Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our webcast announcing U.S. Global Investors' results for the quarter ended December 31, 2021. I'm Holly Schoenfeldt. . As seen on Slide #2, the presenters for today's program are Frank Holmes, U.S. Global Investors' CEO and Chief Investment Officer; Lisa Callicotte, Chief Financial Officer; and myself, Holly Schoenfeldt, Director of Marketing. On to Slide 3. As always, we would love to offer anyone tuned in today one of our JETS, GOAU or HIVE packs, in addition, we do have JETS luggage tags available. All you need to do is send us an e-mail with your physical mailing address to info@usfunds.com. On Slide #4. 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. On Slide 5, I will briefly review our company. U.S. Global Investors is an innovative investment manager with vast experience in global markets and specialized sectors. It was originally founded as an investment club, becoming a registered investment adviser in 1968. The company has a long-standing history of global investing and launching first-of-their-kind investment products, including the first no-load gold fund. We are well known for expertise in gold and precious metals, natural resources, airlines, emerging markets and cryptocurrencies. Now on Slide 6, I would like to hand the presentation over to Frank Holmes to review what we believe is one of the most helpful visuals when it comes to investing, not only in GROW, but in any asset class. Frank?

Thank you, Holly. Yes, this is an important visual because every asset class has a unique DNA of volatility, and that DNA can change over time because of major events. And so that's one reason why we monitor and track both fiscal monetary government policies, and we look at other economic factors on a macro scale. We write about them every week. And that discipline helps us to be able to not only articulate ourselves but relate back to this DNA of volatility. But because we are in the gold business and the gold funds and of a history steeped in gold knowledge, we -- GROW often treated with the DNA of volatility of gold. And here is what you can see is that S&P and Bullion both have a DNA of basically 1%, meaning about 70% of the time, it's a nonevent to go plus or minus 1%. Over 10 days, Gold Bullion is slightly more volatile than the S&P 500. Now the Dow Jones Asset Managers Index, its volatility is 3%. So it's 3x the S&P and the 10 days, plus or minus 19%. So what's really most interesting to me when I look at this global index is that our DNA volatility of GROW over 10 days is slightly less, but on a daily basis, as you can see, we do have a greater volatility. So why is that? It used to be predominantly off of gold stocks. It was -- but however, that's changed. And what I'm trying to share with investors is that gold stocks and our largest asset class rate today is now airlines. And so the New York Stock Exchange, Arca Airlines goes up or down 2% on a daily basis over 10 days. It's a nonevent to go 6%. Tesla known for…

Thank you, Frank. Yes, I would like to briefly discuss our stock buyback process. We have had some shareholder inquiries about that. And I thought that this would be helpful. Like Frank said, there are several rules and regulations for public companies related to purchasing and selling its own stock. And we have policies in place to help assist us in complying with those regulations. And one of these is our trading window policy. Companies are not permitted to purchase and sell stock if they have material nonpublic information. And at certain times during the year, a company may be considered to be having material nonpublic information, especially maybe around the quarter ends where the company has the information of the financials, but those haven't been disclosed to the public. Therefore, trading window policies typically close maybe 1 to 2 weeks, 3 weeks before quarter end and then last until 1 to a few days after the filing has been filed. Our policy is like this. And during our closed windows, we typically do not make decisions about buying and selling stock. We also have a safe harbor plan that we set up during an open trading window that then would allow us to trade during the closed window because we're not making any new decisions during that time. Typically, our trading window closes a couple of weeks before our quarter end and then opens a couple of days after we file our 10-Q and our 10-K. But I also want to remind people that at sometimes we might not have an open window. For example, our 10-K is due 90 days after our year-end, which is typically around September 28th. And that is within a couple of weeks of the quarter end of September. So if we had -- if we file on that date, we would not have an open window because that would have already been closed for the next quarter. And we noted that lately with our delays with our filings. We haven't had an open window since mid-June of last year, and it won't open until next week. So this does affect us making decisions on repurchases. I hope that was helpful and answered some of the questions that our shareholders have.

So as you can see here, we have $4.1 billion average assets, up 40% year-over-year; $6.6 million in quarterly operating revenue plus 39% year-over-year; and $3.69 million quarterly net income, up 50% quarter-over-quarter. I think it's important to recognize what's happening to get the composition from taking profits in HIVE and then rolling them over. That on average, how much money do we make from our operating business and most of our earnings over the time in our losses came from during the bear cycle that we experienced in the gold asset classes and also in the blockchain world, is that they cost us losses that were coming from operating. Now I'd like to look at this visual to put things in context because we've had lots of shareholders inquiry. And I totally relate to them as a major shareholder in the frustration. As Lisa was trying to explain that you can't do stock buybacks unless you have an open window. You can't roll over things. And that period in this whole discussion that's taking place with BDO is quite delayed. So many delays in having open windows, and that has impacted us in our ability to buy back stock. But I believe that next week, we should be what's called an open opportunity time. And I think that's important. But we have some shareholders that been around for a while, and I thank them very much. But I remember them complaining about GROW being undervalued with JETS growing in assets back in December of 2020. It was very evident during that year. It was an epic move in JETS ETF, both in trading volumes in asset collection and we were deeply undervalued. And we started all of a sudden seeing the crypto winter had thawed. And we started seeing…

Yes, and this is -- Tenneco's a little bit in mirrors, the other slide that we had talking about our cash and how that was growing. But as you can see, as we have operating revenues, our actual cash provided by operating activities has been growing. There is some timing on this kind of related to what's being payout and things like that. But besides that, you can really see that having that operating revenue is helping our cash flow.

Thank you, Lisa. So we are undervalued on many different types of factors and analysis and I showed you that Dow Jones Global Asset Management Index, we're looking at the DNA of volatility. And so when you look at that visual, when you compare us to the average P/E ratio, the EBITDA ratio, the cash flow, whatever the factors that Bloomberg likes to publish and they give you this visual to look at, you can see that we are a great GARP stock. We are a great play on gold. We are a great play on the blockchain crypto phenomena, and we also have an incredible brand awareness on JETS ETF. And I'm going to comment on what we've been doing to enhance that brand in a few seconds. But this is a comparison. And a lot of people don't realize Invesco that 40% of Invesco's assets are the QQQ, which is a phenomenal size asset capturing basic NASDAQ. And as you can see, the Invesco trades at 1.54x price to sales, we trade slightly higher but we are less than WisdomTree, which is 100% ETFs. And if you take a look at return on assets, we're a lean company, and our return on assets, as you can see, are 30% versus 4.7% and 5.2%. So for those shareholders is that we're trying to be as frugal as possible, pay bonuses based on performance and realized gains, realized real performance beating the index as fund managers whenever they beat the index that the fund has to go up against, there's bonuses for that. Otherwise, we remain very lean, and it shows up, I think, is a return on our assets. Return on our equity. This is another important factor. As you can see, we have done an outstanding job of…

Thank you, Frank. And I would like to thank our shareholders. I really appreciate the patience that you all have had. Like Frank said, it has been challenging during this time, where we've been trying to catch up on our filings. We have a small team, but they worked diligently, and we are committed to getting information out to our shareholders as soon as possible. But still required, and we still would either way, do all the diligence that we need to ensure that we're getting accurate information out. So thank you for your patience. We can go to the next slide, where we show that we did have another strong quarter. These are just some financial highlights. Average assets under management was $4.1 billion for December 31, 2021, up 40% from the same quarter a year ago. Operating revenues increased approximately 39% compared to the same quarter last year, and our quarterly net income was $3.6 million. And this was an increase of 50% over the September quarter. Now I'll review our financials in more detail. Beginning on Slide 29, we recorded total operating revenues of $6.6 million for the quarter, which is an increase of $1.9 million or 39% from the $4.7 million in same quarter last year. The increase is primarily due to increases in assets under management, especially in our JETS ETF. Operating expenses for the quarter was $3.6 million, a decrease of $1 million or 22%, primarily for the following reasons: employee compensation and benefits decreased $1.5 million or 47%, mainly due to decreases in bonuses due to higher realized gains on the sale of HIVE in the prior year, and that was somewhat offset by an increase in the amortization of employee stock options. The company did issue stock options in June 2021, and…

Thank you, Lisa. As you can see on Slide 37, a majority of our mutual fund assets are in emerging markets and natural resources with 29% in domestic equities and fixed income. And as for distribution, more than 3/4 of assets come from retail investors with 17% coming from institutional investors. And again, this is just looking at our mutual funds. On this slide, Frank mentioned already that we successfully launched our SEA ETF on January 20th, which we are very excited about. I would like to invite all of our GROW shareholders to an upcoming webcast that we will be hosting in conjunction with ETF trends about the shipping and cargo industry with a discussion around the SEA ETF. So this will be happening March 9th at 1:00 p.m. Central Time, and you can sign up by visiting etftrends.com or you can choose an e-mail at info@usfunds.com and I can get you the registration link. On the next slide, we are very excited to see business travel resuming and with that means more in-person conferences and events. In fact, Frank is already set to speak at a handful of events throughout 2022. The next one coming up is ETF Exchange, which will be happening in Miami Beach, Florida, and we will be promoting our participation in all of these events. So if you are able to attend any, we welcome you to join. Moving on. I do have some exciting news to share, which perhaps you have already seen a share on social media if you follow us that way. Huron University officially announced this week the naming of its new academic building, the Frank Holmes Center for Leadership, Ethics and Entrepreneurship. The building is specifically designed to support the university's mission of fostering a close-knit community and cultivating passionate and civic-minded leaders. So we're very excited to see that. On the next slide, don't forget our educational content does not only come in the form of Frank Talk blogs or the Investor Alert newsletter. We love educating our shareholders through video content as well. So be sure to check out our YouTube page and become a subscriber, if you aren't already one. Lastly, don't forget, we do share a majority of our content, including those videos as well as announcements about our upcoming events across all of our social media platforms. So be sure to check those out when you get a chance. And on this final slide, as we do wrap up today's presentation, I want to invite anyone listening to submit questions to me by emailing info@usfunds.com. I also want to hand it back briefly over to Frank Holmes for any closing comments today. Frank? Any closing comments?

Thank you, Holly, and thank you, everyone, for understanding our past year. And we're focused most importantly is growing our operating revenue and cash flow and investments in companies we invest in. We are very focused on the cash flow return on invested capital model for our different funds and just a matter of smart beta and the discipline of running U.S. Global. So thank you all.

Thanks, Frank, and thank you, everyone, for your participation today. This concludes today's webcast.