Equinox Partners, L.P. - Q1 2020 Letter

Dear Partners and Friends,

PERFORMANCE & PORTFOLIO

Equinox Partners lost -48.2% in the first quarter of 2020.

The first quarter of 2020

For a brief moment on Monday, February 24th, with gold up $85 and the S&P 500 down 5%, our decision to avoid U.S. stocks seemed like it was finally going to pay off. Not only were stock prices declining but the market was anticipating the fiscal and monetary response to these declines. Gold, it appeared, would become a must-own asset for a broader swath of investors. We were particularly well positioned, confident that if even a small fraction of the world’s wealth moved into gold, the price of gold and gold miners would rise dramatically.

Unfortunately, gold’s late-February high proved fleeting. As stocks crashed, gold also traded down as investors scrambled for U.S. dollars. Worse still, gold mining stocks began falling much faster than the stock market. At its lows on March 13th, the GDXJ gold mining index was down 48% for the YTD. The S&P was down a comparatively modest 16% at that point. Our positioning for the end of the bull market was dead wrong.

As of March 31st, our mining companies were down 40%, our E&P investments were down 80%, and our emerging market companies were down 15% for the year to date. Our fixed income shorts gained 4% in the first quarter, adding to our losses. As a result, Equinox Partners ended the first quarter of 2020 down 48%. We’ve managed to lose money in both the bull market in financial assets as well its end. That said, we are confident that the current chapter in financial history is far from over.

2020 Versus 2000

As in 2000, we believe that Equinox Partners’ current drawdown is a prelude to serious outperformance. Even the magnitude of this year’s decline is similar to what we experienced in late 1999 and early 2000. While our portfolio in the fall of 1999 was perfectly positioned for the next eight years, it declined 55% from the beginning of October 1999 through March 2000. During that six-month period, as in the first quarter of 2020, everything went against us. Then, over the following eight years, our fund increased fourteen-fold as the S&P rose just 1.5% cumulatively.

[2]

A confluence of factors contributed to the fund’s precipitous turn of the century and first quarter of 2020 declines. But, both periods are characterized by extreme peaks in financial assets and extreme lows in global commodity prices. The fifty-year graph of the S&P commodity index divided by the S&P 500 accurately captures these long-term trends. It is worth noting that by this measure, commodities are much cheaper today in relation to the S&P 500 then they were at the height of the tech bubble in early 2000.

Our eight-year run from April 2000 to February 2008, during which we compounded at 40% per year, was a result of many factors. First and foremost, post-peak 2000, we were mercifully free from the temptation to buy still-overvalued stocks just because they had declined. Our resistance to this temptation was in stark contrast to investors who participated in the tech bubble of the late 1990s and who struggled for years to buy anything other than the companies that they owned at ever lower prices.

Today, as in 2000, our companies simply jump off the page. Take Dundee Precious Metals and TBC as two cases in point. Dundee Precious Metals is a net-cash company with a market cap of $560m USD that we estimate will generate ~$175m of free cash flow in each of the next three years. There’s simply no reason why this company should trade at just 3.1x free cash flow. TBC, the best bank in the nation of Georgia, currently trades at 60% of book and at less than 3x trailing earnings. While it’s too early to tell how much TBC’s provisioning will increase and income will decline in 2020 because of the corona virus, we are confident of two things. First, TBC’s book value will not be impaired. Second, TBC will be able to generate a 20%+ ROE post-crisis. We haven’t seen valuations this compelling since 2000, not even at the lows of 2008.

In macroeconomic terms, 2020 is nothing like 2000. The macroeconomic imbalances of 2000 seem positively benign when compared to today’s situation. Both the Fed and the federal government have already taken unprecedented steps within two months of the stock market top. We expect the government’s “bold, persistent experimentation” to continue until such efforts prove obviously futile. We will manage our 9% short equity position accordingly, and we expect to generate most of our future returns from our undervalued longs.

Our Biggest Mistake

For more than a decade, first world central banks have adeptly supplied liquidity at the right moment and then balanced the supply and demand for U.S. Dollars, Yen, and Euros so as to keep inflationary expectations anchored. It seemed impossible to us that central bankers could manage this complicated dynamic, but they’ve done it over and over again. Broad disinflationary forces in the world economy gave central bankers free license to set the most important price in the economy, interest rates.

As a result of their success, our government bond shorts have been a disaster. Developed world central banks have ratcheted up the price of government bonds year after year, costing us and our partners over $200 million on a cumulative basis since 2008. We remain surprised that bond investors proved so eager to front-run central bank largess without any apparent concern about fiscal deficits. The market’s willingness to lend money to governments that can never pay it back is not a new phenomenon, but the eagerness to do so at ever lower rates is.

We were further mistaken not to anticipate that bonds would rally in a stock market crash even as deficits blew out to unimaginable levels. We are guilty of wishing that the markets wouldn’t rush to lend governments money even as they spent ever more profligately. In retrospect, we should have known that the central banks would set the price for their own government’s debt at ever higher levels until they had thoroughly debased their currencies.

Interestingly, government bonds in the U.S. not only rallied as stocks crashed this year, but they also rallied as stocks rose. The U.S. 30-year bond had already appreciated 8% for the year to date as the stock market peaked on February 19^th. As the stock market crashed, the 30-year bond rallied even further. At its peak, the U.S. 30-year bond offered a yield of less than 1% and was up an amazing 35% for the YTD. Bonds started the year on a tear and rose further as the economic situation deteriorated. In the end, this year’s abrupt, unidirectional bond rally endangered our other positions, and we covered a majority of our fixed income shorts in the first quarter, crystalizing our losses.

The End of the Fed's Balancing Act

Even if the Fed could print just the right amount of money to stabilize the economy without unmooring inflation expectations, we doubt this intervention would lay the groundwork for future economic growth. Can we honestly expect Americans to resume their pre-crisis rate of debt-fueled consumption now that they know their life and work can be disrupted by a virus at any point? The federal government, as powerful as it is, cannot simply pass a Collective Amnesia Act to get everyone to go on borrowing and consuming as though nothing happened.

Accordingly, there are two plausible ways to lay the groundwork for sustainable economic growth: debt reduction via bankruptcy and debt reduction via inflation. Making debt worth less in real terms without making money worthless is unlikely, but the possibility of less pain is always more politically attractive than the tough medicine of debt restructuring. Therefore, we believe that policymakers will attempt an orderly transfer of wealth from creditors to debtors.

The problem is that a gradual transfer of wealth is unlikely to spur debt-fueled consumption anytime soon. We’ve reached a point that only intentionally irresponsible monetary and fiscal policy will generate more economic activity. People, even scared people, will anticipate their purchase of a new car or a house if the price of that car or house is rising fast enough. The trick for policy makers is achieving that fear of rising prices without creating too many negative externalities. A string of Fed officials touting their infinite ability to print money on TV certainly looks like an attempt to signal their irresponsibility. We doubt that signal will be enough. We suspect the Fed will actually have to deliver on some inflation to spur consumption. While presumably well intended, this monetary strategy coupled with supply shortages will make for a particularly punishing environment for the American consumer.

On a happier note, the message of monetary irresponsibility has already registered with gold and silver retail investors. The physical supply of both gold and silver is tight, and premiums are high in the retail market. Roy Sebag, the CEO of Goldmoney which holds over $2 billion of gold and silver metal, has gone on record detailing the trouble he is having acquiring physical gold and silver at reasonable premiums. How it is that gold and silver ETFs continue to acquire massive amounts of physical metal at no premium while others cannot, is a growing mystery.

Should today’s physical shortages of gold and silver persist, investors will likely change the way they hold their precious metals. In normal times, investors prefer the convenience of holding gold and silver in its de-materialized form: paper. But at times of financial stress, those same investors often decide they would rather own the physical metal. When this happens, the investors inevitably discover that there is not enough physical metal to go around, and the price spikes. This is the exact situation that gold and silver markets are in today.

oil & gas: the capitulation

The oil war/corona virus combination finally forced the capitulation of a global oil industry that has been in a bear market for years. While $20 oil is obviously not sustainable, the industry has destroyed so much wealth that there are few asset allocators willing or able to invest based on 2021 or 2022 energy prices. The share prices of our two largest E&P companies have declined precipitously in this environment. Crew and Paramount are down 71% and 84% for the year to date and are down 98% and 96% from their 2011 peaks. Together these two companies have generated a loss of $94 million for our partnership over the past decade.

Amazingly, both of these companies have grown significantly since 2011. As such, on an enterprise value basis, we’re currently paying under $14,000 per flowing barrel per day at Crew and $8,500 per flowing barrel per day at Paramount. On a reserve basis, these companies are even cheaper. Today we are paying $1.45 for each barrel of reserves at Crew and $1.85 for each barrel of reserves at Paramount. Excluding the companies’ debt, the price per barrel of production and reserves of these two companies is just stupid.

The stock market clearly believes that E&P companies that have high debt-to-EBITDA ratios are not going to survive. As such, Crew and Paramount are likely worthless and certainly worth nothing more than an out-of-the-money option on much higher energy prices. This analysis overlooks the fact that today’s oil prices are in large part the result of a deliberate effort on the part of both Russia and Saudi Arabia to depress the oil price. Their attack on U.S. shale is working better than they could have imagined. As of this week, U.S. companies have already begun filing for bankruptcy. Whiting Petroleum sought protection from its creditors last week, and Callon and Chesapeake have hired restructuring advisors.

While the news of distressed liquidations seems bad, the lower oil prices go now the more quickly they will recover and the higher they will eventually be. Irresponsible, low-cost debt capital won’t be available again for U.S. producers for years. As such, those North American E&P companies that can weather the storm should enjoy years of strong returns as the industry insists on higher cash-on-cash returns.

Finally, it is worth noting that persistently low oil prices will improve the long-term fundamentals for natural gas in North America. In the unlikely scenario in which oil prices stay in the $20 range for the rest of the year, we’d expect natural gas prices to move up dramatically in 2021. Natural gas has not suffered demand destruction to the same extend that oil has, but capital budgets for new gas production are being cut along with oil budgets. For both Crew and Paramount, $4 gas would be even better than $50 oil.

Sincerely,

Sean Fieler

end notes

^[1] Sector exposures shown as a percentage of 3.31.20 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.

^[2] From April 2000 to February 2008

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Value Investor Insight Interview October 2025 Issue with Sean and Brad

By Kieran Brennan • November 11, 2025

Value Investor Insight Profile with Sean Fieler and Brad Virbitsky

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.