Equinox Partners, L.P. - Q4 2020 Letter

Dear Partners and Friends,

PERFORMANCE & PORTFOLIO

Equinox Partners rose +24.6% in the fourth quarter of 2020 and was up +33.1% for the full year[1]

[1]

Our value investing discipline doesn’t protect us from being wrong, and we certainly made our share of mistakes in 2020. For example, we began 2020 short both Tesla and government bonds. Our value orientation did, however, prevent us from getting disoriented last spring.  In March, it was obvious to us what we needed to do. We covered our shorts and bought companies at incredibly low prices. As a result of these actions, our fund more than recovered after having been down over 50% in late March.


While buying near the lows and covering most of our shorts during the market crash was obvious in hindsight, at the time, it took real conviction. Our timely purchases of Crew Energy and RTG Mining have proven particularly beneficial to the fund.  Both companies are now top-five positions.  With respect to our short covering, our decisions to cover Tesla and much of our fixed income short exposure were also critical to our fund’s 2020 returns.   Given the financial significance of these decisions, each merits a fulsome description.


We increased our positon in Crew Energy by over 50% between March 12th and March 24th. We then topped up our holding when the opportunity presented itself again on April 20th and April 21st. At its lows, Crew Energy was trading as if it was bankrupt. It was not. The market failed to grasp the attractive nature of the Crew’s debt—a $300m bond due in 2024 with no covenants. Crew had the luxury to wait for oil and gas to rebound. Not only were we confident that the sector’s history of imprudent overinvestment was behind us and that hydrocarbon prices would not remain below replacement costs, but even in the unlikely case that energy prices remained depressed through 2024, we thought that Crew’s equity was worth substantially more than $15m USD.


The second critical purchase decision we made last spring was increasing our position in RTG mining. Like Crew, we had a small positon in RTG at the beginning of the year. Accordingly, when the company chose to raise a modest amount capital in the spring we were perfectly positioned. Given the low price at which RTG was trading, the company’s insiders limited the equity offer to just $3.8m USD to minimize dilution. While modest in size, this equity sale was just the right entry point for us as we were looking to deploy capital with a management team and asset we already knew well.


The third decision—which should not be glossed over—was our active management of our short portfolio. Our short exposure ended up costing 7% of partners’ capital in 2020. But, these losses could have been much worse had we not aggressively trimmed our exposure as the stock market became increasingly frothy last fall. The more ebullient the market became, the more we shifted our short exposure to mundane companies, like Planet Fitness. While we lost money on these shorts as well, we are certain that money-losing, over-levered gyms are not worth 13x revenues. The combination of such extreme valuation and such pedestrian business models reinforced our confidence that we remain in the very late stages of extreme financial overvaluation.

yearend Top-five holdings

MAG Silver: 18.8% of 12.31.20 Partners’ Capital

MAG’s Juancipio joint venture is one of the world’s highest-grade silver mine. At an eventual 8,000 tonnes per day of production, the joint venture will produce 10 million ounces of silver per year at a cash cost of less than zero. For Mag’s 44% net interest, the JV will generate 4.4 million ounces. With spot silver over $25 USD per ounce, that equates to ~$100m in pre-tax free cash flow for MAG. The JV can sustain this level of production for more than a decade based on the existing resource, and there is good reason to believe that the deposit will grow in size as the joint venture identifies other economic orebodies on the joint venture property.


Despite the quality of the Juancipio joint venture, MAG Silver has long traded at a discounted valuation because of Fresnillo’s bad behavior as the majority partner in the joint venture. Fresnillo’s decision to slow walk the investment decision at Juancipio as they pushed ahead with their 100% owned properties infuriated MAG shareholders. With production fast approaching, however, the concerns about the timeline have begun to recede and the value of MAG has increased accordingly. While there could be further delays to the timeline, given the decline in production elsewhere in the Fresnillo district, Fresnillio is as motivated as MAG at this point to bring the Juancipio joint venture into production.


More importantly, with MAG now fully financed and Peter Barns assuming the Chairmanship of MAG this past summer, the company is well positioned to demonstrate its credentials as a savvy capital allocator. The joint venture should enjoy many years of high free cash flow as well as high-return investment opportunities. Given Peter Barn’s background at Wheaton Precious Metals, we expect he will clearly communicate a sophisticated financial approach to develop the joint venture and thereby achieve a premium valuation.


Bear Creek: 12.8% of 12.31.20 Partners’ Capital

Bear Creek is on the verge of financing its fully-permitted Corani project in Peru. The company has all its permits in place and has been working on a financing package for more than a year. If the company can secure 70%+ of the required $600m USD via an off-take agreement and debt package, its stock should rerate dramatically.


The project to be financed, Corani, is one of the largest undeveloped silver mines in the world. With 225m ounces of silver reserves, 2.7b pounds of lead, and 1.8b pounds of zinc, the contained metal value of the deposit exceeds $10 billion USD. Per the company’s December 2019 feasibility study, the project has an IRR of +20% and an NPV of $531m. With silver, zinc, and lead prices up substantially since late 2019, the project’s IRR and NPV have improved sharply.


There are two principal sticking points for the project: banks’ willingness to finance greenfield projects and Peruvian politics. The coronavirus downturn had clearly had a negative impact on the financial wherewithal of the banks that might finance such a project. Accordingly, good projects like Corani are being slow walked and then stuck in credit committees. With respect to Peruvian politics, the impeachment of President Vizcarra with just five months left in his term reminded investors once again that all is not well in Peru. As a result, lenders will likely want to wait until the after the presidential election of 2021 before extending a multi-year loan to Bear Creek.


For the company’s part, Tony Hawkshaw, Alan Hair, and Eric Caba are technically well qualified to negotiate and structure the necessary offtake agreements. We’ve also been pleased with the company’s prudence with respect to shareholder dilution. Bear Creek’s modest recent equity issuance is a case in point.  This financial prudence, we believe, is a result of insiders’ ownership and a concentrated shareholder base.


Paramount: 9.5% of 12.31.20 Partners’ Capital

From its 2014 peak of just over $60 to its March 2020 trough of just under $1, the shares of Paramount declined 98.4% in slightly less than 6 years. Surprisingly, this 98.4% decline occurred while the company’s hydrocarbon production per share more than doubled. Underlying the collapse in Paramount’s share price is the decline in the oil prices. In the summer of 2014 when Paramount’s shares peaked, West Texas Intermediate crude fall from $105 to $45. The collapse in oil prices in 2014 happened at the worst time for Paramount, having borrowed heavily to complete a processing facility that ended up being both delayed and over budget. 


Paramount’s traumatic near death experience has had a clearly positive effect on management behavior. Jim Riddell rationalized the company’s portfolio and middle-management. More importantly, both the company and its leadership has matured. They have a better appreciation for their own strengths and weakness, they realize they are good contrarian deal markers, and they don’t need to complicate that value-add with unneeded execution risk.


Like Crew, Paramount has more infrastructure and transportation commitments than makes sense at its current level of production. And like Crew, Paramount plans to go against the current market orthodoxy and grow production significantly next year. With its Q3 release, the company unveiled a plan to grow production 20% year over year by outspending cash flow by $100m in the first half of 2021. Once that growth is complete, Paramount will have a more sustainable cost structure that should allow it to generate $50m of free cash flow in the second half of 2021. 


At current strip pricing, and if Paramount’s 2021 investments go according to plan, the company will have a sustainable leverage ratio by the second half of next year. Should that occur, Paramount will start to look very undervalued very quickly. Going forward, we expect Jim Riddell and his team to continue to make value-creating capital allocation decisions. Their decision to acquire shares of Nuvista Energy at 60 cents early last summer is one such example. Paramount is well positioned to grow and consolidate its core area as one of the survivors at scale in the Western Sedimentary Basin.


Crew Energy: 7.1% of 12.31.20 Partners’ Capital

From its year-end 2016 price of $7.50 to its March 2020 trough of 14.5 cents, the shares of Crew Energy declined 98% in just over 3 years. What’s remarkable is that this 98% decline occurred while the company’s hydrocarbon production per share remained roughly the same. Three things caused the share price decline: the decline in oil and gas prices, the market’s concern about Crew’s solvency, and the price the market is willing to pay for oil and gas companies. 


As of January 13th, 2021 WTI oil is trading at $53 and Henry Hub gas is trading at $2.75. At these prices, the North American oil and gas industry can grow modestly if desired. The industry, however, is wary of growth given the ongoing uncertainty of the pandemic as well as the low market valuation of the sector. As a result, most large North American E&P companies are cutting back on capital expenditures and using cash flow to buy back shares and pay down debt.


Crew’s management, in contrast to almost all of their peers, is using today’s prices to grow into its infrastructure. Prior to the last down cycle, Crew had invested in infrastructure and transportation commitments to support 40kbpd+ of production. Due to the drop in pricing, Crew has been stuck at 22kbpd. As a result, Crew has been suffering from additional costs for infrastructure and transportation commitments that they couldn’t use.


In December, Crew’s management announced their plan to remedy this situation. Over the next 24 months Crew will grow their production to ~32k bpd from its current production of 22k bpd. Crew is largely funding this growth by borrowing an additional $50m from its banking syndicate. While this strategy is not without risk, Crew hedged a large portion of its production for the next two years to protect itself against another downturn in commodity prices. 


Once production reaches 28k bpd in 2022, Crew expects to generate $140-$150m in cash flow and have ~$300-$350m in debt, which will bring its debt-to-cash-flow multiple to 2.0x-2.5x. This level of production will generate $40-$50m of free cash flow for further debt pay downs or share buybacks should the share price warrant it. 


Finally, it is worth highlighting that Shell and its partners are going ahead with their LNG facility on Canada’s west coast. Crew’s portfolio of thousands of drilling locations is one of the cheapest ways for a supermajor like Shell to acquire the necessary resources for its project. While we have no intention of selling out, nor does management, the strategic value of Crew’s land package merits a special mention. 


RTG: 6.3% of 12.31.20 Partners’ Capital

RTG is the spin-out of CGA Mining, a company we owned a decade ago. In 2013, the team at CGA sold its Masbate mine in the Philippines to B2Gold and spun out its early-stage assets into a new entity called RTG.  While we elected not to keep our shares in the spin-co, we were pleased with CGA’s sale to B2Gold and with the clear alignment that RTG chairman Michael Carrick and CEO Justine Magee had with their shareholders. So, we jumped at the chance to invest with that team again in 2018 when the opportunity presented itself.   


After our initial investment in July of 2018, the shares of RTG fell by 50% as the company failed to make much progress in moving the Mabilo deposit in the Philippines toward production or solidify its 30% ownership of the Panguna asset in Bougainville. This year, by contrast, the path to production for both of these projects improved meaningfully. In the case of Mabilo, the new Minster of Environment in the Philippines, Roy Cimatu, fast-tracked the project and RTG resolved a legal dispute with a former contractor. In the hope of positive developments, we increased our position in April and July through a series of small private placements. Thus far, these investments have been a good decision. Over the past eight months, the stock has quadrupled. Amazingly, RTG remains severely undervalued.


The company’s Mabilo project has an NPV of $473 million according to its 2019 feasibility study. This study, however, was done at $2.50 lb. copper. Today copper is trading at $3.56. The 5% NAV of the project at today’s metal prices is in excess of $600m by our calculation. More importantly, the vast majority of the capital for the project can be generated internally by RTG through the direct shipment of a high-grade starter pit that is 20% copper. While neither the financing nor the surface rights have been secured, we believe the project is likely to move forward in calendar 2021.


If RTG’s Mabilo project does proceed, the seven years of hard work that the board and executive team have put in nurturing that asset will finally pay off. This fall, Sean Fieler joined the board at RTG. We see this as a unique opportunity to build a larger gold-mining company with very little dilution, given the way RTG’s asset development can be sequenced. In the best-case scenario, RTG will soon be in position to redevelop the Panguna mine, an asset of truly world-class scale.








Sincerely,


Equinox Partners Investment Management

end notes

[1] Sector exposures shown as a percentage of 12.31.20 pre-redemption AUM. Performance contribution is derived in U.S. dollars, gross of fees and fund expenses. Interest rate swaps notional value and P&L are included in Fixed Income. P&L on cash is excluded from the table as are market value exposures for derivatives. Unless otherwise noted, all company data is derived from internal analysis, company presentations, or Bloomberg.  All values are as of 12.31.18 unless otherwise noted. MAG Silver valuation using first full year of production and estimatied 8,000 tpd throughput.

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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