Earnings Call Transcript - GROW Q2 2022

Holly Schoenfeldt, Director of Marketing

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our webcast announcing U.S. Global Investors' results for the quarter ended December 31, 2021. I'm Holly Schoenfeldt. As seen on Slide #2, the presenters for today's program are Frank Holmes, U.S. Global Investors' CEO and Chief Investment Officer; Lisa Callicotte, Chief Financial Officer; and myself, Holly Schoenfeldt, Director of Marketing. On to Slide 3. As always, we would love to offer anyone tuned in today one of our JETS, GOAU or HIVE packs. Additionally, we do have JETS luggage tags available. All you need to do is send us an email with your physical mailing address to info@usfunds.com. On Slide #4. During this webcast, we may make forward-looking statements about our relative business outlook. Any forward-looking statements and all other statements made during this webcast that don't pertain to historical facts are subject to risks and uncertainties that may materially affect actual results. Please refer to our press release and corresponding Form 10-Q filing for more detail on factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from any described today in forward-looking statements. Any such statements are made as of today, and U.S. Global Investors accepts no obligation to update them in the future. On Slide 5, I will briefly review our company. U.S. Global Investors is an innovative investment manager with vast experience in global markets and specialized sectors. It was originally founded as an investment club, becoming a registered investment adviser in 1968. The company has a long-standing history of global investing and launching first-of-their-kind investment products, including the first no-load gold fund. We are well known for our expertise in gold and precious metals, natural resources, airlines, emerging markets, and cryptocurrencies. Now on Slide 6, I would like to hand the presentation over to Frank Holmes to review what we believe is one of the most helpful visuals when it comes to investing, not only in GROW, but in any asset class. Frank?

Frank Holmes, CEO and Chief Investment Officer

Thank you, Holly. Yes, this is an important visual because every asset class has a unique DNA of volatility, and that DNA can change over time because of major events. And so that's one reason why we monitor and track both fiscal monetary government policies, and we look at other economic factors on a macro scale. We write about them every week. And that discipline helps us to be able to not only articulate ourselves but relate back to this DNA of volatility. But because we are in the gold business and the gold funds and have a history steeped in gold knowledge, GROW is often treated with the DNA of volatility of gold. And here is what you can see: S&P and Bullion both have a DNA of basically 1%, meaning about 70% of the time it's a nonevent to go plus or minus 1%. Over 10 days, Gold Bullion is slightly more volatile than the S&P 500. Now, the Dow Jones Asset Managers Index, its volatility is 3%. So it's three times the S&P and for 10 days, plus or minus 19%. So what's really most interesting to me when I look at this global index is that our DNA volatility of GROW over 10 days is slightly less, but on a daily basis, as you can see, we do have a greater volatility. So why is that? It used to be predominantly off of gold stocks, but however, that's changed. And what I'm trying to share with investors is that gold stocks and our largest asset class rate today is now airlines. And so the New York Stock Exchange, Arca Airlines goes up or down 2% on a daily basis over 10 days; it's a nonevent to go 6%. Tesla, known for being an innovation and technology leader, exhibits plus or minus 3%, three times greater than the S&P. And in fact, it used to be much greater until it became part of the S&P. But as you can see, over a 10-day period, it is five times greater volatility than the S&P 500. Bitcoin is plus or minus 4% daily, 12% over 10 days. However, when you come to Ethereum, Ethereum is much more volatile than Bitcoin over one day or over ten days. And this impacts one of our big investments, which is in the HIVE Blockchain technology. So I can walk you through, but there is a collateral that's both an opportunity and also can be very frustrating for investors. Anyone that invests in GROW has always said that you must understand that it's a nonevent for GROW to go up or down 5% on a daily basis and 15% over a 10-day period. And that's because we have gold asset classes, we have airlines asset classes, and we have an investment in, as you can see, in the crypto mining space. If you look at Bitcoin, its daily volatility is 4%, much like gold is 1%, but gold stocks are twice as volatile as Bullion, and therefore, crypto mining stocks are twice as volatile as Bitcoin and Ethereum themselves, approximately. So investors just really appreciate and respect this: when you look at us, it's important on a daily basis that I'm going to walk you through in a chart to show you that our volatility does get impacted by the airlines, it does get impacted by gold, and it does get impacted by crypto. What's driving us are surging assets, in particular, the ETF business. And then in particular, the lion's share really now is the just ETF. Gold is an inflation hedge. It's interesting that last year, gold was, in fact, up on an average price realized by gold miners selling their gold. It was up over $50 an ounce. However, from the beginning of the day to the last day, it was off 5%. So most of the beat you talked about was that gold was down for the year, it was about investment. But in fact, its average price has done spectacularly well, not only for last year but for the past 21 years, Gold Bullion has been a stellar performer. And I'm a big believer that, that is one thing that's helped Ray Dalio in his funds because he always has this exposure to gold in his parity trading. We've seen the airlines go through a big surge in recovery. Then we had Delta, and then we had Omicron. I'm going to walk you through how this impacts the volatility. And then we have HIVE Blockchain technology. I want to thank our top institutional shareholders, in particular, Royce Funds and Perritt Capital and Heartland Funds. The other two, Vanguard and BlackRock, are predominantly indexing. But when it comes to Perritt and Heartland, they understand those portfolio managers and also Royce, the world of gold as an asset class, and also later some news innovation and how it changes the landscape in the capital markets. So thank you for being substantial and long-term shareholders. Those five names own close to 20%. Myself, I own approximately 17% of the company. GROW's dividends, last year, we increased them by 200% in 2021. The company has paid a monthly dividend since 2007. The current yield at a share price of $559 looks like a 1.6% yield, which is better than a 5-year government bond, slightly less than now a 10-year government bond, but we've been paying these monthly dividends of $0.0075. It's approved through March 2022. It's reviewed by the Board quarterly. And as you can see in our presentation, I feel Lisa will articulate the cash flow numbers. We feel very healthy in a good cash position as we continue to replace our cash because we did live through a crypto winter and a long bear cycle in gold and the airlines industry. So recently, we've had this incredible surge in those particular assets. Now, the share repurchase program has lots of regulatory rules around it. And I think it's important to recognize that we've had this for a very long period of time, and we have to go through a renewal process, but there are implementation issues that have to do with regulatory... So I want to turn it over to Lisa to give you a little more color on our stock repurchase program.

Lisa Callicotte, CFO

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

Frank Holmes, CEO and Chief Investment Officer

So as you can see here, we have $4.1 billion in average assets, up 40% year-over-year; $6.6 million in quarterly operating revenue, up 39% year-over-year; and $3.69 million in quarterly net income, up 50% quarter-over-quarter. I think it's important to recognize what's happening to get the composition from taking profits in HIVE and then rolling them over. On average, how much money do we make from our operating business? Most of our earnings over time had losses coming from the bear cycle that we experienced in the gold asset classes and also in the blockchain world; they cost us losses that were coming from operating. Now I'd like to look at this visual to put things in context because we've had lots of shareholder inquiries, and I totally relate to them as a major shareholder in the frustration. As Lisa was trying to explain, you can't do stock buybacks unless you have an open window. You can't roll over things, and that period in this whole discussion that's taking place with BDO is quite delayed. Many delays in having open windows have impacted our ability to buy back stock. But I believe that next week, we should have what’s called an open opportunity time. And I think that's important. We have some shareholders that have been around for a while, and I thank them very much. I remember them complaining about GROW being undervalued with JETS growing in assets back in December of 2020. It was very evident during that year. It was an epic move in JETS ETF, both in trading volumes in asset collection, and we were deeply undervalued. We started all of a sudden seeing the crypto winter thawing. We started seeing this big price action in Bitcoin and Ethereum. And so we were undervalued. But with the issue that came thereafter was not being able to get our financials out in time—always delays and disappointments with auditors, and in this sort of resolution of valuation of assets. I think that that's behind us now, and that's what's positive and constructive about it. I hope for those shareholders that the move that took place last year to $12 was predominantly due to crypto, not gold. It was most interesting, and it wasn't JETS. It had to do with this huge move of Bitcoin, Ethereum, dominating all the media and lots of sentiment, and our investment in HIVE all of a sudden exploded in stock price and trading volume during this period, and then it started to cool off. But HIVE, as an investment, has continued to grow its revenue and balance sheet, yet the stock has basically been sideways when you look at relative to the spectacular growth in revenue and earnings it's been able to achieve. This is another thing that's really important: As you can see, during that crypto winter and during JETS and gold being sort of quiet assets, I like to call them, our cash positions were always low. We had many losing quarters during that time period, and we chewed through a lot of cash weathering through that season. It’s almost like the biblical story of Joseph and the Pharaoh. When the Pharaoh had bad dreams, Joseph said, that man is the same during your good dreams. So you have seven years of feast that make sure you save for the seven years of famine. That's something we've always done as a strategy to make sure we have lots of cash to be able to launch a product and weather any type of these crypto winters or gold winters, as they like to call them, or a stock market winter. And so I'm very thrilled. That was one big reason last year that we crystallized the selling of HIVE shares, and last minute we ended up rolling into this debenture. As HIVE had many different options to look at, I think it was explained in the last press release. But what's interesting here in this visual for you is that the cash went down, and then the cash basically in investments in the balance sheet have increased nicely. And today, that investment in HIVE has been earning us a yield and an income, and it's highly unexpected that we had hoped for more volatility, but the whole process of valuations has created greater volatility in getting our peers, our financials so. But underneath this, the company is doing exceptionally well, and both companies, U.S. Global Investors' operating investments, in particular, operating earnings from running the business, are doing exceptionally well. It's investment in HIVE is also doing well. I want to also take a look at this another visual that you can see our assets—and remember, we make our money by charging on average 60 basis points. So the average had a big surge until June of 2021, and then it came off over Omicron fears. And there was the end of the Delta fears, and then we come into the Omicron fear. So every time there's a wave of negative sentiment, we started seeing lockdowns take place by governments; it impacts the JETS' assets. They did go from the $12 range in 2020—in the second quarter of 2020 ran up to about $28, then fell back under $20, and now are popping back up. What's really remarkable is the trading volume in December 2021 was over 300 million shares, as we discussed in our press release. This impacts our operating revenue, as you can see here. It's a simple mathematical model that's easy to calculate. If you have $1 billion in assets, and you charge 60 basis points, you're going to do $6 million in revenue a year. Many smart fund managers, I know take your total assets off Bloomberg and calculate what the revenue could be, and it seems to have enough people that are doing that. So the Omicron fears impacted JETS. JETS' assets were down, and that's what impacted our operating revenue. This is an important visual to understand the stability of ours. As you can see, the operating income for the six months is basically 78%. We did realize some gains from investments, and I think this will probably notch up to a higher level based on what I see today on operating income and our investments to crystallize. What's important is that as asset managers, most of our profits are coming from day-in, day-out operations. This reflects the case study of the DNA of volatility. I always like to share with the shareholders, especially those that are not analysts who own GROW shares. What you can see here is if we have $100 million in assets and our average expense ratio for that is 60 basis points, it means the advisor's revenue is $600,000. If it goes to $4 billion, that 60 basis points, it's $24 million. When you have $100 million, you're not making any money, really; it takes more than $100 million to make money if you're spending any marketing dollars. What I've seen on this is it takes about $4 million to $5 million and 4 to 5 years for a product to really take off. You have to be committed and have the cash and spending power. You want to get it up to $40 million of 60 basis points because it's going to cover your legal and your accounting costs. It's not going to cover your compliance—internal compliance and marketing and educational costs. And that's the additional part. So you have to spend a lot of money, like a rocket taking off to space. It has huge fuel tanks to get away from the pull of gravity, and the same thing here to create the branding. That’s what we saw with JETS. It was basically the fifth year after quarter after quarter, talking to RIAs, making presentations, the weekly blog, and other information that it became very well-known to investors everywhere as the only go-to product that really captured as a smart beta this industry. This industry is a theme and also a smart beta approach, and along came COVID, and the math suggested to a lot of people that a year later, these stocks would double after falling so much during the fears of COVID. Many millennials, I've mentioned before, were accurate. Today, it's just important you can calculate what the assets are and simply add them up to see what our revenue is going to be. So this is the simple methodology to appreciate. Here's a summary of the cash flow. I'm going to turn it back to Lisa for this slide.

Lisa Callicotte, CFO

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

Frank Holmes, CEO and Chief Investment Officer

Thank you, Lisa. So we are undervalued on many different types of factors and analysis, and I showed you that Dow Jones Global Asset Management Index, we’re looking at the DNA of volatility. When you look at that visual, when you compare us to the average P/E ratio, the EBITDA ratio, the cash flow—whatever the factors that Bloomberg likes to publish, you can see that we are a great GARP stock. We are a great play on gold. We are a great play on the blockchain crypto phenomena, and we also have incredible brand awareness on JETS ETF. I’m going to comment on what we've been doing to enhance that brand in a few seconds. But this is a comparison. A lot of people don't realize that Invesco has 40% of its assets in the QQQ, which is a phenomenal size asset capturing basic NASDAQ. As you can see, Invesco trades at 1.54x price to sales; we trade slightly higher, but we are less than WisdomTree, which is 100% ETFs. Taking a look at return on assets, we're a lean company, and our return on assets is 30% versus 4.7% and 5.2%. For those shareholders, we're trying to be as frugal as possible, pay bonuses based on performance and realized gains—realized real performance beating the index as fund managers. Whenever they beat the index that the fund has to go up against, there’s bonuses for that. Otherwise, we remain very lean, and it shows up, I think, is a return on our assets. Return on our equity is another important factor. As you can see, we have done an outstanding job of return on our invested capital, and it's much higher than Invesco and much higher than WisdomTree. This shows up in our P/E ratio that yes, we're deeply undervalued. One could argue so is Invesco and WisdomTree. WisdomTree is around the average; that's roughly where the average asset manager on a global basis trades at. If we were to trade at 15x earnings, the average, then GROW would be substantially higher. Now that I think that we have our audit systems in place, we’re able to make financial disclosures and get them all out faster, better—all that drama that took place is behind us. I think we'll be able to tell our story with simplicity and clarity that we're an undervalued, unique asset class as a boutique investment manager. Another way to look at assets to market cap is another way when you compare WisdomTree or Invesco to U.S. Global; we're deeply undervalued on assets to market cap. The outlook for GROW is staying power for the JETS ETF. We've expanded the global footprint. We're in Europe, listed on the U.K. London Stock Exchange. We've expanded into Peru, Mexico, and Chile is the next big one. This allows you to go into their pensions and their other profits; high-net-worth customers have assets in U.S. dollars, and JETS is one of those ways to play the secular rebound in the global economy is the JETS ETF. With the continuing vaccine rollouts and business travel expected to greatly improve by the fourth quarter of this year and ancillary fees to start rising for the airlines industry, borders are reopening, and travel restrictions are easing—like England has dropped all travel restrictions. I think there’s much more upside opportunity for investors to realize that JETS was in the low 30s, fell out to the low teens, bounced up to the 20s, and is currently at the lower end of the 20s. It has the capacity to appreciate 40% to 50% to get back up to where the stocks were before COVID. This has become a topic of many discussions with differing opinions. It’s sentiment-driven and financially driven. What I do share with you is that Warren Buffett was a big headwind. When I first launched JETS, I had to listen to everyone talking about how Warren Buffett didn’t like the airlines, and I kept saying he’s a GARP investor; he’ll like them. Then he fell in love with them. Eventually, he fell out of love with them during COVID, and that was basically the bottom when the airlines took off. So Warren Buffett has a very different rationale being 91 years old. His view, I think, is very different than millennials coming in that were very important in igniting the huge activity that took place in the JETS ETF. What we did see just recently was the M&A activity in the airline industry—the Frontier Spirit merger, the Frontier Group and Spirit Airlines; they have plans to create the fifth largest U.S. airline and a $2.9 billion merger. The merger is expected to close in the second half of 2022, and its projected results are the synergies of $500 million a year. What is really passing is that this is all happening where we had this negative backdrop of COVID still, and the new variants are supposed to be coming out, which we're going to have to expect. Remember we discussed this slide during COVID, there was pent-up demand going into the end of 2020 to start going south to get out of the winter in the northern states and out of the Nordic countries; everyone wanted to get south. In Asia, they wanted to get to Thailand; they did not want to be in Japan for the cold winter. So you started to see the creation, in a bear market cycle of negativity, new IPOs, and new airlines like Breeze. You saw them in Europe. You saw them in India. Even with all this doubt and Warren Buffett getting out of the industry was the formation of innovative capital looking past this drought in air travel and lockdowns, seeking the next mountain peak. Here we are with some doubts regarding COVID, and we're going to get a big M&A work. You are seeing the leader in these big new IPOs and the M&A work is coming out of the U.S. The stellar air cargo industry has risen dramatically. You saw that during COVID, the other airlines started transferring no passengers. If you recall, they went from 2.7 million people a day being cleared by TSA down to 90,000 in April of 2020, now it’s back over and robust above 2 million. Pricing power has significantly increased for cargo carriers. From moving technology equipment from Asia over to Europe and to Canada for HIVE in technology, we have seen an explosion in the cost of shipping anything—by air or by boat, the shipping rates exploded. This is very similar to launching JETS; I noticed a tremendous change happening in the airlines industry after they just went through many bankruptcies. That's usually during the valley that the opportunity is to look for the next mountain peak. I think that we are going to see supply line constrictions and restrictions; the ability for them to turn on a dime with this pent-up demand is going to be very difficult. Based on the history and research we've done, we launched SEA, and SEA is basically airline cargo and ships. There was an ETF previously called SEA, and it was shut down with $100 million in assets just at the very bottom. There is no other SEA and airlines cargo way to play Asia turning its economy. China has predominantly been locked down; they use robots to move and load up the ships when they ship things across to America, but their country is basically locked down. Once that unlocks, we're going to see a completely different paradigm shift in the ability for these cargo companies to generate significant profits. We're very excited about launching the SEA ETF. We are laser-focused on capturing new assets. As I said earlier, it’s important to get to the $40 million level because it starts covering its out-of-pocket direct expenses, but we still have more money to spend internally on marketing and branding. We've got the cash and the capital set aside to facilitate growth. HIVE remains important for U.S. Global. It is our proxy; there is no ETF that allows you to buy Bitcoin directly. This was our first entry into that industry. I served as Chairman before becoming Executive Chair during the crypto winter, helping turn the company around. The company has grown; I have hired a President and Chief Operating Officer, and we've been able to make several acquisitions during COVID in Canada and expand the business. We have some of the highest gross margins in the world regarding this business. We’ve been able to expand, and so the record revenue for this past fourth quarter is just wonderful as a company if you look at its financials and its ability. HIVE provided its January production update; it produced 264 Bitcoin. It's been expanding its capacity to produce more Bitcoin. Looking at the equivalent that is converting its Ethereum production to Bitcoin, the equipment is over 2,100 equivalent coins. We're talking about a very substantial company that's currently generating about $600,000 a day in revenue based on Bitcoin and Ethereum pricing. With that, this is a company with 20 employees, and I think that it’s now able to grow in a very orderly fashion, but it’s very competitive in the marketplace. I now want to take my time going forward to focus on creating and growing SEA and the branding of SEA as we did with JETS. It requires millions of dollars of capital and a commitment of 4 to 5 years to build brand awareness and uniqueness that SEA offers. You could not buy a lot of those assets, those shares that are in Taiwan and in South Korea for an inexpensive ratio. I remain very bullish on where we are positioned.

Lisa Callicotte, CFO

Thank you, Frank, and I would like to thank our shareholders. I really appreciate the patience that you all have had. Like Frank said, it has been challenging during this time, where we've been trying to catch up on our filings. We have a small team, but they worked diligently, and we are committed to getting information out to our shareholders as soon as possible. But still required, and we still would, either way, perform all diligence necessary to ensure we’re getting accurate information out. Thank you for your patience. We can go to the next slide, where we show that we did have another strong quarter. These are just some financial highlights: average assets under management was $4.1 billion for December 31, 2021, up 40% from the same quarter a year ago. Operating revenues increased approximately 39% compared to the same quarter last year, and our quarterly net income was $3.6 million. This was a 50% increase over the September quarter. Now I’ll review our financials in more detail. Beginning on Slide 29, we recorded total operating revenues of $6.6 million for the quarter, which is an increase of $1.9 million or 39% from the $4.7 million in the same quarter last year. The increase is primarily due to increases in assets under management, especially in our JETS ETF. Operating expenses for the quarter were $3.6 million, a decrease of $1 million or 22%, primarily for the following reasons: employee compensation and benefits decreased by $1.5 million or 47%, mainly due to decreases in bonuses from higher realized gains on the sale of HIVE in the prior year. That was somewhat offset by an increase in the amortization of employee stock options. The company issued stock options in June 2021, and the cost of those options was amortized over 6 months for the vesting period. That was completed by December 2021. General and administrative expenses increased by $474,000 or 37%, primarily due to higher consulting and professional fees and higher director fees, again mainly due to the amortization of stock options. On Slide 30, our operating income for the quarter ending December 31, 2021, is $2.9 million, while our other income decreased by $20 million compared to the prior year. But again, that was mainly related to the HIVE transaction; we realized $15 million of gains related to that and had higher unrealized gains in the prior quarter. In the current quarter, we did have approximately $962 million in realized and unrealized gains on investments. Net income after taxes for the quarter was $3.6 million or $0.24 per share. Moving on to Slide 31, we still have a strong balance sheet and a high level of cash and securities. On Page 32, we still have no long-term debt; the company has a net working capital of $29.9 million, which was an increase of $8.2 million or 38% since June 30, 2021, and a current ratio of 9.7:1. Now that I've discussed that, I would like to summarize our capital strategy. As noted on Slide 34, we want to ensure we have resources to work on and launch products. Frank talked about this a bit earlier; in our experience, it takes hundreds if not thousands of hours to design smart beta products. Even once that’s done, it takes time for that product to grow and become profitable. We want to ensure that we're in a good place to take that time and create those products and manage them so they are profitable. Likewise, we want to ensure that we have the capital to take advantage of any future growth opportunities. We are open to opportunities and know that they can be short-lived, and we want to be prepared when they come our way to take advantage of them. We are keenly aware of market fluctuations and have weathered through market corrections in the past. Frank discussed this as well: if a winter or, for some reason, the asset classes we are in end up being in a bear market, we know that that’s going to turn around, but we need to have resources to get through those times. We plan to continue our strategic buyback program using an algorithm on down days. At this time, we feel that it's prudent to strategically buy back stock on a formula rather than conduct a tender offer for shares. These are long-term strategies that are discussed and reviewed with the Board regularly, and they may change as circumstances change. This is the outlook we have at this time. Now I'd like to turn it over to Holly to discuss more of our marketing and distribution.

Holly Schoenfeldt, Director of Marketing

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

Frank Holmes, CEO and Chief Investment Officer

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

Holly Schoenfeldt, Director of Marketing

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