GROW U.S. Global Investors
$2.98
U.S. Global Investors Q4 F2026 Earnings Call Transcript
AI Conference Call Analysis
Sign in or subscribe to read.Holly Schoenfeldt
Director of Marketing
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 number three, some quick disclosures. 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-K 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 the next slide, We're always grateful for the continued support of our valued shareholders. If you'd like to receive one of our signature U.S. Global hats featured here, just send your mailing address to info at usfunds.com and we'll gladly ship one out to you. All right, on the next slide, I will briefly review the company. U.S. Global Investors is an innovative investment manager with vast experience in global markets and specialized sectors. We use a quantum mental strategy to create thematic smart beta 2.0 products. The company was originally founded as an investment club, becoming a registered investment advisor in 1968 and has a longstanding history of global investing and launching first of their kind investment products, including the first no load gold fund. Finally, we're experts in thematic investing, in particular, gold and precious metals, natural resources, airlines and luxury goods, all using a quantum mental approach that includes both macro and micro factors. Moving on to the next slide. We often begin our presentations with this slide, which we refer to as the DNA of volatility, as a reminder that market swings are a normal part of long term investing. With that in mind, I will now turn it over to our CEO and CIO, Frank Holmes, to walk us through the fiscal year and share his macro outlook for the quarter. Frank.
Frank Holmes
CEO and Chief Investment Officer
The DNA of volatility is so important for investors to really appreciate. Volatility of asset classes are different, and the same thing with individual stocks within a category. The S&P is the biggest benchmark. It's plus or minus 1% daily as a non-event, meaning 70% of the time that's what happens, and over 10 days is 2%. bullion is twice that number and you can see oil is greater as greater volatility and bitcoin on a daily basis it's pretty well the same as oil and gold but when we start going over 10 days bitcoin is more volatile because it's still emerging uh the jets etf um is plus or minus three percent because oil is their biggest line item besides all these other global issues and and trade Thank you for joining us. Thank you for watching. But when I look at GoAU, which relates to gold, so we can see that GoAU goes up or down 3% in a day as a non-event because gold, it tracks gold 95% of the time. It's following gold, which is 2%. So a lot of the gold traders and price discovery are actually following bullion, and then they'll look at for signals, they call them, that they would go and look at an ETF like GoAU. And you can see over 10 days, it's really a shocker, it's plus or minus 9%. But if a big bulk of our assets are gold related, and Airlines Related, you can see that it shows up in growth stock. It makes it really simple. If we're seeing Jets going up over 10 days, 6% or down 6%, and Gold stocks going up or down 9%, well, it shows up in growth. So it's important to understand that relationship. And then Hive is just to give you an idea for Bitcoin mining and AI. It's very volatile and it trades off of what's happening with Nvidia. And because it's more of a microcap compared to Nvidia, it has even a greater volatility. Next, please. I want to thank the top institutional shareholders, Gator Capital and Capital Wealth Advisors. And Vanguard, I believe, is one of their index products. But thank all those investors and their product for being invested and grow. Next, please. I own about 21% of the company and 99% of the voting control. This is being in compliance with SEC rules for investment advisor. So it's just that's where you need to have two classes of stock. Next, please. Strategy and tactics. Strategy is really simple. It's about winning. How do you win? How does a product win in a category in the universe of all these ETFs and mutual funds and in the financial realm? So We believe it's create thematic products that are sustainable using our Smart Beta 2.0 strategy, which requires rigorous backtesting of over thousands of hours before you launch a product. In up cycles and down cycles, you have to go more than a decade, and it gives you a real confidence factor. There's no guarantee that past performance is going to give you Thank you for joining us. Our strategy also as a public company, because we believe that we're deeply undervalued, that we buy back the stock using an algorithm on flattened down days. And we manage to preserve cash for future growth opportunities and market corrections. And we do make investments and we make investments that are not our directly we have also in our funds but we do not buy something that's just for us and not the funds we always make sure we go through a compliance mechanism is a good first the funds to be able to buy and or is it not appropriate then we would turn around and make certain investments and the other part we've found in this world has changed a lot with wholesalers and in the digital world is the subscriber base and followers we're continuously doing everything to grow that base because we hold our own webcasts and the followers it's important for communicating with investors and then increase our exposure to the Bitcoin ecosystem. We have bought some of like the ETFs that pay monthly dividends and give you the upside but at the same time waiting out these corrections that you're getting an attractive dividend. Next place. And we have exposure and investments very minor today and high, but we still have an investment in high. The marketing strategy. I think it's important here is what Steve Jobs said, you can't connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust the dots will somehow connect in your future by how well you look in the back. Next, please. So I want to give you some education on some ICI factors because we still have mutual funds and ETFs and ETFs are growing faster. But mutual funds are really still a significant portion of the overall assets. Even though ETFs are growing faster, they're still A big component. And when you look at data from the Investment Company Institute, 72 million households own mutual funds and 52% were head by someone 35 to 64. But we find our investors are more like the upper end of 64. but where the industry for ICI comes in is that there's many corporations and you can see that 13.7 trillion in long-term mutual fund assets held by defined contribution plans and our IRAs representing about 62% of household assets. So mutual funds continue to still have assets and and a lot is going into the fund flows is going from employer sponsored retirement plans. Next, please. But when you're market to them, it's very different than ETF. So let me help educate that difference. So ICI Factbook, the ETF surpassed $13 trillion in assets. And what's really evolved here is that it's predominantly a smaller account that's doing it. unless you get tax efficiency, monthly paying specialty funds that give you a return on capital model, they've had some big growth. But I think that the majority is small, it's much more retail, and it's also institutional. And what happens is that a lot of institutions will use that to go short, borrow against these positions, and that's a big source of revenue to low-cost ETFs. They make additional revenue from lending out those securities. And we've seen this in jets in particular, that when Spirit was going bankrupt, there were many institutions that were shorting Spirit, but they would go long jets to do that pairs trade, and they would borrow from it. So they were making a bet. against that particular airlines. And so we made a lot of money for the shareholders in jets from the securities lending. Next, please. RIAs, which is positive for us, are rotating to real assets, says Advisor Pro. And the data is a war in Iran. You've seen a lot of big interest is up 265% basically of interest. in oil patch and then especially I see the oil patch of the refineries. They're making money hand over fist. Natural Resources because of China playing games on restricting the supply of rare metals and other minerals. that there's a big spend now by the federal government. They've improved the supply lines and natural resources as a whole are doing exceptionally well. And commodities are also doing well. So we can see the big interest. Next, please. But when it comes to ETFs, it's different factors. And social media is the new classroom of financial education. I'm not a TikTok person, but it's amazing how many people are on there talking about Bitcoin or gold and government debt and the people recommending different types of allocation models. So it's pretty rich what's going on. I think the biggest is YouTube. I personally enjoy looking at YouTube, Reddit. are really often controversial left to more left when it comes to their political opinions, which I always find really interesting to offset other opinions and X does everything to be in the middle. But it's a big source for active investors are using Reddit and so do the chat GPT and so does clode and perplexity. Quite often they're scanning and looking for articles and information they will go to Reddit besides Wikipedia and other platforms. So a lot of people are using these platforms for getting ideas Next, please. So something on the journey I learned about Jets years ago, Graham Stephan, he's now up to $5.2 million. That means he's making about $5 million a year. He has an earlier one several years back, four years ago, that talks about him first starting and making $4,000 and many more. does great geopolitical stuff, but it's a little sometimes aggressive, but he's got a 3.3 million followers. That's very impressive. And then Humphrey Yang, he's got 2 million subscribers. These people do influence because the marker is how many followers they have. Next, please. So when it came to jets, when it was big flows were into it, I was told, don't you know who Sam Chu is? No, Sam Chu, who? He has 3.7 million subscribers and he's not a pilot. But the other two here, Captain Joe and Mentor Pilot, they have millions of subscribers and talk about the airline industry, which predominantly is a lot of young millennials that are trading these products. Next, please. Now, they're not recommending ETFs, these airline people. They just give you all these facts about what is the best business line, what is the best flight, and other interesting topics. And what amazes you is that so many people are interested in the airline industry. and I do know and remember vividly in 2020 when all the analysts on Wall Street were capitulating to get rid of all the airlines and Warren Buffett blew out in June of 2020 all of his Delta position and now he's a play area back in again but what's interesting is that the big recommendation was coming from Reddit and saying that every time they've had a crisis the Jets fall 60 to 70 percent and a year later they're up 130 percent 120 percent and that's what happened so I think that what we've witnessed here is that billions of dollars come in into that type of product and it's lived that it was it's done basically the quant model for which you're paying only 60 basis points has outperformed the New York Stock Exchange Global Airline Index So we end up coming up with a new product called WAR. And defense spending is a macro trend ever since Putin invaded Crimea. But what's really important here, as you can see in this visual, when the Berlin Wall fell, there was a lot of negotiating of streamlining and cutting back on the US military until 9-11. And you can see this very vividly Then after 9-11, spending increased dramatically. And we can see that recently under the Ukraine invasion, spending really picked up again. So people are deeply concerned in Europe, especially Eastern Europe. And Trump is really also pushed to hold them all accountable for their 2%, and now they're going to 5%. And we're talking about $2.9 trillion. So think of a big... and many more. Our current stock price, the monthly yield is 2.83%. And we continue to pay this monthly. We've not increased the dividend. We've been more focused on buying back stock in the past few years. I'll give you a little more color in the next slide. So the company believes the stock is deeply undervalued and therefore buys back shares when the price is thought or down using an algorithm. Next, please. and during fiscal 2026, company pre-purchased 733,848 Class A shares using 2 million in cash. And since just before COVID, we reduced the shares outstanding by approximately 20%. Next, please. So that gives you an idea of the volatility is a key factor here. If there's a big sell-off, there's more volatility that our buying picks up. Next, please. What's really important, I think, for investors is what Meb Faber came out with, shareholder yield. It's a better approach to yield investing. And what he does is he looks at your free cash flow, your cash flow, and how much stock are you buying back, how much dividends and how much debt you're paying down. Overall, that's what gives you a better return on invested capital. Next, please. So shareholder yield is dividends plus buybacks plus debt reduction divided by market cap. Next, please. So U.S. Global Investors is committed to return value to its shareholders when compared to Treasury yields. So you can see here that the five-year is risen, so is the 10-year, but our overall yield because of the stock buy box is 7.87%. Next, please. Grow over longer term. We can see it has outperformed the Russell Micro Cap Growth Index. Next, please. So two platforms, two investor audiences. So let's compare Schwab versus Robinhood. Schwab is 11 trillion in assets. Robinhood is 377 billion. Accounts and customers, Charles has almost 39 million or 30.5 million active brokerage accounts, whereas Robinhood has 27.5. But the average assets per account or customer is 309,000. versus Robinhood is 13,000. So Robinhood really caters to price discovery, younger investor, but you need price discovery to bring in institutions. Charles Schwab is predominantly RIA asset allocators. Next, please. So this is a comp to give you an idea where we fit in the roughly the middle on price to EBITDA, shareholder yield. You can see these differences. Next, please. Average assets, so they were incrementally increasing and they had a great pop last month and now they seem to have sold off. It's very, very volatile overall. Next, please. Net income, the big bump in assets, we've done better. Next, please. One of the real key people for institutions is Ray Dalio, that a well-diversified portfolio should be 5% to 15% in gold and Bitcoin. And I think it's just important to recommend that, that people read his books. You can get his on LinkedIn, his following and all of the work he's done. And it's quite significant as an educator. Thanks, please. so what makes gold so attractive well big part is modern monetary theory um it's it's basically rising rare uh real debt uh has real consequences and the future doesn't wait it's always trying to figure out what it's going to be and we're 350 trillion uh that's last year so i think it could be even higher next please Central Banks. So now we have modern monetary theories being practiced by the G20 countries. Whenever there's a problem, just print more money. And we're seeing now witnessing a big push that a lot of debt funding is to rearm these countries with AI. So we're an interesting dilemma that most of these countries have huge GDP debt levels and the money now is not going so much for social welfare, it's going more for military spending. And we have a big push by China trying to recommend America to get out of U.S. stocks and buy gold, buy something that has long-term assets. So it's interesting to see that debate. But this visual here is to show you that during COVID was the only drop in China slowing down buying gold, but then they had a big surge to $1.80. What's 108, as you can see? Next, please. That means tons of gold being bought. I mean, it's really remarkable to see how much gold China. But if China wants to get caught up with America, I think they have to buy 100% of all the mines production for the next seven or eight years. This is China's official gold reserves. Since he became dictator for life, you can see big pop. Next, please. The Quantum Mental Approach to Smart Beta 2.0. We use a quantum mental approach, which is basically quants and fundamentals to investing, requiring a broad and deep understanding of global economic trends, policies, and geopolitical events. Our Smart Beta 2.0 investment strategy integrates advanced analytics with data-driven decisions. And I think momentum and revenue cashflow are also important factors. Next, please. Gains seen across the thematic lineup. When Trump came out with his freedom on April the 2nd, it's interesting because everything sold off, I think $5 trillion around the world, and it came back and C has outperformed the S&P 500 by a wide, wide, wide margin. And it's the best barometer that I know for the arteries and veins of the world. and so that continues to be an important product along with war. But war is much more volatile. Here are some of the companies we own. There's CE ETF. You can see as it climbs higher, especially this summer. And you can see JETS also. Next, please. This to me is one of my favorite because you can see how wars far outperformed the S&P aerospace and defense select industry and the S&P 500. So money being raised, deficit spending, triggering people buying gold and triggering people buying anything that has to do with rebuilding NATO with AI. Next, please. Now I'm going to turn it over to Lisa Callicotte, our CFO.
Lisa Callicotte
Chief Financial Officer
Good morning. First, I'll start with the next slide, which is our financial highlights for fiscal year 2026. Our average assets under management were 1.53 billion for the year, and our operating revenues were 10.3 million, and we had a net income of 3.1 million, or 24 cents per share. This slide kind of breaks down our earnings. It shows that we have operational earnings, which is related to our advisory services, but we also have investment earnings, which includes both realized and unrealized gains and losses on our investments. Both of these combined are our total earnings, but they're also both based on market fluctuations. The next slides will give us a little bit more detail into our operations for the year ending June 30th, 2026. First, we see that our operating revenues were $10.3 million for the year, and this is an increase of $1.8 million, or 21%, from the $8.5 million of revenue in prior year. The increase was primarily due to increases in assets under management, especially in our gold and natural resource funds. Operating expenses for the quarter were $10.9 million, or 5% lower than prior year. On the next slide, we see operating loss for fiscal year June 30, 2026 was $603,000, or a favorable change of 2.4 compared to fiscal year 2025. Other income for the year ended June 30, 2026 was $4.5 million compared to $2.7 million in the prior year, an increase of approximately $1.8 million, mainly due to higher unrealized gains in investments. Net income after taxes was $3.1 million or $0.24 per share, which was a favorable change of $3.4 million compared to the loss of $334,000 or $0.03 per share in fiscal year 2025. Moving on to the balance sheet, the next couple of slides show that we have a strong balance sheet and includes high levels of cash. And the next one, you can also see more of our investments. On the following page, you see our liabilities, and these are consistent with prior year. And then the next slide, you see our stockholders' equity. We have a net book value of $45.1 million. Networking capital of $35.7 million and a current ratio of 19.7 to 1. With that, I will hand it over to Holly to discuss marketing and distribution.
Holly Schoenfeldt
Director of Marketing
Thank you, Lisa. All right, on the first slide in my section, I want to quickly highlight a webcast that we recently hosted in collaboration with the team at The Wealth Advisor, focused on the trillion-dollar defense opportunity. Frank Holmes was joined by retired Lieutenant General John Evans to discuss how the defense landscape extends far beyond traditional military hardware and why capital is increasingly flowing into AI, cybersecurity, and autonomous systems. If you didn't get a chance to tune in, we'd be happy to send you the presentation. Just shoot us an email at info at usfunds.com. On the next slide, I want to highlight a brand new podcast that US Global has launched called Return on Ideas, where we will be focusing on the people, the innovations, and the ideas that are shaping the world we live in. The very first episode went out just this week, and you can expect to see new episodes every other week. Be sure to check it out on the US Global YouTube channel or wherever you get your podcasts. Moving on. This slide shows some of our new interactive research pieces that if you have not checked out yet, I highly recommend that you do. The first is part of a new infographic series we're launching that examines the power challenges behind AI. And the other two are interactive reports that explore what's driving the price of gold, as well as what's driving oil and natural gas prices and shaping the global energy landscape. You can find all of these on the resources tab on our website. On the next slide, I want to highlight our continued investment in delivering timely original market insights across digital platforms, including YouTube and TikTok. These channels allow us to communicate directly with both current and prospective shareholders and provide greater visibility into our views on the markets and the broader investment landscape. If you haven't already, I encourage you to visit our YouTube channel and subscribe to stay informed on our latest content. All right, on the next slide. We always like to look back at the most read Frank Talk blog posts from the recent quarter. As you can see here, the top themes centered around AI, defense, the rise in oil prices, and we publish one to two posts each week covering a range of market and industry topics that align with the sectors and themes we invest in. If you're already a subscriber and find the content valuable, We encourage you to share it with friends or professional contacts who may be interested in it as well. Subscription is completely free. Finally, on my last slide, I do encourage all of you to follow us on social media. We're on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook, so wherever you prefer to get your news, be sure to check us out. This way, you're up to date with what's going on with Grow, our funds, and our broader market insights. All right, as a reminder to our audience, if you have any questions today, please email those to info at usfunds.com, and we will gladly follow up with you to get anything clarified that you may need more information on. Thank you so much for tuning in today. That concludes our webcast summarizing the 2026 fiscal year.