Good morning. Thank you for joining us today for our webcast announcing U.S. Global Investors' Results for the First Quarter of Fiscal 2018. I'm Holly Schoenfeldt. [Operator Instructions] Also you may download a PDF of today slides by clicking on the red handout button. The presenters for today's program are Frank Holmes, U.S. Global Investors' CEO and Chief Investment Officer; Susan McGee, President, General Counsel, and Chief Compliance Officer; and Lisa Callicotte, Chief Financial Officer. During this webcast, we may make forward-looking statements about our relative business outlook. Any forward-looking statements and all other statements made during this webcast that don't pertain to historical facts are subject to risks and uncertainties that may materially affect actual results. Please refer to our press release and corresponding Form 10-Q filing for more detail on factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from any described today in forward-looking statements. Any such statements are made as of today and U.S. Global Investors accepts no obligation to update them in the future. Now, let's go to Frank Holmes, CEO and CIO, for an overview of the period. Frank?

Thank you, Holly. As you can see in the first visual, with the stars U.S. Global is an innovative investor manager where hopefully you'll agree, especially after I walk through our thought process to investing in HIVE. And we do have a vast experience in global markets and specialized sectors, and I think that that helped us make that pivot move as strategically trying to jump into the blockchain build-out globally. U.S. Global was founded as an investment club. The Company became a registered investment advisor in 1968. It was military, military -- a colonel in the Air Force that started the Company, and so it had long, long history of global investing in particular for gold. And we are highly recognized for our expertise in gold and continue to win awards and recognition for that expertise. Our strengths are we're a go-to stock for exposure to emerging markets resources and now digital currencies. We're noticing that the stock is moving up and down with HIVE and in HIVE is in sympathy with movements of blockchain cryptocurrency or digital currency market. We're debt-free with strong balance sheet with reflexive cost structure and we have monthly dividends and return on equity discipline. In 2016, we're winners of the Mining Journal America's based funds, that was a global competition and there we won other rewards this year for recognition of the previous with a highest Sharpe Ratio by Lipper. So we continue to show that expertise in the mutual funds, and as I'll walk through there in the presentation, it's also changing that landscape that it doesn't really matter, if you're outperforming the ETF, it's just cheaper as better and performance is not as critical. So, it's how markets are changing and hopefully I can walk you through some of the things…

The banks are now engaged in blockchain proof-of-concepts. The blockchain could disrupt everything. And I just give you an idea that you can see the CME is front and center and they partnered up with the London, what they call the World Exchange for refining gold, and to basically give you a coin is backed by gold. Nasdaq launched a futures market trading on bitcoin in Sweden and it too was the raving success. There was a substantial conference that was in Houston in last month that had Microsoft, McKenzie, and all of the major energy companies speaking and how they are going to put their data in the energy space in America, as the more data in Texas on energy than there is as the rest of the world combined. How do they put all that together and just to be able to transmit that data quickly and quick and inexpensively. Next visual we're showing is the major banks have become bullish on cryptocurrency even when we have CEOs saying, it's corrupt it's fraud, but financial institutions filed the 2,700 Patents of blockchain technology. And what bitcoin has done is that basically it's like emails under the internet. It's open up the eyes of how you can actually transmit money, you can transmit contracts, you can trade stocks and et cetera, 24 hours a day. One of the biggest source of money going into Mexico or Philippines is remittance by workers in America, and they said money is a simple largest, cleanest form of foreign currency going into those two countries. And as coming back for Americans' work effort, Filipinos or Mexicans working here sending back to their families. While they're sending back a $100 is really expensive under the Western Union. And under a bitcoin format, blockchain technology it would be $1 million dollar per 100 versus $25. So you had a something that's really remarkable that it is going to be a revolution to back-office through all of the banks and financial institutions. But what's really woken-up the world to blockchain technology has been bitcoin. And so what is bitcoin, as it is always the big question we get asked. [Presentation]

So next question is, well bitcoin at a spectacular run and it must be a bubble. And this bubbleology has been around for while and it’s a good question to ask because it had this incredible move. What people have realized from bitcoin is a limited number of points, it's not like government continue to print money. It's capped and so what does that mean? Well, basically, Metcalfe's Law suggests that crypto price could keep pricing and that was the math that was to explain the value of the cable company. So as more people use cable, the value of cable went up geometrically or exponentially. And this was also for the adoption of cell phones, more people that used it they are for the value of the cell phone network rose geometrically. It was easy than the finance towers for fast tracking, more numbers used to get drop calls all the time when it set at cell phones. And as the banks were reluctant to land and some of the valuations, it was a better security for lend against and also from a cash flow point of view, so they start building more towards, then this technology that allowed them be able to have less drop calls, it was a combination of both. So this is -- Metcalfe's Law is important because as more users are signing up to use bitcoin, the prices go up geometrically. So some people are saying there will be $10,000 by year end and will probably go to $100,000 fast than you speak as more people use and adopt that. You can buy one coin and you can have it broken down on fracasos for buying Subways and Starbucks et cetera. And that's the hard part to as a lot of people don't realize…

Thank you. We can go back and watch the clip earlier on it embedded to the system on Genesis Mining and basically a rig, and what they do, it's a very insightful clean way to become more informed on this particular type of investment we made. And this investment is floated it went to $1.5 billion market cap. And why, you know I mean ask, well there is no other company in the world that is operating investors as of this date a revenue cash flow generating model, that’s playing this accept and predominantly now when you look as small corporations as hedge funds, they are trading in theses currencies as hedge funds and there is Silicon Valley that’s behind 20 basis and New York stock exchange and best into Silicon Valley. But there is really no public company and this is the first public company. When I look also that the model, it pretty reminds me of a royalty company, so I'm very excited about this opportunity and it's going to be very volatile, the biggest thing I share with my answers. And we don’t have liquidity and if you want to sell and I think its January and February and so and myself, I just believe this is a huge opportunity. And so with, I'm going to turn over to Lisa Callicotte our CFO, to give you more detailed analysis of the income statement and then any financial balances.

Thank you, Frank. Good morning. Before I summarize our results of operations, I would like to discuss the accounting treatment related to our direct and indirect investments in HIVE. USGI through its wholly owned subsidiary, U.S. Global Investors Canada Limited directly owns 10 million shares of HIVE. These shares are included in investment securities available for sale on our balance sheet. And unrealized gains and losses on available sales securities are excluded from earnings and recorded in other comprehensive income as a separate component of shareholders equity until we realize. And these shares are restricted for resale until February 2018 and also subject to Canadian insider regulation. USGI Canada also has an investment in Galileo Partners fund. This is our indirect investment. At September 30, 2017, USGI Canada owned 30% on the Galileo Partners fund and the Partners Fund owned 6.7 million shares of HIVE. The investment in the Galileo fund is accounted for on to the under the equity method of accounting. Under the method, the Company's proportional share of the fund net income or loss which primarily consist of realize and unrealized gains and losses on investment, decreased by fund expenses is recognized in USGI's earnings. Therefore our direct and indirect investments in HIVE are transferred very differently, and we will see that as I summarize our result of operations at quarter ending September 30, 2017. Beginning on page 39…

By the way sorry to interrupt there, the Galileo fund is 2 plus 20 funds and that was really important to recognize. So it's embedded gain, for a small fund, it's extremely profitability. You have to have the multibillion dollar fund and mutual fund to compete but what a small fund like this is generating.

Beginning on Page 29, we reported total operating revenue of $1.49 million for the quarter. This is a 25% decrease from the $1.98 million we reported for the same quarter last year. The decrease is primarily due to a decrease in average assets under management, mainly due to net redemptions and market depreciation. And it was somewhat offset by an increase in our EPS average asset. Our operating expenses for the quarter were $1.97 million, which is an increase 19,000 or 1% and primarily due to increases in expenses related to our EPS. We have an operating loss of $479,000 for the quarter ended September 30th 2017 versus income of $31,000 for the same quarter in the prior year On page 40, our other income is $1.7 million for the quarter compared to $250,000 for the quarter ending September 30th 2016. The 1.5 million of this increase is related to our investment in the Galileo Funds accounted for under the FD method accounting. Net income attributable to USGI after taxes for the quarter is 1.27 million or $0.08 per share versus per share of $0.02 for the same quarter in the prior year. Moving on to page 41, we see that we still have a strong balance sheet, we own our own buildings, we have cash and marketable securities at 24.5 million that combine to make that 71% of our total assets. As you can see trading securities decreased 2.2 million mainly due to the liquidation of trading securities to purchase available sales security. Investment securities available for sale increased 11.5 million. This is the line item that includes our directly owned half shares that were valued at 11.4 million at September 30th 2017 and this value includes an unrealized gain of approximately $9 million that is reported in other comprehensive income as a separate component as shareholders' equity. As you can see on page 42, we still have no long term debt. The Company has a networking capital of 13.1 million and a current ratio of 12.6 to 1. With that I'll turn it over to Susan McGee.

Thank you, Lisa. As you can see on this chart a majority of our mutual fund assets are in emerging markets and natural resources and 30% are in domestic equities and fixed income. In its redistribution, we have more than three-quarters of our assets coming from retail investors and the other 25% from institutional investors. Our sales and marketing efforts have continued to focus on our mutual funds including those concentrated on gold and natural resources in emerging markets and our exchange trade fund. In June of this year as Frank mentioned earlier we launched our first gold ETF, the U.S. level Go-Gold and precious metals miners ETF and in September we launched the sister ETF under the ticker symbol GOGO, GOGO. It was launched on the Toronto Stock Exchange in partnership with Galileo. It's our first ETF to appear in the Canadian market and we're especially pleased to bring our longstanding experience that we have in gold mining investment with Canadian ETF investors. GOGO joins Jets and GO-AU our U.S. listed gold related ETFs for our offerings of smart bed installations. We do believe that investors appreciate the expertise that we offer and we are pleased that Thompson Reuters Lipper recognized us with the Lipper Award for 2017. Investors can find more information about all of our funds on our website usfunds.com. At the Company and our funds continue to receive an invaluable amount of viral publicity which we gain through media interviews, Frank Holmes often shares his insights with financial outlets like CNBC-Asia, Lindberg Television, CNN TV in Canada, to name a few. We continue to receive recommendations by influential newsletter writers as well along with sharing certification of our award winning original content by third party publishers. And the new partners have a loyal followings and they…

And as a reminder to our audience, you can enter questions in the control panel on your screen and you do we have a few questions already, the first of which I am going to give to Lisa Callicotte and that is. What are the lock ups on the HIVE's share?

Like that we have two different kind of investments. One is the directly owned 10 million shares of HIVE and that is restricted until February 2018, but it also subject to Canadian insider regulation. The Galileo Partners fund has actually multiple tranches and they have differing restrictions and those are going to be listed through about mid 2018.

Another one I can go to Frank and he kind of touched on it briefly, but are you worried that bitcoin and cryptocurrency space is a bubble. Can you explain?

I think on the Investor Day we commented on this a couple of weeks back that Metcalfe's Law and there's another law called Reed's law and I was recently presenting in Toronto, Ph.D. in behavioral finance, so as a Money Matters showed up and he's played this space based on Metcalfe's and Reed's Law which is really interesting to me. And he was commenting that as I said earlier, there it’s a geometrical -- most of these charts you see Bloomberg et cetera, they are not logarithmic charts, they're linear charts. So it looks a bubble. When you plot this on a logarithmic chart, it's a normal course. So I don’t think it’s a bubble. Who survive? That’s always the great question like the 90s. There are so many companies out there like Ask Jeeves, they're history industry relative to Yahoo almost history. Google came out of nowhere and became the 800-pound gorilla. I mean just dates back when Google came out, there was no Facebook; and in 10 years, the Facebook grown. So I think, we don’t know what’s currency are going to survive, which will -- and now, there is a push by governments. Putin wants to have its own currency, cryptocurrency, and I think you’re going to see more and more countries get around this idea of a digital currency. So I don’t think it’s a bubble to agree that a lot of people just believe from looking out at a linear line.

Another question for Lisa. Well, GROW's exposure to HIVE directly affect the U.S. Global Mutual Funds at all?

Well, the U.S. Global Investors Funds and our ETF do not own shares of HIVE. But some of the Galileo fund including the fund that we are invested in to USGI Canada is that in HIVE.

But it’s not a mutual fund it's a special-purpose front. And it’s dedicated that and I think that the regulatory regime is just different Canada and we mentioned this other day the Board meeting is that, the credit investor can start in Canada with only $25,000, they don’t have to write a massive check. The rules like that make it differences in sort of formation of money, but it’s easy to create a special purpose funding Canada only for credit investors. That you can put on the platform like you do in the U.S. Mutual Funds for fund groups. And the responsibility is upon the broker that’s talking to client to put money in that mechanism is not here in the U.S. So it’s just a different mechanism. And so for that, they have a different set of guidelines and rules.

One more question for Lisa. When can HIVE gain, if any be realized?

Well, USGI and the Partners Funds will have to actually sell the HIVE's shares in order to realized gains. And as we discussed, there are restrictions related to resell and regulatory restriction. So really the timing of realizing the gain cannot be determined at this time.

One last question for Frank. With many investors attention shifting away from gold to bitcoin, what do you think that mean for your gold so get to mutual funds in each year?

I think that this whole ICO market is not really a threat to the gold. I think it’s much more a threat to investing. I think it’s a much bigger that the crowd funding that retail linear, it’s just doesn’t have a whole lot of tolerance for two days waiting open account to, so many checks and rules to trade thoughts versus they could trade ICOs 24x7, and it’s inexpensive to trade. And it’s just as I mentioned earlier, we have a big phenomena taking place in millennials, so now bigger than baby boomers. You have hock-up sites. You have -- so you have social values and believes have changed dramatically. They just recently start buying, they're predominately renting because they want to be able to move, they want be able to move from one city, move from Austin to San Antonio and then from there move over to LA or something, it's more a transient world. And when they make money, they want to have this travel and experience around the world, so it's in different world. And I've noticed this question being asked there how fast can you sell, how fast can you sell, how fast can you get out, it's remarkable to witness when you talk to Genesis and they own 30%, they're talking about a $5 billion company. And most people, they just can't believe specially my age, money managers it's out of the box, out of the negative. And they are oblivious, they are absolutely oblivious to what is taking place with millennials who are now bigger and popular in overall just demographic numbers than we are. And they are sort of from your spending patterns, social patterns, investing patterns from you can get very simple, I asked to run your trade your stocks, you can put bleed into your mutual funds, all the stuff, all of your smartphone. Most of my friends don’t have their whole portfolio on their smartphone. Susan, do you have all your portfolio in the smartphone?

I have the app.

Yes, the apps, sorry it's not that many people and you'll just hear it. So it's just different world and however evolve was most important as I'm excited because rather than it gets delayed and disappointment and spend $10s of $1,000s and $1,000 trying to get legal documents to try to get a product note there. We are now participating this huge in gold sector, and the stock trades are so liquid. Do you know if the stock is traded at 700 million of the stock? I mean in that past month the average price has been 450 and trading 6 million shares of day, I mean it's very, very liquid. Institutions like Fidelity have come in and have done private placements and bought shares, that was at filings you can see that they were participants in the $1.50 funding. So there is something that's extremely important to recognize, this is first mover and where it goes, I would know. But I'm really happy and I think that I've seen it before like I mentioned on several meeting, 3 million, 30 million, 3 billion now it's over a 10 billion.