GROW

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 3, 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 do not 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 are always grateful for the continued support of our valued shareholders.

If you would like to receive one of our signature U.S. Global hats featured here, just send your mailing address to [email protected] and we will 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 quantamental 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 are experts in thematic investing, in particular gold and precious metals, natural resources, airlines, and luxury goods, all using a quantamental approach that includes both macro and micro factors. Moving onto 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?

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 is ±1% daily is a non-event, meaning 70% of the time, that is what happens, and over 10 days is 2%.

Bullion is twice that number, and you can see oil has greater volatility. Bitcoin, on a daily basis, it is pretty well the same as oil and gold, but when we start going over 10 days, Bitcoin is more volatile because it is still emerging. The JETS ETF is ±3%, because oil is their biggest line item besides all these other global issues and trade. You just get this increase in the volatility. So what it tells you, and this explains basically that you should be looking to buy these things.

When they go -3% in a day or more, that is usually a better buy, and over 10 days, if they are down 6%, that is even a less risk buy. Selling, same thing on the upside. What is interesting is the New York Stock Exchange Airline Index, it is greater than JETS when you take a look over 10 days. When I look at GOAU, which relates to gold, we can see that GOAU goes up or down 3% in a day is a non-event, because gold, it tracks gold 95% of the time. It is following gold, which is 2%. A lot of the gold traders and price discovery are actually following bullion and then they will look at four signals, they call them, that they would go and look at an ETF like GOAU. You can see over 10 days, it is really a shocker.

It is ±9%. If a big bulk of our assets are gold related and airlines related, you can see that it shows up in GROW stock. It makes it really simple. If we are seeing JETS going up over 10 days, 6% or down 6%, and gold stocks going up or down 9%, it shows up in GROW. It is important to understand that relationship. HIVE is just to give you an idea for Bitcoin mining and AI. It is very volatile and it trades off of what is happening with NVIDIA. Because it is more of a micro cap 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 in one of their index products.

Thank all those investors and their product for being invested in GROW. Next, please. I own about 24% of the company and 99% of the voting control. This is to be in compliance with SEC rules for investment adviser. That is where you need to have 2 classes of stock. Next, please. Strategy and tactics. A strategy is really simple. It is 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? We believe that it is 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 is no guarantee that past performance is going to give you a guarantee of future results, but it does give you a way to understand up and down cycles and how weightings and various screens are used to create a thematic basket of stocks. Our mission is to make people feel financially happy and secure that their wealth is consistently growing. It is volatile, as you can see from previously, and that is what we try to educate investors on, and we have won many awards on the education for that. Our strategy also, as a public company, because we believe that we are deeply undervalued, that we buy back the stock using an algorithm on flat and down days. We manage to preserve cash for future growth opportunities and market corrections, and we do make investments.

We make investments that are not 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 when we go through a compliance mechanism, is it good for the funds to be able to buy? Or if it's not appropriate, then we would turn around and make certain investments. The other part we found in this world has changed a lot with wholesalers and 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. Then increase our exposure to the Bitcoin ecosystem.

We have bought some of 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 please. We have exposure and investments very minor today in HIVE, but we still have an investment in HIVE. 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. 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. When you look at data from the Investment Company Institute, 72 million households own mutual funds, and 52% were headed 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 IRAs representing about 62% of household assets. So mutual funds continue to still have assets. A lot is going into the fund flows, is going from employer sponsored retirement plans. Next, please. But when you're marketed to them, it's very different than ETF. Let me help educate that difference. So ICI Fact Book, the ETF surpassed $13 trillion in assets.

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. 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. We've seen this in JETS in particular, that when Spirit was going bankrupt, the whole end, there were many institutions who 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.

We made a lot of money for the shareholders in JETS from that securities lending. Next please. RIAs, which is positive for us, are rotating to real assets, says AdvizorPro. The data is a war in Iran. You have seen a lot of big interest is up 265%, basically of interest in oil patch. Then especially, I see in the oil patch of the refineries, they are making money hand over fist. Natural resources because of China playing games on restricting the supply of rare metals and other minerals, there is a big spend now by the federal government to improve the supply lines. Natural resource as a whole are doing exceptionally well. Commodities are also doing well. We can see the big interest. Next please, when it comes to ETFs, it is different factors and social media is the new classroom of financial education.

I am not a TikTok person, but it is amazing how many people are on there talking about Bitcoin or gold and government debt and then people recommending different types of allocation models. It is pretty rich what is going on. I think the biggest is YouTube. I personally enjoy looking at YouTube. Reddit, really often controversial, more left when it comes to their political opinions, which I always find really interesting to offset other opinions. X does everything to be in the middle. It is a big source for active investors are using Reddit, and so do ChatGPT, and so does Claude and Perplexity. Quite often when they are scanning and looking for articles and information, they will go to Reddit, besides Wikipedia and other platforms. A lot of people are using these platforms for getting ideas.

Something on the journey I learned about JETS years ago, Graham Stephan, he is now up to 5.2 million. That means he is 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 with YouTube, getting paid for shared revenue. Basically, it is $1 million for every million subscribers. He is a real estate guy that has gone full time in this end of the business. Andre over here in the middle here, he has always got The World's Coming to an End, does great geopolitical stuff but is a little sometimes aggressive, but he has got 3.3 million followers. That is very impressive. Then Humphrey Yang, he has got 2 million subscribers. These people do influence because the marker is how many followers they have. Next please.

When it came to JETS, when those big flows were into it, I was told, "Don't you know who Sam Chui is?" I said, "No. Sam Chui, who?" Well, he has 3.7 million subscribers, and he is 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 are 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? Other interesting top. What amazes you is that so many people are interested in the airline industry.

I do know and remember vividly in 2020 when all the analysts on Wall Street were capitulating, get rid of all the airlines. Warren Buffett blew out in June of 2020, all of his Delta position. Now he's a player again, back in again. 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%-70%, and a year later, they're up 130%, 120%. That's what happened. I think that what we witness here is that billions of dollars come in, into that type of product. 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.

We end up coming out with a new product called WAR, and defense spending is a macro trend ever since Putin invaded Crimea. 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 U.S. military until 9/11. You can see this very vividly that after 9/11, our spending increased dramatically. We could see that recently under Ukraine invasion, spending really picked up again. People are deeply concerned in Europe, especially Eastern Europe. Trump has also pushed to hold them all accountable for their 2%, and now they're going to 5%. We're talking about $2.9 trillion, so think of a big funnel of money coming rushing down, going into a sector.

There are certain industries that are going to truly be more significant, and I'm a big theory believer that it's going to be AI-related, and that includes data centers. This one. Next please. What do we do? It's about growing the dividends or growing the cash flow. 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 a little more color in the next slide. The company believes the stock is deeply undervalued and therefore buys back shares when the prices flatter down using an algorithm. Next please. During fiscal 2026, company repurchased 733,848 Class A shares using $2 million in cash. Since just before COVID, we reduced the shares outstanding by approximately 20%. Next please.

That gives you an idea that volatility is a key factor here. If there's a big sell-off, there's more down volatility than our buying picks up. Next, please. What's really important, I think, for investors is Meb Faber came out with shareholder yield. It's a better approach to yield investing. 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 gives you a better return on invested capital. Next please. Shareholder yield is dividends plus buybacks plus debt reduction divided by market cap. Next please. U.S. Global Investors is committed to return value to its shareholders when compared to Treasury yields.

So you can see here that the 5-year has risen, so has the 10-year, but our overall yield, because of the stock buybacks, is 7.87%. Next please. GROW over longer term. We can see it's outperformed the Russell Microcap Growth Index. Next please. So two platforms, two investor audiences. Let's compare Schwab versus Robinhood. Schwab has $11 trillion in assets, Robinhood has $367 billion. Accounts and customers, Charles has almost 39 million or 30.5 million active brokerage accounts, whereas Robinhood has 27.5. But their average assets per account customer is $309,000, versus Robinhood is $13,000. So Robinhood really caters to price discovery, younger investors, 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 at roughly the middle on price to EBITDA.

Shareholder yield, you could 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 volatile overall. Next please. Net income on the big bump in assets, we've done better. Next please. One of the real key people for institutions was Ray Dalio, that a well-diversified portfolio should be 5%-15% in gold and Bitcoin. And I think it's just important to recommend that people read his book. You can get his On LinkedIn, his following and all of the work he's done, and it's quite significant as an educator. Next please. So what makes gold so attractive? Well, a big part is Modern Monetary Theory. It's basically rising rare. Real debt 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. That's last year. I think it could be even higher. Next please. Central banks. Now we have Modern Monetary Theory 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 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.

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 108. What is 108 as you can see. Next, please. That means tons of gold being bought. 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 mined production for the next 7 or 8 years. This is China's official gold reserves since he became dictator for life. You can see, big pop. Next please. The quantamental approach to Smart Beta 2.0. We use a quantamental 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 l think momentum and revenue cash flow are also important factors. Next please. Gains seen across the thematic lineup. When Trump came out with his freedom, it was on April 2nd. It's interesting because everything sold off, I think $5 trillion around the world, and it came back and JETS has outperformed the S&P 500 by a wide margin. It's the best barometer that I know for the arteries and veins of the world. 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 JETS ETF. You can see as it climbs higher, especially this summer. You could see JETS also. Next please.

This to me is one of my favorite because you can see how WAR has far outperformed the S&P Aerospace & 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 gonna turn over to Lisa Callicotte, our CFO.

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 $0.24 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. 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 30th, 2026 was $603,000, or a favorable change of 2.4 compared to fiscal year 2025. Other income for the year ended June 30th, 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 FY 2025. Moving onto the balance sheet. The next couple of slides show that we have a strong balance sheet. It 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. Then the next slide, you see our stockholders equity. We have a net book value of $45.1 million. We have networking capital of $35.7 million and a current ratio of 19.7:1. With that, I will hand it over to Holly to discuss marketing and distribution.

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 [email protected]. On the next slide, I want to highlight a brand new podcast that U.S. 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 U.S. 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. 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 order. As you can see here, the top themes centered around AI, defense, the rise in oil prices. 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 [email protected], 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.

Investors results for the third quarter of 2026. As you can see 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. Moving on to the next slide. 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 number 4, we're always grateful for our continued support of our valued shareholders.

If you'd like to receive one of our signature U.S. Global hats featured here, just send us your mailing address to [email protected], we will gladly ship one out to you. All right, moving on to 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 quantamental 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 long-standing history of global investing and launching first of their kind investment products. Finally, we are experts in thematic investing, in particular gold and precious metals, natural resources, airlines and luxury goods, all using a quantamental approach that includes both macro and micro factors.

Moving on to the next slide. We often begin our presentations with this slide, what we call the DNA of volatility, as a reminder that market swings are a normal part of long-term investing. With that in mind, I would like to hand it over to our CEO and CIO, Frank Holmes. Frank?

Thank you, Holly. As Holly points out that volatility is so important to appreciate, these numbers always change when global factors, such as a stock, like we know Tesla when it went into the S&P 500's volatility dropped. Gold bullion, when the ETF was created, its volatility dropped. Other events could turn around to increase volatility, and it's a non-event for Bitcoin to go up 3% in a day or down, and the same thing with the airline index. The same numbers happen over, as you can see here, over 10 trading days, versus gold. Gold stocks are even more volatile than gold.

Next, please. I want to thank our shareholders, Gator Capital Management, seeing our deep value, owning 7.9% and 6% by Capital Wealth Advisors and Vanguard's index. Next, please. As a CEO and CIO, I own approximately 19% of the company and have approximately 99% of voting control. This is a structure that is going to be in compliant with '40 Act and rules for running money management companies. Next, please. Strategy and tactics create thematic products.

Look for rigorous process of back testing thousands of hours before launching a product for its resiliency in both up and down cycles. Our mission is to make people feel financially happy and secure that their wealth is consistently growing. Consistently is really an important part when we look longer term. Short term, we can see periods where gold, which is we're well-known for, can trade sideways or be down. Over this century and over this decade, it's had phenomenal performance.

Over the past five years, it's really clicked in over the past two years. It's recognizing over longer time periods. We strategically buy back our stock using an algorithm on flatten down days and manage to preserve cash for future growth. Please, we do love when we get more subscribers for their thought processes, so feel free to subscribe.

It's something that we look to increase in a very competitive marketing. The drive down marketing costs has developed followers, and we increase our exposure to the Bitcoin ecosystem because we did launch HIVE, the first crypto mining company to go public, which is a dual engine, both data centers tier 1 for Bitcoin mining, but tier 3 is now building AI factories. Next, please.

I'm gonna quickly go back over the capital markets for you and our products and how they're aligned with them. In that thought process, the great line from Steve Jobs, "You can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards." You have to trust the dots will somehow connect to your future, and that's really a thought process that also shows up in Smart Beta 2.0 is back testing, seeing if you can connect the dots, what are the factors for portfolio construction, as well as different themes have different key factors for stock picking.

Next, please. The trend continues. Mutual funds continue to see redemptions as ETFs continue to grow. What's really important for us is to see the active managed ETFs are growing. Next, please. The total U.S. ETF market remains the largest in the world, as you can see from ICI Fact Book. The total assets have surpassed 13 trillion. Next, please. The rise of active ETFs. You know, active ETFs attracted $500 billion in net inflows in 2025, and more than 80% of ETF launches in 2025 were active. This is a big difference from when we first launched the JETS.

In Q1 2026 active ETFs were attracting nearly as much money as passive ETFs. Next, please. I really point out that I think Cathie Wood has been really instrumental in the creation and success when she was able to balloon to $100 billion in technology suite of ETFs, and really capture the whole boom in Bitcoin early and Elon Musk building Tesla. Being an early pioneer, and being active and concealing to her is really research. The thought process is that people can download and look at research at the same time, see how she looks to participate through her products.

I think that was a major game changer. I mean, in that context, the company we believe is, its stock is deeply undervalued and continuing to buy back shares when the price is flat or down, as I mentioned earlier. This is part of the company's 2-pillar strategy to enhance shareholder value by paying dividends as well as buyback amounts per year. Next, please. For three months ended March 31st, the company repurchased a total of 176,592 Class A shares using cash of approximately $534,000. Since 12th of 2019, we have shrunk the shares outstanding by approximately 20%.

Next, please. GROW by buybacks. This is just looking at the past 4 quarters. As you can see, if markets become volatile and down, we end up buying more on the down periods. Next, please. The key factor in this thought process is what's called Total Shareholder Yield. That's dividends plus buybacks plus debt reduction. Since we don't have debt, it's really focused on dividends and buyback divided by the market cap. Next, please. On a comparative analysis, you can see that basically our monthly dividend is $0.0075.

That works out to a present yield of about 3.4%. I think if we flip over to the next visual, it's really helpful to put this in context because the dividend growth model is really comparing dividends against five-year government bond yields. You can see that our yield is slightly less than a five-year, but with the stock buybacks, that total shareholder yield is 9.96%. This just begs the thought process of continuing to buy back the stock, and makes it a very compelling investment.

Next, please. Assets of $1.63 billion, and operating revenue of $2.8 million quarterly. Next, please. Average assets under management have been increasing, which is positive and constructive in the sort of the volatile markets we live with. It doesn't matter. A year ago, we had, which is really to me, interesting, the contrarian is, Liberation Day on April 2, and how that impacts the assets and how we've slowly climbed out of that correction. And some of our products have done exceptionally well, even with the negative doubts.

Next, please. Quarterly EBITDA per share is basically showing you some of the volatility. Lisa will give you more granularity, and if you want more details, you can feel free to phone her, reach out and walk you through some of the swings we've experienced. Looking back at the quarter of June of last year, that included April Liberation Day, assets fell, assets rallied slowly from there. We've also had some other GAAP reporting issues that create this sort of non-cash volatility.

Next, please. We like to compare WisdomTree's 100% ETFs. Invesco is 40%, we're 63%. Sort of comparing our operating revenue price to book, we're the deepest value. That's why we keep buying back our stock. We still generate higher returns on assets. Our pre-tax margins remain healthy. Our dividend yield is the highest, and our price to EBITDA is extremely attractive when you compare it to the overall market. Next, please.

A well-diversified portfolio should have 5% to 15% in gold, as Ray Dalio, master of the universe of big hedge funds, the biggest, to last $136 billion, very quant discipline, also a big gold advocate. As imbalances happen on a regular basis in the G20 countries between their monetary and fiscal policies, gold rises faster in those countries which have a bigger imbalance. Next, please. This is sort of connecting the dots. You can see here gold's had a spectacular run since last year, in the past 12 months, from under $2,000 to over $5,500.

It's corrected and now is bouncing back. I think gold still remains very attractive for many fundamental reasons. Next, please. One of the most compelling is a Modern Monetary Theory. It basically is that governments this century have demonstrated a propensity to print their money out of any problem, saying that they will buy back that debt when the economy improves in their country, but they never do, so the debt continues to grow and there's approximately 8 billion ounces of gold on the surface of the earth, but the money printing is faster than the gold is coming out of the ground or and gold is above the ground. That lends it that real assets like gold become an attractive asset. I think that it's just an important part in a diversified portfolio to protect your family's legacy and have a long-term exposure, in particular gold stocks. Next, please.

One of the big factors to buying gold is not just the fear trade, which is negative interest rates and imbalance of MMT. It's been the rising GDP per capita for countries like China and India, Middle East, and Southeast Asia, where there's a huge cultural bias towards buying gold, especially on any corrections. We quite often like to look at gold in rupee terms and Chinese yuan terms. You can see they're up substantially in rupee terms for India. When you put India and China together, it's 40% of the world's population.

You throw in Southeast Asia, Middle East, you're over 50% of the world's population who buy gold for love. The correlation there is the highest GDP per capita or the rising in these countries has demonstrated a continuous buying this century. Next, please. What's really important for me as a money manager and U.S. Global Investors is our gold equity stocks are now starting to show up as momentum stocks in the past year.

This is fundamental. This happened in 2002, went on for five years, and gold stocks far outperformed the overall market. This is a very positive telling sign of growth momentum and revenue and cash flow. Next, please. Gold miners' free cash flow has surged. As you can see this visual, even though it shows you gold's corrected, the overall free cash flow of the industry continues to rise faster than the overall S&P 500. That's another reason why many of these stocks show up at IBD. Next, please. Central banks continue to be net purchaser of gold since 2010.

We can see the real acceleration has taken place since 2020. We saw big increases in 2018 and 2019, especially out of China. When Xi Jinping became dictator for life, China kept buying back gold, China continues even this past month of showing a robust buying of gold to try to legitimize their currency as a global currency. Next, please.

We believe that government policies are a precursor to change. This is a classic example what happened to silver. When the U.S. government named silver a U.S. strategic mineral in November, we saw a huge increase in the futures market by hedge funds, buying silver. It had a hyperlink run to $120 an ounce, and then the big correction took place because of more government policies, with the CME increasing margins by 64%.

It's gone through the correction and now has come off that bottom. Next, please. Our approach to investing is a quantamental approach to Smart Beta, and it's well known now that we use this quantamental approach 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, diversification, and management of risk. Momentum and revenue and cash flow growth are very important.

High free cash flow yield is also very important to generate higher cash flow returns on invested capital. What we have found is that different assets, different themes, have different factors for picking those stocks in that industry, that category. Further, we have found that the structure of the portfolio is very important when you do back testing. Next, please. Building a smart thematic ETF platform, SEA, WAR, JETS, GOAU. Gold is up 300%, so GOAU since we launched it. JETS has done exactly what we thought it would outperform the NYSE Arca Global Airline Index.

It's now, these flags are showing you that JETS is listed in Colombia, it's in Mexico, it's also in Peru. So is GOAU. GOAU is listed in Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. Recently, SEA is listed in Peru and Mexico. These will eventually get listed all through Latin America. I think it's important that when we look at SEA, it's far outperformed the S&P this past year, even after the tariff spat on April 2, 2025. The whole world fell by $5 trillion. As cloud broke back, the S&P last year was up about 12%.

SEA was more than double that. WAR, which is basically AI for the rebuilding of military, it's had a spectacular year. I think it's over 12 months now, it's up over 50%. It's done what it's should have done, which are based on our models, we're happy with that. JETS just continues to fly over all the negative narrative. It falls short-term with rising negative sentiment, like the war in Iran. Immediately you start to see the airlines this past quarter coming out with numbers far, far superior to global GDP, domestic GDP.

I think that the airlines are a sweet spot of being almost a leading indicator for global economic activity like sea, cargo carries 80% of all commodities and finished products, heavy, big products, and it really captures the arteries and veins of global travel. World trade, or it's just as global travel. Next, please. Gains seen in WAR and SEA amid international conflict sell off quickly and then go on to rise. Totally contrary to what many people thought. Next, please. Military expenditures, we keep highlighting, have hit a new all-time high.

It's forecast to be 5% of GDPs in the next couple of years, which is now pushing $2.9 trillion. It's pretty easy to figure out the five industries which are gonna be benefit. Really, the focus for us has been AI in those industries, like cybersecurity to making aircraft carriers or fighter jets. What we do see, so this century since 9/11 took place, that you can see that there's been a rise in spending, globally. You can also really see, since Xi Jinping became dictator for life, that America has increased its spending because China now has the largest military force in the world, and maybe more military ships than the U.S.

Next, please. AI, we've mentioned many times in our webcasts, is really key for cybersecurity. For me personally, it's also been really key for healthcare. I do the Galleri test every year that looks for over 200 precursors to looking for proteins, for precursors to cancer. Now the MRI that can look for tumors in your body that normal blood tests may not capture. That could be the stage, the stepping staging for cancer. AI is really important for healthcare, cybersecurity, but key here for everyone listening is military spending.

In 1989, under George H. W. Bush, America went in and arrested Noriega, the president of Panama, for narco dealing and other corrupt activities, but 23 American soldiers were killed. Going into Venezuela was much more tricky because they had stocked themselves with a lot of Russian and Chinese surveillance equipment, radar equipment. What's really key here is that no Americans were killed as we captured Maduro. The idea of using AI is really quite profound when it looks at national security. Next, please. This has been our theme for the creating of WAR.

Which we're showing you here is these AI data centers are hyperlinking information between a Delta Force on the ground, to an aircraft carrier, to a fighter jet in the sky, to data from a satellite, to a helicopter, bringing in, taking out Delta Forces. The use of AI will continue to be very significant for national security in addition to healthcare. Next, please. We believe we have the products that are lined up with that, like recognizing the future demand accelerated with compute and graphics processing, NVIDIA and chips.

Here I am with Jensen, the CEO of NVIDIA, the largest market cap company in the world. It continues as our investments in HIVE as it builds out its AI infrastructure. Next, please. We also look at some of these alternative investments that are illiquid, they wouldn't qualify for our funds. We participate them so that we have our nose into what's going on in the world outside of listed public companies. We were able to participate InvestX series, and it was a $500,000 investment, and now it's looking to go public, and the estimated value for our investment is up sevenfold.

These things don't happen. Sometimes there's lumps and losses in this speculation. We as a company, as an investment company, not only invest in our own funds, we also invest in some real estate and the creation of new companies. Like we launched the creation of HIVE. We also make these other special investments so that we are in the information flow of where technology is going. Next, please. Now I'm gonna turn it over to hardworking Lisa Callicotte to give you more granularity on the financials for this past quarter. Lisa?

Thank you, Frank. Good morning. On the next slide, you can see that we're gonna start with our financial highlights. Average assets under management were $1.63 billion for the quarter ending March 31st, 2026. This is a 15% increase from the same quarter a year ago. Operating revenues were $2.8 million, an increase of approximately 31% compared to the same quarter last year. We had quarterly net income of $2.6 million or $0.23 per share.

As we move on to the next slide, this slide is a reminder of our two main components of our earnings. We have operational earnings that consist of our advisory services, and we have other earnings, which mainly consist of realized and unrealized gains and losses on our investment holdings. Both the advisory earnings and the investment gains and losses fluctuate based on market forces.

On the next slides, we're gonna go into more detail about our results of operation. Here we see that our total revenues were $2.7 million for the quarter, which is an increase of $659,000 or 31% from the $2.1 million the same quarter last year. The increase was primarily due to higher assets under management, especially in our gold mutual funds and our gold ETF, GOAU.

Operating expenses for the current quarter were $2.7 million, an decrease of $322,000 or 11%, primarily due to decreases in employee compensation of $143,000 or 11%, and $138,000 or 57% decline in advertising expenses, which was primarily due to elevated expenses in the prior year related to the launching of our WAR ETF.

On the next slide, we can see our operating income for the quarter ending March 31st, 2026 is $88,000. That's compared to a loss of $893,000 for the same quarter, in fiscal year 2025. Other income increased $1.1 million compared to prior year, mainly due to net unrealized gains in equity securities of $1.3 million in the current period compared to unrealized losses of $50,000 in the same quarter in the prior year. This was a favorable change of $1.4 million. Other income for the quarter includes a $1.9 million unrealized gain in the InvestX series investment Frank discussed earlier.

In the current period, the company recognized $844,000 tax benefit, compared to a tax expense of $137,000 in the March 31, 2025 quarter. This favorable change of $981,000 was primarily driven by discrete tax items, including a federal tax adjustment related to the tax treatment of certain HIVE convertible securities and a decrease in valuation allowance. In the December quarter, we recorded a tax expense related to the tax accounting method change, and we expected an offsetting benefit that was recorded in the March quarter.

Net income after taxes for the quarter is $2.7 million or $0.23 per share, which is a favorable change of $3.1 million compared to the net loss of $382,000, or a loss of $0.03 per share for the quarter ending the same quarter ending FY 2025. On the next slide and the following slide, you see that we have a strong balance sheet that includes high levels of cash and securities.

Moving on to the next slide, you can see our total liabilities are $2.9 million. The following slide shows our shareholders' equity. The company has a net working capital of $36.2 million and a current ratio of 20.9 to 1. With that, I'll hand it over to Holly to talk about our marketing.

Thank you, Lisa. All right. The first slide in my section highlights several events that our marketing and investments team have recently attended, as well as one that we are looking forward to in June. In April, Frank Holmes delivered a keynote presentation at the Swiss Mining Institute conference in Panama, where he also had the opportunity to meet one-on-one with management teams from many of the precious metals companies that we own.

In May, members of our team attended the Wealthy & Wise Summit, where Frank also spoke on the intersection of gold, defense, and AI, three themes we believe are becoming increasingly interconnected. Also, we are excited to once again represent U.S. Global at Wealth Management EDGE in June, which I believe will be our third consecutive year attending.

That event provides a valuable opportunity to connect with advisors and peers across the ETF industry. On the next slide, you will see our team representing U.S. Global Investors, a Nasdaq-listed company under the ticker symbol GROW at the official Nasdaq Texas kickoff event. The gathering brought together business and economic leaders to discuss the future of innovation, growth, and capital markets in Texas and the important role our state can play going forward.

Moving on. The next slide highlights our commitment to delivering timely and original market insights through our YouTube and TikTok channels, which both are powerful platforms for engaging new and longtime shareholders. If you've not seen any of these, we do encourage you to visit our YouTube page and our TikTok page and subscribe to our YouTube channel to stay up to date on the latest content.

All right, moving on to the next slide. We always like to recap the most read Frank Talk blog posts during the recent quarter. As you can see here, the top themes really focused around commodities, particularly oil prices and gold prices. Investors are focusing on gold and oil in 2026 because both of these assets are tied to several major macro themes shaping the markets right now: inflation concerns, geopolitical instability, fiscal deficits, and it goes on.

If you're not a subscriber to Frank Talk, I highly recommend you do so at usfunds.com, and it is completely free. Finally, on my last slide, I do encourage you to follow U.S. Global Investors across social media. We are on Twitter or X now, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. 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, not only with GROW and our funds, but the broader market as well. All right. As a reminder to our audience, if you have any questions today, please email those to [email protected], 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. This concludes our webcast summarizing the third quarter of 2026.