Kuroto Fund, L.P. - Q2 2023 Letter

Dear Partners and Friends,

PERFORMANCE

Kuroto Fund appreciated +6.5% in the second quarter and gained +9.7% in the first half of 2023.

Visit our performance page to view the Kuroto Fund, L.P. fund summary in more detail.

Generating returns in good and bad markets

Kuroto Fund’s 24-year history can clearly be divided into two periods. For the first eight years of the fund, from January 1999 to the peak of October 2007, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index increased more than five-fold and compounded at a 21% annualized rate. Since 2007, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index has compounded at just 0.5% per year. Kuroto Fund outperformed in both periods. During the first period ending in October 2007, Kuroto compounded at an incredible +29.0% per year. Since 2007, Kuroto Fund has compounded at a much more modest +3.9% per year.

In the initial eight-year period, our investment successes were straightforward. We bought stocks that appreciated rapidly and then sold them. For instance, we held positions in Namyang Dairy and Dabur for approximately three years during which they increased five-fold in dollar terms on average. Inco Indonesia, even more impressively, rose more than thirty-fold in just over three and a half years. We bought each of these companies at mid-to-low single-digit multiples of free cash flow and sold them at more reasonable multiples on much higher earnings.

The period from October 2007 to 2023 has been much more challenging. Over the past almost sixteen years, we had to work hard to generate modest returns. To illustrate how we achieved these returns since 2007, the following letter outlines our buy and sell decisions in four companies that have generated good IRRs and have made the greatest contribution to Kuroto Fund’s performance over that period.

FPT

- First bought: June 2014 / Current 6% position

- Dollar contribution: $27.9m of period’s $34.6m / Avg. period AUM $181m

- Fund contribution: +33%

- Return of stock from initial purchase: +576%

- Return of fund from initial purchase: +81%

- IRR based on purchases and sales: +16%

We first purchased shares in FPT in 2014. At the time, FPT was a Vietnamese conglomerate with several business lines that didn’t fit together: the third largest local broadband cable company; the second largest cell phone retailer; an IT distribution company; and a small but quickly growing tech outsourcing business focused on Japan. While we were skeptical about the quality of some of FPT’s businesses, nevertheless we believed that FPT had a real competitive advantage as the only private broadband company in Vietnam. The meritocratic culture at FPT in which young people could join and rise through the ranks without connections struck us as obviously superior to the incentive structure at the company’s state-run competitors.

To our delight, FPT has outperformed our most optimistic expectations. Dr. Binh, the company’s controlling shareholder, turned out to be an excellent entrepreneur. He sold majority stakes in FPT’s two, low-quality businesses: the cell phone retailer and the technology distribution business. The broadband business, after a period of heavy investment, has compounded revenue at double digits and seen margin improvement, allowing earnings to grow faster than our expectations. But the real surprise has been the success of the education and global technology businesses.

Leveraging FPT’s brand as the country’s best place to work in technology, the company created FPT University, which has become one of Vietnam’s premier technology education institutions and presently enrolls over 100k students. This business is highly profitable and a meaningful contributor to the bottom line. Moreover, this business has provided a steady flow of new graduates for the global technology-outsourcing business. FPT’s global technology-outsourcing business has grown into the group’s biggest business by far. The business line has expanded from Japan to have a large presence in the U.S., Europe, and the rest of Asia. And, it has moved up the value chain from very low-end technology outsourcing to higher-end digital-transformation services. FPT now owns the country’s largest and most impressive technology ecosystem and is in a stronger position to grow today than it was when we initially invested.

As the chart above shows, we allowed the position size grow to over 20% of the fund, only meaningfully reducing the position as the opportunity to invest in extremely undervalued oil and gas businesses presented itself last year. Today, FPT is 6% of our fund. It trades at a mid-teens earnings multiple and is still growing earnings around 20% per year. Our investment success in FPT is proof that a strong corporate culture can help an organization overcome serious challenges and generate value for long-term shareholders.

LOGO YAZILIM

- First bought: August 2018 / Current 2.4% position

- Dollar contribution: $9.6m of period’s $17.1m / Avg. period AUM $86m

- Fund contribution: +15%

- Return of stock from initial purchase: +67%

- Return of fund from initial purchase: +61%

- IRR based on purchases and sales: +47%

We purchased shares of Logo Yazilim in the summer of 2018 as the Turkish lira was in freefall and the U.S. government was threatening to destroy the Turkish economy with sanctions over the imprisonment of Pastor Andrew Brunson. We had been following Logo since 2014, had spoken to management several times, and had identified it as a business that we would love to own at the right price. The summer of 2018 delivered that price.

Logo was and remains the dominant enterprise resource planning (ERP) software company in Turkey for small-and-medium-sized businesses. By 2018, the company was well-positioned to navigate Turkey’s periodic macroeconomic and geopolitical storms and thrive in a more benign environment. Logo’s customers face enormous switching costs, so the company had the ability to increase prices in-line with inflation after a modest lag. In addition, ERP was very underpenetrated throughout the country, so the growth opportunity was large. Moreover, the company had little debt and traded at just 8x forward earnings estimates. Because of the high equity-market volatility caused by the crisis, we were able to buy over 5% of the company in a short amount of time and became one of the largest shareholders outside of the founder.

As Turkey’s 2018 crisis progressed and ultimately passed, Logo not only survived, but thrived. The ERP business grew substantially, its Romanian subsidiary turned profitable and became a meaningful contributor, and the company took advantage of a regulation change to ramp up a tax compliance software business that has grown from nothing to over 20% of the top line. By 2021, the market understood the quality of the business, and the shares re-rated to over 20x earnings. As a result, we reduced our position from a high of 17% of the fund to around 6%.

In 2022, the USD value of Logo’s shares declined significantly again as the stock was punished by a combination of the lira’s decline and a stock market derating as foreign investors fled the Turkish equity market. We increased our position as the shares declined, believing that we could again generate good returns owning Logo. This investment thesis worked for a while but we decided to sell most of our position in early 2023 as it became apparent that Turkey’s latest economic difficulties weren’t going to recede quickly.

Today, Logo’s shares have derated to 10x earnings. The business remains very resilient and the opportunity for growth in a better economic environment remains, but the company fundamentals are hard to forecast because of the macroeconomic environment in Turkey. With the political situation clarified, and Erdogan beginning to implement a more orthodox economic team, there is reason for hope. At the moment, we are waiting for a bit more clarity before adding to our Logo position. Today, Logo is a 2% position in our fund. Our successful investment in Logo reminds us of the importance of maintaining a buy list of well-researched businesses in case the opportunity presents itself.

LG H&H

Metrics from inception of accounting system in 2007

- First bought: June 2003 / Last sold: March 2019

- Dollar contribution: $42.1m of period’s $226.4m / Avg. period AUM $337m

- Fund contribution: +14%

- Return of stock from 2007: +1680%

- Return of fund from 2007: +1205%

- IRR based on purchases and sales: +22%

LG H&H is an early vintage investment that we initially bought in June of 2003 and held through the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. After the Asian Crisis in the late 1990s, LG H&H had struggled with declining market share in their door-to-door cosmetics business, and the management team was not sure how to improve the company’s margins on its household branded products business. On top of these problems, LG H&H had a leveraged balance sheet following an acquisition spree in the mid-1990s.

The silver lining to all these problems was that the LG group parent company had recently hired an experienced Proctor & Gamble executive to be the new CEO of LG H&H and granted him relatively large amounts of autonomy within the LG chaebol. This meant that as minority shareholders we would benefit from Western style capital allocation and business rationalization at LG H&H. Furthermore, we were able to buy LG H&H preferred shares at a meaningful discount to the common shares even though they had the same economic characteristics. This was a quirk of the Korean market that allowed us to hold onto the shares for over a decade with a high margin of safety even as LG H&H’s common shares traded at a valuation that was close to fair value.

The turnaround of LG H&H worked much better than we expected. Management was able to stabilize the company’s market share in its high margin cosmetics business and turned around its home care product line. They rationalized SKUs and focused on the 20% of the brands that generated 80% of the profit. As a result, the company more than doubled margins, meaningfully grew the top line, and deleveraged its balance sheet. The company then launched an aggressive growth strategy in China that was incredibly successful.

The stock we bought re-rated from a mid-single-digit earnings multiple to a mid-teens multiple as LG H&H transformed into an easier to understand, high return on capital branded products business with a pristine balance sheet and a proven management team. The CEO from Procter & Gamble retired in 2014, and we continued to own the business until fully exiting in 2019 at what we believed was a full valuation.

Since our sale, LG H&H’s China business has collapsed and the company has struggled with COVID lockdowns, regulation, and poor brand mismanagement. The stock retraced back to where it was trading over a decade ago. While the current valuation is not demanding, the outlook is cloudy and the investment case is hard to underwrite. This result underlines to us the value-investing fundamentals of staying on top of a company’s competitive advantage, buying with a meaningful margin of safety, and selling when that margin of safety disappears.

ACE HARDWARE INDONESIA

- First bought: February 2008 / Last sold: November 2012

- Dollar contribution: $34.1m of period’s $335.1m / Avg. period AUM $342m

- Fund contribution: +11%

- Return of stock from initial purchase: +792%

- Return of fund from initial purchase: +78%

- IRR based on purchases and sales: +45%

We bought ACE Hardware in Indonesia at a discounted valuation during the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. We liked the business’s strong balance sheet, high margins, and low valuation. Additionally, we felt that they had the special sauce of how to do retail in Indonesia. While the company was a licensee of the U.S. ACE hardware brand, they had changed their merchandising to fit Indonesian tastes. Instead of selling hammers and nails, the company was selling a high-margin product mix that included everything from children’s toys to fish aquariums. Although the product mix didn’t make much sense from an American perspective, it worked well in the Indonesian context. The company was rapidly growing both square footage as well as same-store sales. The result was a fast-growing company that spun off cash.

We had reservations about the durability of the margins, the sustained lack of competition, and serious concerns about a related-party distributor that was controlled by the family that also controlled Ace Hardware Indonesia. After digging deeper and conducting diligence on the controlling family, we were able to build conviction that the family was operating in an ethical—if not Western—fashion, and that the margins reflected the unique merchandising strategy of ACE that other brick and mortar retailers in Indonesia would find hard to replicate.

Over the course of our five-year holding period, the shares increased almost 9-fold. When the shares reached what we saw as a fair valuation and the Indonesia rupiah became relatively strong, we elected to exit. Now nine years after our exit, the shares are trading 30% below the price we achieved in our last sale. The company’s deteriorating fundamentals were largely driven by an increase in competition at the high end from IKEA and at the low end from an aggressive Malaysia low-priced brand. Additionally, online retail expanded rapidly in Indonesia. Ace’s growth has slowed dramatically and our concerns about the sustainability of its incredibly high margins are now shared by the market—it just took 15 years for the competitive dynamic that concerned us to play out. Our investment in Ace Hardware Indonesia highlights the importance of keeping a close eye on an investment’s competitive position and exiting a position when the margin of safety goes away.

Sincerely,

Sean Fieler Brad Virbitsky

end notes

^[1] Please note that estimated performance has yet to be audited and is subject to revision. Performance figures constitute confidential information and must not be disclosed to third parties. An investor’s performance may differ based on timing of contributions, withdrawals and participation in new issues.

Unless otherwise noted, all company-specific data derived from internal analysis, company presentations, Bloomberg, FactSet or independent sources. Values as of 6.30.23, unless otherwise noted.

This document is not an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy interests in any product and is being provided for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as legal, tax or investment advice. An offering of interests will be made only by means of a confidential private offering memorandum and only to qualified investors in jurisdictions where permitted by law.

An investment is speculative and involves a high degree of risk. There is no secondary market for the investor’s interests and none is expected to develop and there may be restrictions on transferring interests. The Investment Advisor has total trading authority. Performance results are net of fees and expenses and reflect the reinvestment of dividends, interest and other earnings.

Prior performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. Any investment in a fund involves the risk of loss. Performance can be volatile and an investor could lose all or a substantial portion of his or her investment.

The information presented herein is current only as of the particular dates specified for such information, and is subject to change in future periods without notice.

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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.