Equinox Partners Precious Metals, L.P. - Q1 2016 Letter

Dear Partners and Friends,

current positions


Roxgold Inc

Led by CEO John Dorward, Roxgold is a new gold producer in Burkina Faso trading for about seven times forward cash flow. John and his team have built other mines in West Africa and are utilizing this experience to great effect at their Yaramoko project. This small, high grade mine has ramped up very quickly since its first gold pour in May 2016, with better performance than expected in terms of tonnage, grade and recoveries thus far. While we await financial results reflecting this good operational performance, we suspect that the company is already cash flow positive. Going forward, the company will allocate capital between paying down debt used to finance the construction of the project and exploring the regional land package around the mine. Exploration success would allow the company to increase production capacity with minimal incremental capital, and the initial signs here are positive.


Mandalay Resources

Led by CEO Mark Sander and Chairman Brad Mills—who together with their partners own almost 10% of the company—Mandalay trades for about five times cash flow. Mandalay pursues one of the most unique business models we have encountered in the mining space. Operational experts, they look for mismanaged assets that they can acquire cheaply and fix. They use strict financial parameters when acquiring assets to ensure ample reward for the risk they are taking on. Mandalay currently operates three mines in Chile, Australia, and Sweden. Management’s long-term track record of operational improvements is impressive and has generated very good returns on invested capital. In addition, the company has had success in extending the lives of the mines they’ve acquired through investments in exploration. Because struggling mines tend to be short on cash, the assets Mandalay acquires often have low hanging fruit from an exploration perspective. The company’s low valuation reflects the relatively short mine lives of its assets. Exploration success, therefore, is particularly impactful with Mandalay.



Gold Road Resources

Led by CEO Ian Murray and his chief geologist Justin Osborne, Gold Road trades at about 80% of NAV at spot prices, and about $80 per ounce of gold in resources. Ian and Justin have produced one of the best gold discoveries in recent years with an intelligent approach to exploration. Gold Road owns a massive property called Yamarna in Western Australia. Realizing they did not have the resources to explore the entire land package, management brought in a partner on the southern half of the property and focused their resources on the northern half, where they made a discovery called Gruyere. Gruyere has advanced quickly from initial discovery in 2014 and the company expects to release a feasibility study on the project later this year. Under the right financing conditions the company could go into construction as soon as next year. Gruyere itself has reserves of 3.2 million ounces within a resource of 6.2 million ounces, giving it the scale sought by larger mining companies. Meanwhile, the company and its joint venture partner have been generating a host of exploration targets on the rest of the property. The size of Gruyere will support the large initial capital investment needed to operate in such a remote location, substantially lowering the hurdle for new discoveries on the rest of the property. Ideally, further exploration success will help keep investor interest during the construction period, or entice an acquirer to come forward.


Torex Gold Resources

Led by CEO Fred Stanford, an experienced operator who spent most of his career in Inco’s Sudbury operations, and Chairman Terry MacGibbon, a serial entrepreneur from Vancouver, Torex operates the Morelos project in Guerrero, Mexico and trades for about eight times cash flow. Fred and Terry bought the asset from a larger company after difficulties with the local communities halted work on the property. Since then, they have been deliberate about cultivating good relationships in the community and with state and federal level officials. The value of this approach was demonstrated by the swift and peaceful resolution of a recent blockade by a few local families. The mine itself is among the largest gold projects to start up in the last few years and will produce nearly 300 thousand ounces annually over its life. Longer term, management has ambitious plans to bring on a second deposit they have found. Located underground and across a river, the project presents major engineering challenges, but could potentially double the reserves of the company.


Dundee Precious Metals

Run by CEO Rick Howes and Chairman Johnathan Goodman, Dundee trades for five times current cash flow, which could drop to as low as two times with growth over the next few years. Dundee has been a long term holding for the firm and, admittedly, something of a problem child, but we have known Johnathan for a long time and believe he will take the right steps to realize value. Dundee owns the Chelopech mine in Bulgaria. Chelopech was purchased cheaply in a privatization and Dundee has done a good job modernizing the infrastructure and culture of the mine. However, Chelopech produces a copper-gold concentrate that is high in arsenic, and few smelters will treat it. When initial plans to build a treatment facility in Bulgaria fell through, the company was forced to buy a smelter in Namibia that was nearly bankrupt. In the ensuing five years, the company spent massively to modernize the smelter and clean up inherited environmental issues. However, we believe that the market has fundamentally misunderstood that the period of heavy investment is over. Going forward, Dundee will continue to operate Chelopech and the smelter should start to generate positive cash flow. Their Krumovgrad project, also in Bulgaria, is a high-return opportunity that will meaningfully increase gold production. Encouragingly, the company has sold off its troublesome operation in Armenia, a sign of a more disciplined approach to capital allocation going forward.


Bear Creek Mining

Bear Creek owns the Corani project in Peru, one of the largest undeveloped silver deposits in the world, valued at just $1 per ounce of reserves. The CEO, Andy Swarthout, is a geologist who lives in Peru and discovered the deposit. Supported by a strong, experienced board, Andy has shepherded the company’s capital structure extremely effectively through the difficulties brought on by both politics in Peru and the bear market in silver. Bear Creek owns a second asset, Santa Ana, which was meant to be their first mine, but they ran into problems with the local community during an election year, and the government stripped their license to operate the project. Having failed to come to a negotiated resolution, the company is pursuing arbitration, with a judgment likely sometime next year. Meanwhile, the company has advanced Corani through engineering and permitting. Located in rural Peru and at high elevation, Corani probably needs silver prices higher than $20 to justify development, but the scarcity value of a silver asset of this scale cannot be understated. We expect that a larger silver company will pay a hefty premium to buy Corani in a better silver price environment. In the meantime, management pushes the project towards being “shovel ready”. A favorable arbitration ruling on Santa Ana could reduce the capital needed to fund Corani and lower dilution to existing equity holders.


Beadell Resources

Led by Simon Jackson, who was a key member of management at Red Back Mining—one of our most successful mining investments in the last cycle—Beadell is a turnaround story in Brazil that trades for about six times cash flow. Simon and his team came in late last year after previous management proved incapable of operating the Tucano mine properly. Simon quickly executed a capital raise to reduce debt levels and made a number of operational changes at site to improve production and lower costs. With some benefit from the lower Brazilian Real and higher gold prices, the mine is now generating cash, which is being deployed back into exploration. The land package has been historically underexplored and this represents the greatest opportunity for Beadell. Already the early results suggest that mineralization continues laterally and at depth from the current open pit reserves. Further down the line, we believe Simon will use Beadell as a vehicle to build a multi-asset company as he did at Red Back.


Fortuna Silver

Fortuna is a silver and gold producer operating in Mexico and Peru. The management team, led by CEO Jorge Ganoza and his brother CFO Luis Ganoza, are based in Lima, Peru, and focus on acquiring and running assets to generate profits, which sounds simple but is in fact all too rare in this industry. Fortuna trades for about eight times cash flow. The San Jose mine in Mexico is the flagship asset, and Fortuna recently completed an expansion project to increase production and capitalize on the growth in the resource generated by exploration success along the trend of the ore body. San Jose is a low-cost, long-lived mine with further exploration upside. It’s progression over the years is indicative of Fortuna’s approach to the mining business. They acquired San Jose cheaply and have built its value through good operational execution and exploration success: throughput capacity is now three times higher than when they opened the mine. Recently, Fortuna acquired a development project in Argentina that offers them the opportunity to replicate the success they have had at San Jose.


Premier Gold Mines

Led by CEO Ewan Downie, Premier has been one of the savviest companies at making deals over the course of the cycle and owns a portfolio of development and exploration properties in Canada and the United States. For instance, they divested a royalty portfolio when multiples for those assets expanded dramatically and purchased an advanced development asset, South Arturo, from Goldcorp when the company needed to raise cash to shore up its balance sheet. Today Premier has near term production coming from South Arturo, a longer-term development asset called Hardrock, and a pipeline of exploration properties. We like Premier’s approach of having multiple irons in the fire, and allocating capital based on where it can get the highest expected returns. For a company this size to have joint ventures or other partnerships with Barrick, Goldcorp, and Newmont (all among the largest producers in the industry) speaks to Ewan’s ability to find and execute deals. Premier trades at a slight discount to our sum of the parts valuation, so we have access to management’s acumen for free.  


MAG Silver

MAG Silver is lead by CEO George Paspalas and a strong board of credible industry veterans. The major asset is the Juanicipio joint venture and we estimate that MAG trades at about nine times cash flow expected when Juanicipio reaches full production. MAG has been a long-term holding for the firm due to the unrivaled quality of Juanicipio. The joint venture is advancing the asset, driving a tunnel to access the ore body, and completing engineering work on surface infrastructure. We expect them to opt for a larger plant than the market is currently considering, on the basis of the exploration success at depth last year. Unfortunately, due to permitting delays, follow up to this success has been slow, but we anticipate the next round of drill results in the next few weeks. These results should give a better sense of the size potential of Juanicipio, and could lead to material upgrades of estimates of the company’s cash flow and NPV.


Tahoe Resources

CEO Kevin Macarthur created Tahoe as a vehicle to replicate the success he generated at Glamis Gold. Trading for ten times cash flow today, Tahoe started as a single-development asset in Guatemala that was spun out from Goldcorp, which wanted to lower its exposure to the country. In the six years since, Tahoe has built the Escobal mine, one of the largest and highest-grade silver mines globally, and acquired two companies with operating and development assets in Peru and Canada. Now a multi-asset producer, we believe that its high-quality asset base and disciplined growth strategy set Tahoe apart from other intermediate producers.


Endeavour Mining

Endeavour is run by CEO Sebastien de Montessus with key support on the board from Naguib Suwiris, and trades for about six times cash flow. Endeavour has engineered a massive turn around in the last eighteen months that has completely transformed itself. Built by merging together several assets in West Africa during the last cycle, Endeavour entered the downturn with high levels of debt and margins that evaporated quickly in a falling gold price environment. The company rolled up its sleeves, cutting costs to restore profitability. Having achieved this breathing room, management engaged in a series of transactions that have substantially improved the company’s portfolio. They acquired the La Mancha Resources which also brought a strategic partnership with the Egyptian billionaire, Suwiris, the major owner of La Mancha, who in turn became a core shareholder of Endeavour and joined the board. He also brought his trusted managers, including Sebastien, who are French nationals with careers at the uranium miner Areva. In French-speaking West Africa, this is a major asset that Endeavour previously lacked. Since then, the company has divested and purchased assets and, taking advantage of a rising share price, raised fresh equity to reduce debt. Today the company has a high-quality portfolio of mines in Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Burkina Faso, as well as several development-stage opportunities which represent attractive investments going forward.


Altius Minerals

The only company in the portfolio currently that is not primarily exposed to gold or silver, we own Altius for its attractive portfolio of royalties and for the skill of its management team led by CEO Brian Dalton. Altius trades for about twelve times cash flow from its royalty portfolio. Brian is one of the most creative and ambitious thinkers we have encountered in the industry, and he has a simple goal: to prove that mineral exploration can be a good investment through all parts of the cycle. He runs his business with a mentality that is familiar to us as value investors, trying to buy assets during downturns and then selling down his portfolio in the boom times. Outside of the royalty portfolio, Altius focuses on early stage, grass roots exploration. The company stakes large tracts of land and seeks partners to spend the high-risk capital needed to test for mineral deposits. This model reduces Altius’ risk, allowing the company to accumulate many lottery tickets cheaply. And, if their partners hit, Altius stands to gain substantially. It’s a smart model but requires patience and discipline; Altius has a twenty year track record demonstrating both.


Orezone

Orezone owns the Bombore project in Burkina Faso. Run by Ron Little, who has more than twenty years experience operating in the country, Orezone is poised to be one of the better development stories in the next gold cycle. Orezone trades for about 80% of our estimated NAV and two times cash flow when in production. The company has an innovative plant design that will allow them to put a heap leach mine into production for relatively low upfront capital, and then use the cash flow from this operation to build a larger facility to process the rest of the ore at the project. When fully ramped up, Bombore has the scale to appeal to larger mining companies and could be an attractive acquisition target.


Goldquest Mining

Led by Chairman Bill Fisher and President Julio Espaillat, Goldquest is another of our development stage holdings and trades for about 80% of our estimated NAV. The company’s Romero project is located in the western part of the Dominican Republic. Romero hosts a high-grade copper/gold deposit that the company is advancing towards feasibility stage. We think the economics on the existing ore body justify development, but the company also boasts a substantial land package that they will start to drill this summer, testing for similar structures. Management has permitted and built mines in the country previously and is well placed to permit Romero, which is an important factor since they need to prove that the mine won’t interfere with local water sources.


Aurico Metals

Aurico is run by young CEO Chris Ricther and is a hybrid company, holding both a royalty portfolio as well as a major development asset called Kemess Underground. Trading for twelve times royalty cash flow, Kemess has little more than option valuie in the stock price currently. We expect that in due time the company will sell or spin off the royalties in order to highlight the value at Kemess. They are aiming to secure permits for development of the project before taking this step. While not the highest-grade project out there, Kemess benefits from extensive existing infrastructure that remains from an earlier open pit operation at the site, which lowers the capital needed to bring the underground into production.





positions sold


Dalradian

We sold Dalradian after a thorough review of the technical report issued on its most recent resource update. Dalradian owns the Curraghinalt deposit in Northern Ireland. A series of high-grade, narrow veins, the deposit will be, in our view, difficult to mine without substantial dilution of grade. The company has indicated that they are still reviewing options for how to mine the deposit, ahead of releasing a feasibility study later this year. We think it is too risky to own the company without the benefit of the feasibility study demonstrating what the economics look like. We will reconsider the investment when this information is released.


Kaminak

Kaminak serves as a useful validation of our thesis that high-quality development projects will be in high demand, as the company was acquired by Goldcorp shortly after we began building a position. With no rival bids likely to emerge, we sold our position prior to the deal closing and redeployed the proceeds.







Sincerely,


Sean Fieler 

Precious Metals Fund - Q3 2025 Letter

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.

Equinox Partners, L.P. - Q3 2025 Letter

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.

Kuroto Fund Wins 2025 HFM US Global Equity Award

By Kieran Brennan • October 30, 2025
Kuroto Fund Wins HFM 2025 US Performance Award

Kuroto Fund, L.P. - Q3 2025 Letter

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

Precious Metals Fund - Q2 2025 Letter

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. 

Equinox Partners, L.P. - Q2 2025 Letter

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 

Kuroto Fund, L.P. - Q2 2025 Letter

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.

Precious Metals Fund - Q1 2025 Letter

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.

Kuroto Fund, L.P. - Q1 2025 Letter

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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