U.S. Global Investors, Inc.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us for our webcast announcing U.S. Global Investors' results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2020. I'm Holly Schoenfeldt. If you have any questions during the webinar, you can answer them in the questions area of the control panel sidebar, which is normally to the right of your screen. Also, you may download a PDF of today's 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, Lisa Callicotte, Chief Financial Officer, and myself, Holly Schoenfeldt, Marketing and Public Relations Manager. 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 and 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 four, you'll see a quick overview of U.S. Global Investors. We are an innovative investment manager with vast experience in global markets and specialized sectors. Founded as an investment club, the company became a registered investment advisor in 1968 and has a long-standing history of global investing and launching first-of-their-kind investment products, including the first no-load gold fund. U.S. Global is well known for expertise in gold and precious metals, natural resources, and emerging markets. Now let's go to Frank Holmes, CEO and CIO, for an overview of the period. Frank?

Thank you, Holly. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for participating in hearing our story. I'd like to highlight that where that go-to stock has always been for gold, and then it evolved to digital currencies with our substantial investment in Hive. I'll talk about that in a few minutes. Our balance sheet still remains very, very strong, and we have this reflexive cost structure and monthly difference returns and equity discipline. We've maintained a very low yield, and we've also, buying back our stock, have done it on an algorithm that is on down days, and it's very sort of mathematically driven. Next one is I want to really thank all these institutions, in particular the Royce Funds, Parrot Capital Management, and Financial Investment Management Group. Paul Sellerin has been just long-term loyal investors, and BlackRock and Vanguard I think are much more of indexed funds that have invested in U.S. global investors. So the next one is dividends. We've paid dividends for 10 years now. It's monthly. Current yield at $1.53 was about 1.96%, which is slightly higher than what people are making on money market funds today. And I think we want to do everything to try to maintain it, but there's always sort of guidelines and rules that the share repurchase program in motion. Thank you for joining us. but this program may be suspended or discontinued at any time and so we'll make sure if we make any changes that we'll send out press releases in a normal fashion. The balance sheet remains to us healthy and strong with no debt and I'm going to jump in to some of the things that have impacted our financials and they continue to do that. The next visual is Hive. We have 10 million shares of Hive. We were a co-investor of launching this company. We realized several years ago that we couldn't launch an ETF in the space because of concerns and rightfully so the regulatory bodies of hackers getting Bitcoin and putting them into an ETF. and so we took that intellectual capital and we invested in the creation of the first crypto mining company and started off in Iceland and Sweden and what's happened with high blockchain is that it's very volatile. It moves as an 82% correlation with the Ethereum price and now it's tracking with Bitcoin because I want to point out to investors here that when you look at this year alone, as Ethereum went from $125 to $280, high blockchain went up 453%. Then Ethereum fell down from 280 level down to 120, 115 level. The stock corrected 65%. Ethereum then runs again starting in March to just recently over $200 a coin and Hive immediately starts to run with it. So that impacts every three months. So we can have a great win one quarter and we could turn around and have basically a hit to our earnings on mark to market. And I think Lisa will comment a bit more on that. But I want you to understand is that it would be the same thing if we were able to launch an ETF and there are flows of the ETF itself goes up and down volatile like this, that could impact your overall management fees. So this has been our proxy into this space, and I'm happy to see that the company Touchwood has been able to be the best performer of all crypto blockchain companies, mining companies. Hive was the very first company, many me-to's and copycats came along, but Hive continues to become a proxy for the Ethereum and Bitcoin market. But the next visual is just so important for all investors. Every asset class has its own DNA of volatility. And so if you buy gross stock, you have to recognize that we are volatile. And when we take a look at the S&P 500, it's almost the same as bullion. If you look over one day or 10 days, that volatility is both 1% Even though many media people think that bullion is more volatile than the S&P 500, in fact, it's not. But gold stocks, I'm sorry we had to put that column in there, but gold stocks for our gold funds, they are much more volatile. On a one-day basis, it's plus or minus 3% versus 1% for bullion, and over 10 days, it's much more volatile. Now when we come to Bitcoin and Ethereum, that's another level of volatility. Bitcoin is five times greater than the S&P or gold on a daily basis. Ethereum is four percent, four times greater and look at these data points when you're looking at 10-day volatility. Well, that shows up. That shows up in Hive because Hive correlates close to 90% between 82% and 90% correlations to these crypto prices. And so that definitely has an impact on our financials when we're now with the new rules that started a year ago on mark-to-market. Even though we've made a long-term investment, everything comes into mark-to-market. The earnings per share for the quarter, they're impacted by this, and Lisa will talk more about it and comment on it, but we lost 11 cents for this quarter. Now that's not just all negative. There's other parts to try to explain that and some other positive parts that are coming in, but on the next visual is the quarterly average assets under management. This is an average number. and it's important it doesn't show you the flows that come in at quarter end or month end, but you can see that now we've divested of Galileo and the assets of U.S. Global were slightly rising for March and that was a lot had to do with the GoAU, the gold assets, but also more important is the jets. But this is an average number. The next one really gives you a more significant impact of jets. Jets is a total complex. and so on. So the total complex is now back over a billion dollars and so that has a huge difference in going forward and it takes several months because money comes in and goes out of ETS very fluidly but fortunately it's been unprecedented in talking and giving interviews that Anyone that any fund has had attracted so many assets in a falling price. And it's interesting for me was bad news was good news for Jets. And the same thing happened with Hack. Hack was one of those great ETF ideas and nothing was really growing with Hack until they were hacked, until Sony was hacked. and that news all of a sudden flowed up into that industry, those stocks, and HACC took off, not only the stocks, but the ETF went to a billion dollars. And what it explained to me is that JETS fell 50% and then a lot of investors came in. And we've commented before on our webcast that we have a lot of hedge funds that go long, one or two airlines that want to be short, and so forth, and they'll be short jets. And another one that want to be short, one or two airlines, so they want to make sure that they're protected against an industry run, they go long jets. And what we've seen is an unprecedented amount of money coming into it, more of a tactical trade looking for the rebound that's taken place in previous cycles. So I'm going to try to highlight What these drivers are. The next visual is lessons learned from 9-11, SARS 2003, financial crisis at the bottom in March of 2009, which started in 2008, on a need to support the airline industry. It became very evident that 1 in 15 jobs are airline related. The CARES Act immediately started to cater to the airline industry and supporting this industry because of the multiplying effect of creating jobs here have a huge impact on hotels and tourism. When we look at Las Vegas, there's 200,000 empty beds and over 300,000 people lost their jobs. And so the fact that most people Thank you for joining us. That's when the airline industry really went to a tailspin, and you saw flights and travel go from what was running at 2 million flights a year, people flying in America, fell down to, I think the bottom was 80,000. And the unfortunate part is it's turned, and I'll comment on that. The other sort of really shocking news, besides the positive news for jets, is the online brokerage boom. Bad news is good news. New accounts just boomed. Charles Schwab reported over $600,000. TD Ameritrade, $600,000. E-Trade, over $300,000. New accounts coming in. And this includes Robinhood. And Robinhood has many More accounts than Charles Schwab, however, their accounts are substantially less, and that's where millennials go and trade, and we've heard about them going into the oil ETF because oil fell. There's lots of coverage of new speculators coming in and trading, and that's what we've seen with jets because the airline industry is volatile. It is volatile just like oil is and it's more volatile than the S&P 500 and so we've seen this new boom and I think that's very positive and constructive of being energized the capital markets with new flows coming in and new people staying at home and focused on building their wealth. Airline stocks, the next visuals I'll show you, they're on sale, most discounts since 9-11, and that dramatic fall, all of a sudden, Eric Balcones, I did an interview, and I remember vividly, it was at an all-time low on an oscillator, looking back, as you can see here, and that really created another awareness for the Just ETF as a way to play the space. So we see, in talking to people that speculate in this industry, let's take a look at these visuals. Airlines stocks bounced back six months after various crises. So this one is looking at 9-11. The bounce back was 80%. Now, this doesn't mean this is going to happen this time, because every cycle is different. But there's a probability of enough stimulus, and we've seen unprecedented stimulus coming into this economy. airline stocks bounced back after SARS so this is looking at what took place in Asia predominantly and in that March 2003 till September it was 127 120 percent bounced back in these stocks and then we'll go back to the 2009 bottom March 2009 from the low to the bottom to the top then we're seeing an 80 percent bounce So it's just important for when people say, well, why was all this money coming in? And then Buffett recently came out with all this negative news. But it's really not just Buffett. Buffett's a phenomenal investor, and his webcast was just a great lesson. But we have to remember, he's turning 90 this year. His risk tolerance has changed, and he's really made very few investments recently. he's been nothing but piling cash so the airline industry got lots of publicity with it but there's many other categories that he sold down and it's been piling in his cash looking for whether he feels a bottom but what I believe is we're in an election year In election year, the spigot's open, water flows, and it's just unprecedented the G20 collaboration around the world to print money, both fiscal stimulus and monetary stimulus, and I think we're getting some traction. So the new indicators, what I've discovered is the TSA started publishing how many people they're screening every day. and it's now going to become clearly a data point just like looking at stock prices every day how is it trending and we can see that the low is on April the 14th and as the trend has been turning up it's more than doubled now from its lows the daily people the amount of daily people being screened in America to fly We've got a long way to go. We've got 2 million and we're basically over 2 million people are flying a day domestically. When we do international flights, it's about 2.7 million. We fly all the way down to 87,500. So there's a whole thesis on betting on this. The other one that really surprised me, which I found interesting, was looking at Google Trends. and looking at the balance that took place in Asia and look at how it's going to apply here that you track people looking up for tourism, people looking to fly, book hotels and as that trend changes week over week, it's usually a precursor that we're going to have more people flying, booking hotel rooms and Raymond James in their recent report analyzed Google tracking in Asia and they found a rebound. So I hope that you find this interesting that you can be using TSA data points as another factor along with Google Trends. Warren Buffett, you know, I think as I said he's one of the most brilliant investors but he said, I was too dumb to realize I did not think Jeff Bezos could succeed on the scale he has. and explaining how he missed Amazon. In another annual meeting, he talked about how he missed Google. So he can't catch every trade. He's brilliant. And so the thought process is that he's just going to buy one of these airlines when he thinks the economy's turned around. And 100%, he's talked about it prior. So maybe that takes place. But it creates so much news and so much interest in the airline industry that Jets has become the proxy. And we're thrilled about it. Just like Hive has become the proxy for people that do not want to buy Bitcoin or Ethereum, the trade stocks that Hive became a proxy for those cryptocurrencies. And I thought interesting this week, Bill Miller said he's very positive of the airline industry and he basically has an opinion that if you don't believe in it, then you don't believe there's going to be a vaccine to solve the problems. and he thinks that a lot of the negative news is just kind of six months out. So that's from his lips to God's ears. I hope he's right and I believe he's a brilliant investor and I would bet on the airline industry and its capacity to rebound if people want to get back to doing business. I also got a chuckle that Buffett isn't a fan of Bitcoin either. And it was a billboard ad that was put out in front of his office. Warren, you said you were wrong about Google and Amazon. Maybe you're wrong about Bitcoin. So it's just a jump ball for a lot of people. Is it going to be a B economy? Is it going to be a Nike Swiss economy turnaround? Or a W? And so I believe that his age of 90, I believe that he's got to think about risk differently. and I think that when the economy turns, like I said earlier, a high probability he basically takes a look at the whole industry. It's a jump ball. What will recovery look like? And so I remain quite constructively bullish and I'm seeing people going back to work. Yes, there's going to be more coronavirus outbreaks because more people are going back to work, but there's new procedures. Some people are going to be cleaner and people are going to learn from it. So let's come back to the Jets just to show you the inflows are unprecedented. It's now 50 straight days of money flows and as Eric said, this never happened before. As you can see in the next visual, he comments that the hottest theme in ETF industry with bargain hunting day traders from sites such as Robinhood taking the other side of the trade with Warren Buffett who recently sold carrier jets. So I think I'm thrilled about it. It's being recognized by it. Eric Balcunas this week flew to the Panhandle with his son. He was sharing on a podcast we were doing together and to see his father. who's single, retired at 70, I think 75 years old. And so he's out testing the airlines and he'll have a lot of insight on his experience of flying, I believe it was Delta. So this is another visual showing you the unprecedented growth in assets. and then the JET trading volume is also a precursor. It jumped 22 fold and this is something that's important for liquidity as more funds come into buying it and using it as a proxy. We did expand as the next visual JET ETF. As you grow, there's lots of barriers to entry of launching a new ETF. for many of these platforms they won't put it on unless it's over 50 million and then it's 100 million and then other platforms are 500 million but the most egregious is this play to pay to play by the major wire houses that they're looking for hundreds of thousands of dollars to be on their platform and if a client wants to come and buy then they have to find a disclaimer that they did on their own the brokers can't recommend it but We are growing, and we are on these platforms, and I think that's important, is that Schwab is the biggest in the number of accounts, of dollars, in dollars and accounts. National Financial is number two, Pershing is number three, and I think after Schwab, TD Ameritrade, they'll be unequivocally the biggest in number of accounts also. and Robin Hood, which is a really fascinating story out of Silicon Valley and continues to grow. And the fact that now our product, such as JETS, is being recognized there is very important. If you're a registered investment advisor for next week, I believe, Holly, it's just for RIAs, Thank you for joining us today. is gold. And gold is another beneficiary of this unprecedented printing of money. And our entry into that space is our product is doing exactly what we thought it would do. But here's what's really important for investors is just to recognize that gold bullion is outperforming the S&P 80% of the time this century. and the past 20 years and has outperformed the S&P 500 by three times. But now gold stocks remain very, very undervalued and so our GoAU product is out there. The volume has picked up substantially. We've not had the growth in The next visual is just for investors to recognize the inverse relationship between gold and real interest rates. It's quite simple. When gold hit 1900, real interest rates fell to minus 300 basis points. and then as real interest rates rose price of gold fell and gold stocks took it on the chin even more but gold stocks are very undervalued and I believe we're going to see journalists coming in because the free cash flow yields for the end of March are so much stronger than the S&P for the first time in over a decade and generalist analysts will be buying gold stocks that focus on free cash flow yields. Next visual is gold is in an uptrend for close to five years, but especially the three-year numbers are very, very strong for many of the 100 gold producers we follow in the world. We're also seeing this past quarter record inflows into gold-backed ETS, which is a precursor to higher gold prices, and I should say remain positive and constructive regarding it. GoAU, our entry to that space, listed also in New York's and all these platforms as you can see here. And that's so critical of launching a product that you do get on these platforms for investors to come in and take a look at it. I want to point out that Bitcoin and Ethereum went through what they call a crypto winter. It lasted about 15 months. and all the negative talk by JP Morgan on the crypto space stopped and we saw crypto all of a sudden evolve. What's really important for investors is that this is the next halving of Bitcoin that is the reward mechanism of supply it had this week and that's very material to higher Bitcoin prices in previous cycles. and then we see great hedge fund managers like Paul Tudor Jones buys Bitcoin to hedge against inflation. Recall a year ago he came out and started buying gold and so he's been rewarded for being long gold and now it's Bitcoin. So we are seeing more institutions coming into the space. This is another visual showing you Hive blockchain correlates 82% of the time with the crypto prices. And Hive is at unprecedented volume in trading. Last year, we went through a proxy battle, knocked it down. Then the Ethereum prices all of a sudden started to take off. But institutions that owned it just sold it on a program particular in Canada. They sold it right until the end of December. and the pressure of the stock down and all of a sudden this year it had its own life and it surged. So I think a lot of that worse is behind us. As you can see, Hive has outperformed all this competition and Hive has a series of updates. This is for you to go back and take a look at that we increased during this lockdown. We still made an acquisition in Quebec. We did it for basic numbers for you to understand. If you want to build a megawatt of capacity in Oklahoma or Texas or Montana where crypto mining is quite strong and robust or Washington State, you're talking around $300,000 a megawatt and we spent $92,000 on the acquisition in Quebec, Canada and we have very inexpensive green energy and so that is another positive development for high blockchain. Now, I'm sorry I've been long-winded in this presentation, but there's been so many exciting things that happened during an incredible global meltdown. And U.S. Global, with all of our global funds, really felt this meltdown with the coronavirus, but we're blessed to be able to have products that we weathered the storm. I want to share with the, for Grow Investors, is that what came to my attention from Eric is that the average ETF If it's not profitable after three years it's shut down and we were able to maintain this for five years before it exploded and because we mentioned earlier we have a lower cost structure and that allowed us to bet on this and it's the only product that's out there so we're really happy that we kept conviction to our thesis and the shareholders of Grow at Benefit. And we've also given the public a great way to participate in the airline industry. Lisa.

Thank you, Frank. Good morning. Before I discuss the results of our operations for the quarter, I'd like to discuss the finalization of the sale of our 65% Canadian subsidiary, Galileo Global Equity Advisors. On March 2nd, 2020, Galileo purchased all of its common stock owned by USGI for a million Canadian dollars, which is about 746,000 U.S. The results from Galileo through March 2nd are reflected as discontinued operations in the Consolidated Statement of Operations. So now I'll discuss the results of operations for the quarter ending March 31st, 2020. Beginning on slide 48, we recorded total operating revenues of $914,000 for the quarter, which is an increase of 57,000, or 7%, from the $857,000 the same quarter last year. The increase is primarily due to increase in the ETF assets under management as we've discussed, but we also had decreases in performance being paid out and this increase was somewhat offset by lower assets under management in our USGIF mutual fund. Operating expenses for the quarter were $1.9 million, an increase of $364,000 or 24% from the prior year same quarter. and it was primarily due to an increase in general and administrative expenses of $338,000 or 45% primarily due to business development costs related to increase in ETF assets. We see our operating loss for the quarter ending March 31st, 2020 is $979,000 or a decrease of $307,000 compared to the same quarter for fiscal year 2019. On slide 49, we see that other income and loss for the quarter was a loss of $503,000 As Frank discussed, we record changes in our investment value in this line item, and it has been volatile and is expected to be volatile in the future. The $503,000 loss was mainly due to unrealized losses in investments, and lost for continuing operations was $1.5 million, and lost from discontinued operations was $85,000, which was related to Galileo. Net loss attributable to USGI after taxes for the quarter is $1.6 million, and as you can see on slide 50, that's a loss of $0.11 per share. Moving on to slide 51, we see we still have a strong balance sheet, which includes high level of cash and unrestricted marketable securities that combine to make up 68% of our total assets. As you can see on page 52, at March 31, 2020, we had no long-term debt, the only long-term liabilities are lease obligations, and the company had a net working capital of $10.2 million and a current ratio of 8 to 1. After quarter end, effective April 12, 2020, the company was approved for a loan of approximately $442,000 under the Paycheck Protection Program under the CARES Act. The company has less than 25 employees and is considered a small business. There is potential forgiveness for this loan, but it is dependent on the adherence to forgiveness criteria. and USGI will be working with its lender to determine if all or some of the loans will be forgiven. With that, I'll turn it over to Holly.