Iolite: the Viking navigation stone

The Viking's Compass

True North,
Even in the Storm.

Vikings navigated the open Atlantic with a stone.

Held to an overcast sky, a thin sliver of cordierite (iolite) revealed the position of the sun through cloud, fog, and storm. Its dichroism shifts from deep violet-blue to pale grey depending on the angle of polarised light, allowing the navigator to locate true north even when nothing else could. The Norse called it sólarsteinn, sunstone.

This is how they crossed from Scandinavia to Iceland, Greenland, and Newfoundland. Not by waiting for calm seas. By knowing where they were going when others could not see.

In capital markets, the equivalent of cloud and fog is consensus: index flows, institutional herding, the noise of quarterly cycles. Most investors navigate by what is visible: the benchmarks, the headlines, the most widely held stocks.

iolite Capital navigates differently. Concentrated fundamental analysis, like light through cordierite, cuts through the noise to find the value that the consensus cannot see. This is how iolite has navigated crisis, dislocation, and uncertainty since 2008. Not by predicting the storm. By knowing where true north is when one arrives.

Robert Leitz · Founder & Managing Director

Investment Philosophy

Three Principles.
One Consistent Approach.

Concentrated

Entrepreneurs don't spread themselves across 30 ventures. They go deep on a few. iolite holds approximately 10 positions, each one the product of deep fundamental work, each one sized for conviction. The portfolio spans global geographies and industries not because of a mandate, but because value doesn't respect index composition. Concentration is not a risk. It is a prerequisite for genuine understanding.

Contrarian

Every great entrepreneurial success involved doing something the market or conventional wisdom said was unnecessary, impossible, or wrong. The same dynamic applies in investing. iolite targets businesses that are undervalued, misunderstood, or ignored, companies outside the index universe where institutional capital simply doesn't go. The edge is structural: passive investing is growing, and it systematically misprices exactly the kind of businesses that reward independent analysis.

Compounding

Entrepreneurs who built lasting wealth understood that the most important investment decision is often to do nothing, to let a great business compound rather than taking chips off the table. iolite holds positions for as long as the thesis is intact, across full market cycles. ~15% per annum since inception in 2008. Through the financial crisis, the sovereign debt crisis, the pandemic, the inflationary shock of 2022. Demonstrated. Not asserted.

About iolite Capital

The Firm

iolite Capital is a Swiss investment manager founded by Robert Leitz in 2008 and incorporated as iolite Capital Management AG in 2011. The firm applies private equity discipline to public markets, concentrating capital in undervalued, owner-operated businesses with durable cash-flow potential.

The portfolio holds approximately 10 positions, selected from a global investment universe with no benchmark constraints. Highly concentrated by position count, it is deliberately diversified across geographies and industries, the result of following value wherever it exists, not wherever an index points.

iolite is owner-operated. Robert Leitz built it from scratch, with his own capital at risk, the same way his portfolio companies were built. All investment decisions rest with him: no committees, no asset-gathering mandate, no institutional friction.

The firm works with a small and deliberately limited number of investors. New partnerships are rare.

Alignment & Structure

~10

High-conviction holdings

Management fee · A-class

Hurdle before performance fee

Owner

Operated · personal capital invested

A-class terms. Substantial personal capital invested alongside clients.

Market Structure

Built Against
the Index.

Passive investing now allocates capital mechanically, by index weight, with no reference to business quality or valuation. The most widely held stocks become the most overowned, while everything outside the index (smaller, owner-operated, out-of-favour businesses) is left systematically underowned and mispriced.

iolite's edge is precisely there, where capital cannot, or will not, go: situations too small for large institutions, businesses passive vehicles must ignore, companies brokers no longer cover, complexity that scares capital away. A global portfolio of about ten positions, built on fundamental work, with no reference to the benchmark.

~90%

Outside the US

~50%

Below $1bn

All

Sectors

~10

Positions at a time

Illustrative of iolite's holdings: roughly 90% outside the US and around half below $1bn market cap, close to the mirror image of a global index. Past holdings are not indicative of future positioning.

The Approach

Portfolio Selection

Who We
Invest In

iolite backs businesses run by the people who built them, owner-operators with the majority of their net worth tied to the outcome. Not inherited wealth, not options from a compensation committee, but capital genuinely risked through cycles.

Owners with real skin in the game think in decades, protect the downside instinctively, and build rather than extract. Such businesses tend to be smaller, less covered, and further from the index, which is exactly why they trade at compelling valuations.

The bulk of their value lies below the surface. That is exactly where iolite looks.

Our Investors

Who We
Work With

iolite works with a small group of private and institutional investors, typically entrepreneurs and their heirs, who built wealth through concentration, contrarianism, and compounding. They understand at once why ten high-conviction positions, run by a single decision-maker with personal capital at stake, looks different from what the industry usually sells.

They do not demand liquidity at the wrong moment, panic when a thesis takes time, or measure success by the quarter.

New partnerships are rare. If this resonates, iolite would welcome the conversation.

Get in Touch

The
Approach.

Capital Concentrated in Conviction

iolite's investment philosophy is not borrowed from a textbook. It is the same approach that has driven successful entrepreneurship for as long as markets have existed: concentrate on what you know best, do what others won't, and compound patiently over time. Applied to investing, this means a global portfolio of approximately 10 high-conviction positions, each one in a business where the gap between intrinsic value and market price is large enough to justify the risk of being early and wrong. No benchmark. No index weight. No diversification for its own sake.

Investment Universe

iolite invests globally with no geographic or sector constraints: smaller companies, owner-operated businesses, and industries that attract limited institutional attention, precisely the areas passive investing systematically underweights. These businesses are undervalued not because they are inferior, but because the market is not paying attention.

Portfolio Construction

About ten positions at any time. Sizing reflects conviction and downside, not index weight, liquidity, or sector balance. Geographic and industry diversification emerges from following value globally; it is not engineered. The result is a portfolio that is simultaneously concentrated and genuinely diverse.

Investment Process

Each investment is assessed with a private-equity mindset: balance-sheet resilience, cash-flow quality, governance, the integrity and capability of the owner-operator, and the durability of the competitive position. The central question is always whether the business can compound capital over a full cycle, not whether it will outperform next quarter.

Patience as Strategy

iolite holds positions for as long as the thesis is intact. Patience is not a constraint. It is the strategy. Most of the compounding in a great business happens after the obvious thesis has played out and less patient investors have moved on.

Risk

Risk at iolite is not defined by volatility or tracking error. It is the permanent loss of capital. Downside analysis precedes upside analysis. Every position is sized to survive being wrong.

Track Record & Selected Investments

Evidence,
Not Assertions.

Since 2008, iolite has compounded capital at approximately 15% per annum, through the global financial crisis, the European sovereign-debt crisis, the pandemic shock, and the 2022 inflationary regime shift. Below are selected, publicly disclosed investments: what iolite saw, why it worked, and where it engaged to create value. Not every thesis plays out; the ones that don't are dissected just as openly in iolite's letters.

Jumbo Interactive™

ASX: JIN · Australia

An asset-light digital-lottery retailer bought at a temporary earnings trough after an international-expansion stumble. We backed the founder-led core business through the noise.

Market cap grew from ~A$50m (2012) to over A$1.1bn (2019) as the core compounded.

Bakkafrost™

OSE: BAKKA · Faroe Islands

A best-in-class, vertically integrated salmon producer with a durable moat, structurally constrained supply meeting durable demand growth. Profiled in Forbes and IntraFish.

Shares roughly doubled over the following two years.

Digital River™

NASDAQ: DRIV · USA

An undervalued e-commerce and payments platform. We published the thesis in the Manual of Ideas, highlighting the gap between price and intrinsic value.

Up ~49%, then taken private by Siris Capital.

Euler Hermes™

EPA: ELE · France

A mispriced French credit insurer we advocated publicly through the Manual of Ideas, a high-quality compounder the market overlooked.

Shares rose from ~€95 to €122 before Allianz acquired the company.

Dynacor Group™

TSX: DNG · Canada

A profitable gold-ore processor with the model, market and track record to be exceptional, but a governance gap. We built a ~10% stake and engaged directly.

Requisitioned a special meeting, filed a regulatory complaint, and published detailed research, pressing for governance, transparency and capital allocation.

Engaged ownership · governance

MTY Food Group™

TSX: MTY · Canada

A royalty-streaming platform and disciplined acquisition machine, disclosed after it reportedly received C$52+ bids while trading near C$42, at roughly 7× trailing free cash flow.

Solid upside, limited downside, clear catalyst, a mispriced compounder.

Selected publicly disclosed investments only; not a representation of the entire portfolio or its performance. Full attribution and performance data are available to qualified investors via iolite's investor letters and quarterly fact sheets. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Institutional Foundations

Built to Endure.

Conviction is the strategy; structure is what makes it investable. iolite pairs a single accountable decision-maker with the operational, governance and continuity framework that sophisticated allocators require.

Continuity & Succession

No single point of failure

One accountable principal, and a named successor well suited to manage the portfolio. If the principal were incapacitated, investors may redeem or remain. A low-turnover book and limit-order execution mean the portfolio does not depend on daily intervention.

Operations & Custody

Institutional-grade infrastructure

An independent fund administrator (NAV Fund Services, Cayman), a Tier-one prime broker and custodian (Interactive Brokers), an independent auditor (BDO Cayman), and independent directors. iolite never takes custody of client assets.

Governance & Compliance

Regulated on both sides

A Swiss investment manager operating within the FINMA framework, advising a CIMA-regulated Cayman fund with an independent board and a high-water mark. No side letters. No soft-dollar arrangements. No asset-gathering incentives.

Capacity & Alignment

Paid to perform, not to gather

The small-cap, special-situations focus is the edge, so capacity is managed deliberately rather than maximised. The firm earns primarily through performance, with substantial personal capital invested alongside clients; iolite succeeds only when they do.

The Community

A Network Built on Intellectual Honesty
and Lifelong Learning

iolite is an active participant in the global value-investing community, presenting, exchanging ideas, and stress-testing thinking alongside some of the world's most rigorous long-term investors. These are not networking events. They are forums where serious investors hold each other to a high standard of analysis and intellectual honesty.

"Robert is one of Europe's most thoughtful value investors."

John Mihaljevic · Chairman, MOI Global

In Their Words

VALUEx has attracted some extraordinary investors, including… Robert Leitz. They have all become friends.

Guy Spier

CEO, Aquamarine Capital

Robert Leitz manages iolite with the same principles that we apply in our company and investment style.

Ivo Raissakis

CIO, Früh & Partner

In an industry often dominated by short-term thinking, Robert Leitz stands out for his intellectual rigor and long-term perspective.

Vitaliy Katsenelson

CEO, Investment Management Associates

Robert is an honest manager who does deep due diligence and always has interesting ideas.

Sophocles Sophocleous

Founder, FatAlpha

One of the most reflective people I know, Robert consistently brings deep insights and thoughtful perspectives to every conversation.

Simon Morrison

Managing Director, Shine Justice (ASX:SHJ)

Thank you, Robert, for all that you have done for my family. I cannot tell you how grateful we are.

Private Investor

Switzerland

As featured in

Forbes

BusinessWire

Mining Weekly

Yahoo Finance

Investing News Network

The Deep Dive

Fundview

FatAlpha

MOI Global

Registered Investors Only

The Inner
Circle.

Full quarterly letters, annual reports, investment memos, and portfolio commentary, shared in full with a small group of registered investors who have an existing relationship with iolite.

Complete quarterly and annual investor letters

Portfolio updates and position commentary

Investment memos and thesis write-ups

Direct access to Robert via reply

A glimpse from recent letters

Annual 2025: antifragility, a “SaaS reckoning,” and the case for backing aligned owner-operators.

Interim 2024, courage and nonconformity: why dogmatic systems let people outsource accountability.

Annual 2023: from the Nifty Fifty to the Magnificent Seven, and how passive concentration mis-prices great businesses.

Access is by invitation or application only. iolite does not engage in general solicitation. Materials shared here do not constitute an offer or solicitation for the sale of any security.

An Entrepreneurial
Investment
Firm.