Earnings Labs

U.S. Global Investors, Inc. (GROW)

Q3 2022 Earnings Call· Tue, May 10, 2022

$2.66

+3.10%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
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Same-Day

-2.17%

1 Week

+5.22%

1 Month

-2.17%

vs S&P

+5.95%

Transcript

Holly Schoenfeldt

Management

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for our webcast announcing U.S. Global Investors Results For Third Quarter Ended March 31, 2022. I'm Holly Schoenfeldt. As seen on Slide number 2, as you can see on Slide number 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 Slide 3, as always, we would love to offer anyone to end today, one of our JETS, GOAU Archives and SEA JETS. In addition, we have Jet Luggage tags available. All you have to do is send us an e-mail with your physical mailing address to info@usfunds.com. Moving on to Slide number 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 accepts no obligation to update them in the future. Moving on to Slide number 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. Moving on to Slide number 6. I would like to hand the presentation over to Frank Holmes to review what we believe is one of our most helpful visuals when it comes to investing, not only in GROW but in any asset class. Frank?

Frank Holmes

Management

Thank you, Holly. The DNA of volatility is another way of looking at capital markets and risk and volatility are all intertwined. And this is a visual update statistically of looking at what 1-day volatility is 70% of the time. And for the S&P, it's 1%. So whenever it's up more than that or down like 3% in a day that mathematically odds favor for a bounce the next day. The other part is a 10-day volatility whenever it's plus or minus 3%. As you know notice that gold in the stock market are actually the same, which shocks a lot of people, whereas asset managers index, it's minus or plus 2% on a daily basis and 5% over 10 days. The airlines, which we have a huge asset class in our portfolio, New York -- listed on the New York Stock Exchange, our ETF JETS. But this is to compare to the Arca Airline Global Index, and it's nonevent for to go up or down 2% a day and 7% over a 10-day period. What influences this index the most is this the rotation in oil, and oil has a greater volatility on a daily basis 10-day and oil is the largest cost to the airlines industry. Bitcoin is plus or minus 3% is having a rough day. And we took the 10 day for it is plus or minus 11%. And Tesla is the same as bitcoin. Any there was even more volatile and GROW is basically as volatile as a Helium. When you look at over 1 day or over a 10-day period, it's because of our investments in high blockchain, in the gold space and also in the airlines and airlines representing the largest component of our overall assets today. What's driving GROW, growing assets under…

Lisa Callicotte

Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Frank. Good morning, everyone. First, I'd like to start with just a couple of highlights on the next slide. Our average assets under management were $4.1 billion for March 31, 2022 quarter, and this was consistent with our prior quarter and slightly up from a year ago. Also, we had total operating revenues of $6.2 million and an operating margin of 41%. Now, I'll go into more details about our results of operations for the quarter ending March 31, 2022. On the next slide, we recorded operating revenues of $6.2 million for the quarter, which is a decrease of $180,000 or 3% from the $6.4 million in the same quarter last year. The decrease is primarily due to paying performance fees in the current period and receiving performance fees in the prior period. Operating expenses for the current quarter were $3.7 million, an increase of $595,000 or 19% over the same period last year, primarily due to the following reasons: General and administrative expenses increased $612,000 or 40%, primarily due to higher fund expenses and higher consulting professional fees; advertising cost increased $94,000 primarily due to the launch of the new ETF. But these increases were somewhat offset by a decrease of employee compensation and benefits of $123,000. On the next slide, we see our operating income for the quarter ended March 31, 2022, is $2.5 million or a decrease of $775,000 compared to the same period for fiscal year 2021. We see that our other income decreased to $12 million compared to prior year and that is because in the current period, we recorded unrealized losses on investments of $4.5 million compared to unrealized gains on investments of $7.1 million in the same quarter last year. And this is what Frank was discussing earlier related to the…

Holly Schoenfeldt

Management

Thank you, Lisa. On this slide, we always like to do a breakdown of our mutual fund assets. So, as you can see here, a majority of those assets are in emerging markets and natural resources, while 26% are in domestic equity and fixed income. Similarly, if you look at assets by distribution channel, you can see that 82% come from retail, while 18% are from institutional. And on this slide, I would like to invite all of our Grow shareholders to an upcoming webcast. We will be hosting in conjunction with ETF trends on gold and gold mining stocks with the discussion around our GOAU ETF as well. And this will be taking place on May 23 at 1:00 p.m. Central Time, and you can sign up either by visiting etftrends.com or sending us an e-mail at info@usfunds.com. Moving on to the next slide. Don't forget that our educational content does not only come in the form of the Frank Talk [ph] blog or the Investor Alert newsletter. We love educating our shareholders through video content as well. So, make sure you subscribe to our YouTube page to get video updates on everything from gold to airlines and the shipping industry. And lastly, as we wrap up today's presentation, I do want to remind everyone that we share a majority of our new content, as well as announcements about upcoming events across all of our social media platform. So, make sure to check those out when you get a chance. And just as a reminder to our audience, if you have any follow-up questions today, please e-mail those to info@usfunds.com. I now want to hand the presentation back to Frank for any closing comments. Frank?

Frank Holmes

Operator

Thank you, Holly, and thank you all shareholders for staying with us and any new ones have come and joined us. Thank you. End of Q&A: