GreenWood Investors 2025 Letter To Investors

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A Strong Year

Most important, though, is to keep working; I knew that I essentially never wanted not to work. To me, working is a form of sustenance, like food or water, and nearly as essential. -Katharine Graham

Dear GreenWood Investor:

We are pleased to report a year of strong returns for our investors, driven by solid underlying fundamental performance. In 2025, our core separate accounts generated 52.5% net returns, compared to 22.1% for the MSCI ACWI net index. Inception to date returns have been upgraded to 12.9% per year vs. 8.4% for the ACWI Index.

Foreign exchange was a positive contributor to performance for 2025, which offset the negative impact from being long the euro in 2024. We continue to believe over time FX will be a wash, and only seek to hedge currency exposure when we view sentiment as being heavily skewed in any direction, or to balance factor exposure. Our hedged fund returned modestly lower performance as a result of the hedges and fee structure, which has no management fee yet carries a performance fee with it.

Overall, our 2025 portfolio returns were mostly driven by solid underlying performance of our portfolio companies, which prior to the additions of two new core positions, generated a weighted average operating profit growth of roughly 21%, using sell-side estimates for full year profit. This operating income growth will ignore progress achieved at other companies where operating income is not the primary driver of value creation, discussed in the next section. Excluding these companies, the portfolio returns of 30% outperformed the underlying profit growth.

Much of this outperformance has been the result of a handful of portfolio components improving the underlying behavioral narrative. Our behavioral framework, which complements our valuation and quality frameworks in our global ranking process, seeks to anticipate behavioral changes in investors’ perceptions. Often this can be triggered by improvements in the underlying business quality, or via catalysts. As we articulated in the third quarter of 2020 letter , this is a traditional special-situations lens applied to a wider range of outcomes.

Exhibit 1: Key Behavioral Contributions

Holding	Prior Narrative	Current Narrative	Stock Performance in Excess of EBIT	Comment
Leonardo (LDO IM)	GARP	Compounder	77%	Remains below peer average multiple
Swatch (UHR SW)	Turnaround	Value	35%	Added during risk-off moments, outperforming full year stock returns
Genus (GNS LN)	Value	GARP	48%	FDA & China catalysts added significant value
Odet (ODET FP)	Value	Turnaround	-30%	Lack of buyback in 2H widened discount

We are continuing to work on catalysts to unlock further behavioral gains for our portfolio, and we are increasingly part of the process to improve the underlying business quality. We are collaboratively involved in improving the business quality, fundamental performance and catalysts for nearly 80% of our portfolio. The portfolio still skews towards value narratives, leaving ample room for further alpha as we and our managers work to improve the resilience and performance of their businesses.

Exhibit 2: Behavioral Gross Exposure by Narrative Group

Narrative Category	Turnaround	Value	GARP	Compounder
Portfolio Exposure (12/31/25)	11%	56%	17%	12%
Typical Daily Stock Behavior	Pushing rocks uphill. Little good news is rewarded and bad news is painful.	Market often ignores good news, but it behaves more rationally, particularly when buybacks are active.	Market celebrates good news, rewarding valuation with progress.	Market looks past bad news with resilience of margins and multiple offsetting setbacks.

Of course, we remain mindful of economic considerations, with the past year’s mixed macro backdrop allowing individual company performance to help drive our portfolio performance rather than overall macroeconomics. With much of the most worrisome investor behavior confined to a few stocks and mostly one sector, we are optimistic that by simply avoiding any such exposure, we can continue to generate satisfactory returns driven by underlying portfolio company catalysts, improvements in operating income, and transformational milestones.

Transformation Progress

Transformation is not about fixing what’s broken; it’s about creating what’s next. — Gary Hamel

Beyond the operating income growth mentioned before, many transformations are often not best measured by profit growth, but rather hitting catalysts that positively inflect the narrative for the company. And yet for 35% of the portfolio, we believe there are more relevant and useful benchmarks for assessing value creation. Performance barometers other than operating income are more enlightening for these positions.

NexGen Energy (NXE)

This is the case for NexGen Energy (NXE) which is a pre-production uranium company that is on the cusp of receiving federal approval for full scale development of its world-class Arrow deposit. NexGen added 4% to our net returns as it progressed closer to a federally approved project. Additionally, it provided fantastic drill results from another deposit (Patterson Corridor East, just 3.5km from Arrow), and continued to benefit from the supportive nuclear narrative spreading globally.

The company took advantage of this positive news flow momentum and raised nearly $1 billion in fresh equity capital, at all-time highs, to make sure it is “shovel ready” to start construction the day after receiving federal approval on its mine. This should provide all the equity funding needed, as it then proceeds to secure the remaining funding from a menu of options given the high cash generation potential from this asset once in operation. We have slightly trimmed the position given its performance thus far in 2026, but we are still very excited for the long-term strategic importance of this asset.

International Petroleum Company (IPCO CN)

While International Petroleum Company’s (IPCO) operating income declined in line with oil prices remaining under pressure during 2025, the primary driver of value for the company is the successful development of its Canadian oil sands project, Blackrod. The owner-operator management team has executed this project well, and Blackrod is coming online later in 2026 — ahead of schedule and under budget. While the stock has outperformed its underlying operating profit performance over the past year, we believe there remains room to run for IPCO as we enter our fourth year of owning shares. While shares have more than doubled since we initiated the position, we believe the company is an even better investment today than when we started buying shares in 2022.

This is largely attributable to the Lundin family’s capital allocation framework which is strong and strictly followed. Much can be learned by other companies from following the Lundin’s mantra of “say what you do, and do what you say.” Over the past few years, IPCO has done something unique — it self-funded a major greenfield oil project while simultaneously buying back 10% of its available free float per year. This has resulted in the company thus far reducing its total share count by roughly 20% and increasing its 2P reserves by 82% during our holding period. We continue to see significant capital returns ahead as the Lundin’s optimize for the long-term, whether in the form of buybacks if shares trade at a discount to NAV, or a dividend when at a premium.

Genus Plc (GNS LN)

Genus is a uniquely positioned animal genetics company that remains under-appreciated by the market, despite its 70% return during 2025 which led to Genus contributing nearly 3% to portfolio performance. The company’s business is characterized by a highly recurring customer base, a royalty-like revenue stream, is relatively asset lite, and has dominant market share. When we entered the stock in 2024 after spending material time with its new CEO, Jorgen

Kokke, we saw the opportunity to own a high-quality porcine (pig) business, a turnaround in the ABS (COWS) business, a free call option on its gene-editing platform, and a future rebound in China (the largest pork consumption market in the world). At the time of our entry, the stock was trading at EBITDA, which was a material discount to its own historical average and to a recent comparable public transaction for animal genetics. During 2025, while operating income did grow 20%, stock performance was mainly driven by 2 significant milestone events.

In April, after a 10-year journey, the company received FDA approval for its porcine (pig) gene-edit for Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (or known by the company as PRP) that has the potential to essentially eliminate a disease that costs U.S. pig producers at least $1.2 billion per year . In receiving FDA approval, Genus has materially de-risked the “free call option” on its gene-editing platform. While the company still needs regulatory approval in Japan and Mexico, we anticipate this occurring within the next 12 months. This prior “free call option” alone has the potential to 2-3x company operating profit over the next 5-7 years.

Then in September, Genus announced it was strengthening its local positioning in China by finalizing a strategic JV agreement with Beijing Capital Agribusiness whereby it was selling down 51% of its China business at a very accretive price. The agreement not only provides the best possible route to achieving PRP commercialization in China and accelerates value crystallization with retained future economic rights, but it effectively fully de-levers the company. This is very significant for a U.K. company that was teetering on the 2x net leverage multiple threshold where local investors get nervous.

Ever since we first had lunch with Jorgen in summer 2024, we have been consistently impressed by his commitment to accountability within the organization, his underpromise and over-deliver mantra, and a willingness to hear our views on governance and capital allocation. As the company anticipates a significant ramp in free cash generation, we are hopeful that future share buybacks will enter the toolkit of this UK-listed company. We have not sold any shares and remain very excited about Genus’ future.

Swatch (UHR SW)

Swatch’s anti-fragile balance sheet anchors the valuation while its margins have diminished towards zero. With a balance sheet secured by real estate, gold, watch residual values (which have stabilized) and the Swiss Franc, 2025 was an interesting year for all of these assets. This counter-cyclical balance sheet allowed us to meaningfully increase our position in risk-off moves in the market throughout 2025, which exacerbated an already attractive stock-to-book value ratio in our view.

Exhibit 3: Swatch’s Balance Sheet in USD & Price / Adjusted Book Value

Line chart showing Swatch's USD Book Value / Bearer Share (<a href= — Data Source: CapIQ

While Swatch management’s response to our collaborative outreaches has been disappointingly dismissive, we are committed to ensuring the company’s governance receives some much needed upgrades — just as its premier brands, Breguet and Blancpain, have received in recent months. Swatch remains the most intelligent way for investors to bet on the bright future of the premium and luxury watch industry, and the company’s recent impressive product launches underpin our faith that it will capture a stabilized and improving Chinese consumer and make further inroads in the US market.

And yet, we believe further improvements to management and governance structures are required for the company to fully seize the emerging green shoots in the Swiss watch industry. While our collaborative efforts have been shunned by the heirs of the company’s founder, who have overseen a stagnant two decades for the company’s revenue and employee base, we remain committed to being a part of the solution as opposed to being a critic.

We believe in democracy, and we believe in accountability. We believe all shareholders matter, and have been working to ensure that every Swatch shareholder is able to exercise their vote at the upcoming AGM, where we have laid out six proposals to improve governance . While Swatch’s status quo has been perpetuated by very difficult voting procedures, ensuring that nearly 2/3 of the economic shares simply don’t bother to vote, we encourage every shareholder take the time to vote at the upcoming AGM. If you are a shareholder and are unsure of how to vote, we’ll soon publish an easy how-to manual in order to make your voice heard.

Thinking Out of the Box

Every entrepreneur knows the feeling: that moment of despair when the only thing you are aware of is the giant gap between where you find yourself and the life and business you imagine. Once you succeed, people see only the success. If you fail, they see only the failure. Rarely do they see the turning points that could have taken you in a completely different direction. But it’s at these inflection points that the most important lessons in business and life are learned. —Stephen Schwarzman

Of course, Swatch’s management team is the exception — not the rule. We have more often found highly capable managers being not only receptive, but outright welcoming to our efforts to help on the value creation journey. This was the case this past year with Jack in the Box (JACK), where a CEO has committed to bring the company back to its basic mission.

JACK is a top 20 restaurant brand by sales that had seen its stock fall on hard times since its all-time highs in 2021. We started our engagement with the company towards the end of 2024 as we saw a brand that had strong mindshare, but was being heavily weighed down by the Street’s perception of debt concerns, prior capital allocation decisions, its geographic over-index to California, and significant executive turnover. We were intrigued as shares traded for record low valuation multiples, short interest was near all-time highs, and its real estate portfolio was estimated to be worth more than the entire market capitalization.

As we dug deeper, and further engaged with the new CEO, we came to see many of the Street’s concerns about JACK as not only fixable, but that the brand could be re-energized through an increased focus on operational excellence, further digital and marketing innovation, and smart capital allocation. Building off of the core customers’ love of the menu, we believe there is ample opportunity to grow cash flow and drive multiple expansion.

In the context of being a constructivist, it doesn’t necessarily mean that a Greenwood team member needs to be in the board room to help our companies reach the high-end of their potential. Our goal is to provide our portfolio companies and their executives with the supportive skill-sets needed to help super-charge the agenda. In the case of JACK, while we may have been able to help with capital markets, we did not have the operating experience in the quick-service restaurant (“QSR”) industry to add much value. We were relying on prior turnaround case studies and experts in the field to help us identify paths to improvement.

In November 2025, Greenwood signed a co-operation agreement with the company to add two new directors to the board. We believe that Alan Smolinisky and Mark King bring far more relevant skills than we could have, and that these new directors have the expertise and ownership mentality to bring a sense of urgency to the boardroom and drive significant future shareholder value.

We have known and worked with Alan for quite some time and he is one of those people you want on your team. We know he will be dogged in his pursuit of balance sheet optimization, capital allocation, and using his owner-operator attitude of “this cannot fail.” In addition to his deep real estate expertise and value-investing mindset, Alan also disclosed in the 8-K announcing his appointment that he directly owns 169,349 shares, or roughly 1% of the company’s shares. We are pleased he will be chair of the newly formed Capital Allocation Committee and sleep well knowing we have a savvy owner on the board.

Mark King is an experienced quick-service restaurant CEO, having led Taco Bell for nearly 5 years during the tumultuous Covid-19 era. He oversaw a period of above trend revenue and profit growth with his tenure culminating in being named Restaurant Leader of the Year in 2023 by Restaurant Business . He is an inspirational leader, having led multiple brand turnarounds, and we believe he will bring an aspirational brand vision to the board room.

We know this will not be a linear turnaround given the many challenges facing this company and the QSR industry, but we think JACK has a significantly higher probability of achieving a good outcome relative to 1 year ago, yet the stock price is materially lower. And while fiscal first quarter (January) will still see negative same store sales, we see a roadmap for a re-rating just on the basis that sentiment is so bottomed-out in the QSR sector generally and for JACK in particular. As the company delivers on its fiscal year 2026 guidance of flat same-store-sales, we think JACK might get some new friends on its 75th birthday.

Balancing Ownership

You just can’t beat the person who never gives up. -Babe Ruth

Beyond the companies that we’ve already discussed, the rest of the portfolio is still anchored by CTT (CTT) and Leonardo. CTT remains the highest-ranked opportunity in our global ranking framework, and we are excited about the year of further transformation ahead. While we are in quiet periods on both companies, the theses remain unchanged, and the commentary we provided in August of 2025 remains valid and on track.

While CTT launched our own hands-own approach to boardrooms, we never intended to stop there. Much of our core accounts’ and fund’s exposure is dedicated to the coinvestment opportunities where we and our collaborators have increasingly become the owners in the board room representing the often silent minority shareholder.

While a board of directors has always been elected by shareholders to serve their interests, in today’s world of consultant culture and RegFD, the representatives no longer interact with their constituents. Furthermore there is almost never any choice. The democracy is fictitious. The views of investors are nearly always filtered through the management team, and the most common boards are getting their information filtered and served to them by the very people they are supposed to monitor and hold accountable.

The reason why we’ve dedicated so much time and effort to both our own portfolio’s governance frameworks, but also to writing articles and white papers, is because we are convicted that long-term investors’ interests are best served by being a part of this conversation. We intend to keep going — whether it means we serve on the boards, or we nominate experts with skin in the game to serve the companies.

Exhibit 4: Core Account / Fund Exposure by Governance Feature

Stacked area chart showing Core Account / Fund Exposure by Governance Feature from 2008 to 2025. The Y-axis represents percentage exposure from 0% to 100%. The X-axis shows years from 08 to 25. The chart is divided into four stacked areas: Builders (lightest green), Future Coinvestments (light green), Coinvestments (dark green), and Agents & Other (darkest green).

From 2011-2014, we had lost this discipline in staying aligned with the managers of the firm, by requiring significant skin in the game along-side ours. It led to more mistakes than we have time to discuss. But the lessons have been learned, and we have incorporated this discipline into the core of our firm. We include “Builders,” in our core principles, along with being global and collaborative. Our returns have reflected this discipline and alignment.

Of course, we hunt for opportunities globally, and look at everything — regardless of insider ownership. Increasingly, no matter the company or the opportunity, we can ensure shareholders are well represented by owners with skin in the game. They don’t have to be like-minded, and we prefer a plurality of views, with balance between them.

We aim to only create win-win outcomes, where customers, employees and owners all win together — by collaborating together, and sharing common missions. We will continue to emphasize a plurality of views, as no one owner’s views should ever prevail. Historically, research has proven this view leads to superior performance.

When opening a financial account, every American brokerage firm is required to ask clients about their financial goals, whether they are focused on preserving capital, growing capital, or if they prefer income. While these are often seen as mutually exclusive, and at odds with each other, we believe the best firms will be able to balance all three. Risks and opportunities must be balanced, and shareholders must also earn returns on their capital… eventually. This balance rhymes with our view that the best managers are able to manage for the short and the long-term simultaneously.

Taken at their extremes, these opposite views being maximized for only one time frame or financial goal will lead to unsustainable returns and profits. There isn’t just beauty in finding balance, but better returns. There are also more sustainable outcomes for all involved. But the one thing that underlines all of it is the principle that ownership creates accountability and it forces competing views to find balance.

Looking Ahead

We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done. -Alan Turing

As investment managers tasked with the ambition to generate meaningful outperformance for you, we appreciate the push and pull between the short term and the long-term, and we have found that the more we contribute to the long-term success of our firms and our portfolio, the better the short-term results have been. We don’t have to choose one or the other — and if push came to shove, we’d only choose the long-term. But we must choose both.

And that’s why we’re still bullish on our long-standing investments. The only way to get to the long-term transformational outcomes is to make sure the short-term offers consistent progress. The only way to get to long-term capital appreciation is to also stay mindful of risk-management and capital preservation.

While we are grateful for all of the collaborations and broad-based execution that made a great 2025 possible for us, we and the managers we’ve partnered with know that we cannot take anything for granted. Those accomplishments are already done, and we are only here for continuous progress.

One of the managers we repeatedly draw inspiration from is Leonardo’s CEO Roberto Cingolani. Even though Roberto was appointed to a three-year term, which needs to be renewed in 2026, he never took all three years for granted. He took each day as an opportunity to leave behind a better company to whoever would come after him.

Rather than the typical jockeying that happens with Italian government-influenced companies, he didn’t focus on campaigning for a job. He focused on producing results, on transforming the company’s culture, and on accelerating the underlying trajectory of innovation, product and services launches, and as a consequence, financial results.

Every day we are able to invest your capital alongside ours, we bring the same urgency and commitment to producing outstanding returns. We take nothing for granted, and conversely, are deeply appreciative of your confidence in us to continue to compound your capital.

While the commitment is constant, the effort must be renewed on a daily basis. The initiatives must evolve, new risks must be managed, and new opportunities must be seized. We are excited where our portfolio companies are, and where they are heading. We believe all of them have a chance at achieving “compounder” status as they fulfill their missions. Those missions will not be completed in 2026, but we will be in the board rooms of many — pushing to make demonstrable progress during the year. Thank you for sharing this journey with us. We are honored by your trust, and are committed to deliver.

Onward,

Steven Wood

Chris Torino

This letter has been distributed for informational purposes only. Neither the information nor any opinions expressed constitute a recommendation to buy or sell the securities mentioned, or to invest in any investment product or strategy related to such securities. It is not intended to provide personal investment advice, and it does not take into account the specific investment objectives, financial situation or particular needs of any person or entity that may receive this letter. Persons reading this letter should seek professional financial advice regarding the appropriateness of investing in any securities discussed in this article. The author’s opinions are subject to change without notice. Forecasts, estimates, and certain information contained herein are based upon proprietary research, and the information used in such process was obtained from publicly available sources. Information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but such reliability is not guaranteed. Investment accounts managed by Greenwood Investors LLC and its affiliates may have a position in the securities discussed in this article. Greenwood Investors LLC may re-evaluate its holdings in such positions and sell or cover certain positions without notice. No part of this letter may be reproduced in any form, or referred to in any other publication, without express written permission of Greenwood Investors LLC.

Past performance is no guarantee of future results.