It will simply mark the next phase of financial repression. Our Gold Mines The second phase of the bull market in gold has been broadly positive for our portfolio, as a portion of the investor money flowing into gold has bid up gold mining equities as well. Where central banks buy the physical gold bullion, private wealth investors allocating to gold will also buy gold mining stocks. The GDXJ Junior Mining Index is up +131% for the year-to-date through September 30. Even with this year’s rapid rise in the gold mining portfolio, valuations remain cheap at spot gold prices. Our in-production portfolio trades at a 24% IRR as compared to a 25% IRR on March 31. The most dramatic mis-valuation among our gold miners continues to be in the pre-production companies. While these equities have appreciated more rapidly than our producing companies for the year-to-date 2025, they began from such a low valuation that even at twice or three times their January price, they are still undervalued. Troilus Gold, a junior gold mining company with an 11.2 million ounces gold-equivalent resource in Quebec, Canada, is a case in point. Troilus Gold shares have more than tripled in 2025, rising from C$0.31 to C$1.35 per share. The company still trades at an IRR of 30%, 0.2X its NAV (using a 10% discount rate), and a price per ounce of recoverable gold of $63. When Troilus goes into commercial production in 2029, we expect it will generate annual net income roughly equal to its current market cap. Troilus historically traded at an extremely low valuation because the market did not believe that the company could finance the project's upfront capital expenditure of $1.3 billion. Throughout 2025, Troilus began addressing these financing concerns by signing an offtake agreement with a European smelter and a related letter of intent for $700 million of debt financing on attractive terms. If Troilus Gold raises the necessary equity and signs a streaming arrangement to fully fund the mine’s construction, we believe the stock will trade much closer to its NAV (using a 10% discount rate and the spot gold price) of $2.5 billion. New Board Seat at Gran Tierra Energy On September 30, portfolio company Gran Tierra Energy announced that Brad Virbitsky has joined the board on behalf of Equinox Partners. While it is a relatively modest-sized position in the fund, we believe there is significant value to unlock, and we can help realize that value through our participation in the boardroom.
By Kieran Brennan October 30, 2025
Kuroto Fund Wins HFM 2025 US Performance Award
By Kieran Brennan October 30, 2025
Dear Partners and Friends, PERFORMANCE Kuroto Fund, L.P. appreciated +16.6% in the third quarter and is up +51.6% year-to-date 2025. By comparison, the broad MSCI Emerging Markets Index rose +11.0% in the third quarter and is up +28.2% for the year-to-date. Performance in the quarter was driven primarily by our investments in Nigeria, with additional strong contribution from our largest position, MTN Ghana. A breakdown of Kuroto Fund exposures can be found here . Portfolio Changes During the third quarter, we initiated a position in Solidcore Resources, a company described in our February webinar . Solidcore is similar to the oil companies we profiled in our Q2 2025 letter in that it is a competitively advantaged commodity producer. The company’s main asset is a long-lived and low-cost mine, the management team is among the best in the region, and the infrastructure they are building will make them a natural consolidator of regional assets. Given the subsequent increase in commodity prices, we ended up purchasing the bulk of our position at a 40%+ free cash flow yield. Solidcore is now a top 5 position in the fund. We funded our purchase of Solidcore by reducing our Georgia Capital position weighting from 17% to 11% and by selling our stake in a Greek consumer-focused business. In the case of Georgia Capital, while the discount to the sum of the parts value decreased from 50% to a more reasonable 30%, we still see it as a compelling investment opportunity. Georgia Capital’s portfolio of oligopolistic businesses is growing earnings double digits, buying back stock, and trading at a single digit, look-through price-to-earnings multiple. The sale of our Greek investment was driven by stock appreciation combined with a management change that led us to re-underwrite our investment. GHANAIAN AND NIGERIAN MACRO Over the past decade, Nigeria and Ghana have endured a seemingly unending series of self-inflicted macro problems. Inflation increased to over 30% in both countries, and the currencies depreciated 64% and 79%, respectively. Ghana defaulted on its domestic and foreign debt in 2023, and Nigeria imposed onerous capital controls for multiple years. However, 2025 has been a turning point for both countries. For the first time in over a decade, investors in these markets are experiencing macroeconomic tailwinds. In Ghana, since the beginning of the year, the currency has appreciated 43% vs. the U.S. dollar, GDP growth averaged over 6%, the budget has been in primary surplus, inflation declined from 24% to 9%, and debt to GDP declined from 62% to 43%. Ghana’s macro environment has improved due to three factors: One, Ghana’s debt restructuring is mostly finished, and the country now has a much smaller interest expense burden, which should decline further as the central bank lowers rates to be more in line with the decline in inflation. Two, the new government which assumed power in January has cut spending 14% in real terms. Three, the country has been helped by the large increase in the gold price, which is both the country’s largest export and a significant component of Ghanaian central bank reserves. Ghana now has 4.8 months of import cover, half of which is held in gold bullion. Whether Ghana can maintain this strong start to the year is an open question, but the fundamentals are certainly in a better place than they have been in the past decade. In Nigeria, President Tinubu’s bold reforms upon taking office are finally starting to have some effect. In 2023, Tinubu eliminated the local fuel subsidy which consumed about 40% of the government’s annual revenues, floated the currency which resulted in a 68% depreciation, forced a recapitalization of the banking sector, and removed the board of the notoriously corrupt national oil company and replaced them with technocrats who formerly worked at companies like Exxon and Shell. While not perfect, the scale of the reforms is impressive by any standard. A year later, inflation has fallen from over 30% to the high teens and is expected to fall to single digits next year. Economic growth has increased from less than 3% to over 4%. Oil production is up more than 10% and oil theft is down 90%. Importantly, the exchange rate has been stable for a year and anecdotally, we are hearing that conditions on the ground are night and day different, businesses are looking to invest, and banks are willing to lend. We initially invested in Ghana and Nigeria in 2018 with the expectation that both countries would eventually adopt a sane set of macroeconomic policies. While it took longer than we expected, sane policy is gaining traction in both countries, and our superior companies are getting re-rated to more sensible, albeit still very cheap, valuations. In Ghana, our main investment has been in MTN Ghana, which has compounded at approximately 25% in U.S. dollar terms since 2018 despite all the on-the-ground challenges. The stock’s historical return understates our investment performance because we increased our weighting at opportune times. The total contribution to our P&L has been +$17.7 million over that time frame, resulting in a +24.9% cumulative contribution to fund returns. Our Nigerian investment results have also been strong. While our initial entry was poorly timed, we added counter-cyclically, and as a result have generated +$9 million of P&L, contributing a cumulative +15.0% to the fund’s return. Our experience in both markets underscores the importance of our investment strategy of looking at out-of-favor markets to find competitively advantaged, well-run businesses at unusually cheap valuations. NEW BOARD SEAT AT GRAN TIERRA ENERGY On September 30th, portfolio company Gran Tierra Energy announced that Brad Virbitsky has joined its board on our behalf. While it’s a relatively modest position size in the fund, we believe there is significant value to unlock and we can contribute to that process through our participation in the boardroom. Sincerely, Sean Fieler & Brad Virbitsky
By Kieran Brennan August 1, 2025
Dear Partners and Friends, PERFORMANCE Equinox Partners Precious Metals Fund, L.P. rose +13.2% in the second quarter of 2025 and is up +39.7% for the first half of 2025. By comparison, the Junior Gold Mining Index GDXJ rose +18.7% in the quarter and is up +58.7% for the first half of the year. Our meaningful year-to-date underperformance relative to the GDXJ reflects the continued discount at which our companies trade compared to peers. Specifically, our portfolio of producing companies trades at an average internal rate of return (IRR) of 24%, roughly double the 11.5% IRR of the broad universe of gold miners that BMO covers. the gold mining bull market is young The skepticism that characterizes the gold mining sector stands in sharp contrast to the enthusiasm in the broader stock market. The animal spirits that have propelled popular stocks like Wingstop and Robinhood to an average of nearly 80 times 2025 earnings remain totally absent among gold mining investors. One indication of the sober mood that dominates the gold mining sector is the use of gold price assumptions below spot in net asset value (NAV) calculations. Looking at four important sell-side houses for the sector, their models include an average long-term price assumption of $2,400 per ounce, representing a 28% discount to the quarter-end spot price. 
By Kieran Brennan July 24, 2025
Dear Partners and Friends, PERFORMANCE Equinox Partners, L.P. rose Equinox Partners, L.P. rose +11.6% net of fees in the second quarter and is up +24.1% for the year-to-date 2025. By comparison, the S&P 500 index rebounded +10.9% in the second quarter and is now up +6.2% for the year-to-date 2025. Our portfolio has performed well across the board this year, with our gold miners, oil and gas producers, and emerging market businesses all appreciating. We were particularly gratified by the long-overdue outperformance of several of our earlier stage gold companies in the first half of this year. With markets and complacency on the rise, we think it prudent to address the non-negligible risk of an economic downturn. Beware the Next Recession 
By Kieran Brennan July 23, 2025
Dear Partners and Friends, PERFORMANCE Kuroto Fund, L.P. appreciated +21.3% in the second quarter and is up +30.1% for the first half of 2025. By comparison, the broad MSCI Emerging Markets Index rose +12% in the second quarter and is up +15.3% for the first half of 2025. Key performance drivers for the fund have been our large position in MTN Ghana, as well as the strong returns from our holdings in Nigeria and the Republic of Georgia. A breakdown of Kuroto Fund exposures can be found here . Despite Kuroto Fund’s outperformance in the first half of the year, our portfolio remains very attractively valued. Given the diversity of business models we own, it is difficult to find metrics that provide an accurate picture of the value and quality of our portfolio in the aggregate. In the absence of an alternative, our portfolio’s weighted average price-to-earnings multiple of 7.3x 2025 earnings, dividend yield of 5.2% and ROE of 24.7% will have to do.
By Dan Donohue May 1, 2025
Dear Partners and Friends, PERFORMANCE Equinox Partners Precious Metals Fund, L.P. rose +23.4% in the first quarter of 2025. Over the same period the price of gold rose +18.9%. The fund’s performance was driven by strong returns from both the producing and exploration stage companies as gold crossed $3,000 per ounce. Trump's New Economic Policy Trump’s New Economic Policy has roiled markets and bolstered investor gold buying globally. While the violent market gyrations remain a focus for our team, we have also been thinking through the long-term effects of Trump’s policies. In this latter endeavor, Nixon’s 1971 New Economic Policy has proven an invaluable guide. The policy similarities between Nixon’s first term and Trump’s second are striking. Both presidents declared emergencies, raised tariffs, cut spending, reduced foreign aid, blamed foreigners, devalued the dollar , proposed tax cuts, attacked the Federal Reserve chair, and directly managed consumer prices. There are, of course, also meaningful differences. Most notably, Trump has raised tariffs more, devalued the dollar less, and has not imposed formal wage and price controls. Nevertheless, the policy resonance is striking.
By Kieran Brennan April 30, 2025
Dear Partners and Friends, PERFORMANCE Kuroto Fund, L.P. appreciated +7.3% in the first quarter of 2025, while the broad MSCI Emerging Markets index rose +3.0%. Kuroto performance for the quarter was driven primarily by the strong performance of our operating companies in Georgia and Ghana. A breakdown of Kuroto Fund exposures can be found here . Returning to Brazil Though the Kuroto Fund didn’t invest outside of Asia until 2014, as a firm we began investing in Brazil in the late 1990s and made our first sizable investment there in 2004. We have followed the market ever since. Given our love for the country of Brazil and admiration for many of the companies there, it has been challenging for us to remain mostly absent from Brazilian capital markets for the past decade. We stayed away for a variety of reasons, but primarily because we didn’t like the valuations on offer. So it is with more than a bit of enthusiasm that we were able to make two substantial investments in Brazil this January, taking our portfolio weighting in the country from 0% to 10%. Brazil remains a macroeconomic and political adventure, but today’s valuations are incredibly attractive. The Brazilian stock market is down over 40% in US dollars over the past 14 years. 
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