As you can see on slide number two, 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. If we move on to slide number three. During this webcast, we may make forward-looking statements about our relative business outlook. Any forward-looking statements and all other statements made during this webcast that don't pertain to historical facts are subject to risks and uncertainties that may materially affect actual results. Please refer to our press release and corresponding Form 10-Q filing for more detail on factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from any described today in forward-looking statements. Any such statements are made as of today, and U.S. Global accepts no obligation to update them in the future. Moving on to the next slide.
As always, we would love to offer anyone tuned in today one of our JETS, GOAU, or SEA hats. Send us an email with your physical mailing address to info@usfunds.com. Now, on to the next slide, 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're also well known for our expertise in gold and precious metals, natural resources, airlines, and luxury goods. Now, when we move to the next slide, slide number six, this is where I want to hand the presentation over to CEO Frank Holmes. Frank?
Thank you, Holly, and thank you all the shareholders who are listening. This is one of the most important disclaimers I always like because it's colorful, but it's factual, in a quant world, is the DNA of volatility. And what's important here is that every asset class has its own DNA of volatility, and it changes over time. They know well today that the DNA of the human body can change, and external forces, imbalances between macro forces of monetary fiscal policies, can all of a sudden impact capital markets, and it can change the DNA of the volatility of an asset class. So let's take a look at the S&P 500. It basically says it's a non-event to go up or down 1% almost 70% of the time.
Over 10 days, it's 3%, and you can see that gold bullion is the same as the S&P 500. If we go back 10 years ago, bullion was more volatile, 2-to-1 to what the S&P was. On the Dow Jones US Asset Manager Index, it's got a daily volatility close to the S&P, but over 10 days, it doubles, basically to 5%. Growth definitely doubles over 10 days. It's a non-event to go up or down 6% on a weekly basis. Some of our funds are known, especially for gold and GOAU. You can see that it's ±7% over a 10-day period.
Those changes in the assets of the airlines or gold they do have an impact in our funds, and this is how we earn fees, and we earn fees on basis points on the total assets that we manage, and they can change over a monthly basis, a quarterly basis, and that's what changes. Basically, it's very simple business to calculate what our revenue is going to be. Next. Well, the ETF world continues to beat down on the mutual fund world. As you can see, the ETF world continues to enjoy more product access, and the fund flow is going out of the mutual fund world.
It's interesting that the younger investors, the millennials, the generations X, Y, and Z, are much more keen to go and trade and invest, but probably trade an ETF to get exposure to a theme. Next, please. I want to thank our institutional shareholders, Vanguard, Royce Investment Partners, Perritt Capital, KWM, and BlackRock. A couple of these other lineups are into index funds, and but still, we thank them all for that we qualify and show up in their product lineup. Next, please. So, as you know, I'm the CEO and Chief Investment Officer, and I've been in this title for about 35 years. It's interesting to watch how U.S. Global's been through different cycles of global booms and busts.
But during this period, you know, I've owned approximately 18% of the company and 99% of the voting control. That's a technical part of having 40 Act rules. But, what's important, I am the largest shareholder. Next. Yields are important to look at, and we track what happens with the two-year, five-year, and the 10-year. And to share with you is that most, the currency movement is off a two-year yield, and that impacts gold. So that's one reason why I follow the 50-day moving average on the yields and mainly on dividend-paying stocks, and the 10-year is for the infrastructure spending. If you're gonna build a new pipeline, the financing is usually off a 10-year government bond. A new gold mine, expansion of a gold mine, it's off a 10-year government bond.
So it's important to be able to track what is happening in over 10 weeks, which is 10 weeks of trading, which is a 50-Day Moving Average, to get a feel for these swings and these short-term trades. And what you see here is the five-year yield when it crosses above the 50-day, that is usually bearish. And you can see last year, when the five-year yield went above in May, that we started seeing small-cap stocks fall, micro-cap even more so, and we would be characterized, in fact, more of a micro-cap. Until October, then when rates seemed to have peaked and the training, and as that was taking place, small-cap stocks started out. I'm trying to highlight that there's a very strong inverse relationship with the five-year yield and the dividends that you're paying on your stock.
Next, please, is to try to—this sets into the motion here, shows you that the Russell 2000 looked like it had a breakout while rates were falling, until the rates rising, that the small cap stocks started selling off. It's sort of an important part, and I think that we're pretty close to this cycle where rates are in a presidential election cycle. In the fourth year, going by fourth year of a presidential election cycle, when you have a Democratic President and a Republican Congress, the market is usually up 8%. When you have falling interest rates and not rising interest rates, odds are that it's 11%-12%.
So even with all the negative news, the math suggests that. This time last year, I forecasted that based on the presidential election cycle, the markets would be up. When you have this sort of balance of power, and it was, but it ended up closing up on the year. So I do like looking at data, and I do from a macro point of view and a micro point of view, from stock picking to macro, and that is called Quantamental approach to investing, and that has led us down the journey to create Smart Beta 2.0 ETFs.
And so it doesn't matter if it's a macro factor or it's a micro factors, and I thought I'd highlight that when rates do start to tick down, be they in April or May, that I think that we will see money flows into this category, which does impact companies like U.S. Global. Next, please. Our capital strategy, the allocation strategy. Yield, and the shareholder yield is a model that looks at the cash dividends paid, plus the net share repurchase, net reduction, divided by the market cap. That's another way of looking at it, and there's a fund manager, Meb Faber, that wrote a book on it, and he's picked stocks, and they seem to... It was a deep value approach of picking the stocks, and they've outperformed.
So we do follow that, and we do ask questions on a regular basis of where we're allocating capital. Two, is we manage the expectations for new product launches, what's necessary. And three, we manage to preserve cash for future growth opportunities and market corrections. We have been stockpiling cash. We have been buying back our stock. And strategically buy back the stock, but using an algorithm on flattened down days. And five, we discuss and review with the board on a regular basis and keep in touch with our board so they know what we're doing and why.
So this is Meb Faber, and he came up with this famous book and really pounded the table across America on the shareholder yield about end up looking at Warren Buffett's model of looking at companies and that if they're not paying dividends, but they're decreasing their yield, their cash flow, they're to be bought. If they're buying back stock, Warren Buffett's always believed that it's been a better than paying out dividends. But he has this unique model, which we look at and respect. Next, please. This is the model, shareholder yield is three parts. Cash dividends plus net purchase of your shares back and net debt reduction cap. Next, please. So gross dividends, the company has paid monthly dividends since 2007.
It's interesting because that was the peak in gold, and all the emerging markets really peaked, and we started that strategy of paying out dividends. But we've been able to do through down cycles and 2008 crisis, still be able to maintain paying dividends of how we manage our capital. But the yield right now is 3.17%. I'm gonna show you that it's below the five-year, but that's okay because the buying back stock just takes the yield higher. They can, anytime, they can always cut a dividend, they have that right if something comes up. Next, please. Share, gross total shareholder yield is approximately 7.9%. Next, please.
And that, adding back the dollars we've spent buying back the stock, plus paying out dividends. So you can see here that the growth dividend is below the five-year treasury yield. Now, why do I show that? Is because lots of institutions make a decision that they will rather buy risk-free a five-year government bond than buy a stock with a dividend yield that's less than 5%, unless the dividend is increasing faster. So therefore, it will catch up and surpass the five-year treasury yield over the next five years. So as my first time as a money manager, research analyst, actually, was in 1970.
I'm aging myself, but it was on a dividend growth monitor, and you looked at stocks that had yields that were higher than the five-year, saying that they did outperform. So you have to look at that model in the context of how much is stock, along with the dividend yield. Next, please. So you saw earlier that our total Shareholder Yield is twice what our dividend yield is, more than twice, and it's higher than the five-year government bond. So it is of great value, and it's another rational reason for buying the stock on down days. This is an important comparative analysis. We quite often get calls from institutions and comparing us to WisdomTree and to Invesco. The reason why I bring these two names up is WisdomTree is 100% ETFs.
Our operating revenue is ETFs, and Invesco is 40% because they have the biggest piece of them, the QQQ ETF. What you can see is that the price-to-book value for WisdomTree is substantially higher, almost four times higher, or three times higher than what ours is, and so it says that on a price-to-book relative valuation, we're undervalued relative to WisdomTree. And Invesco looks a lot cheaper, but then there's other factors in that financial model. This number one factor, the return on assets. As you can see, the return on assets by WisdomTree was greater than ours, but were greater, both of us, than Invesco. And that's one reason why Invesco trades at a lower price to book. And then pre-tax margins for WisdomTree, they're higher. That would afford a higher P/E ratio.
We are much higher than, say, Invesco. And then we look at dividend yield and compare, and as you can see, that the lowest dividend yield is WisdomTree, and then we're in the middle between Invesco and our price to cash flow is about the same as WisdomTree. It's higher than Invesco, but it appears that Invesco has other losses that they're wrestling with. And this is sort of the gambit. These companies are bigger. We'd be a micro, WisdomTree would be a mid cap, and Invesco would be a big cap, a mid cap going into a big cap range. And I think it's just a helpful comparative analysis. It is some basic Quantamental approach that analysts would take a look at picking one stock versus another. Next, please.
So why we buy back our shares? So, I have a tremendous respect for. Bruce is always articulating it, and I want to point out that the company stock is undervalued, therefore, buys back shares of GROW stock when the price is clobbered down on the previous trading day. And as Warren Buffett highlights the value proposition of buying back one's stock at value accretive prices, doing so, Buffett says, benefits all shareholders. And we agree. Next, please. So the current shareholder repurchase program for the quarter ended December 31st, 2023, the company repurchased a total of 196,295 shares. Class A shares, $160,000. We bought back about 1% of the outstanding shares since September 2023, and this may be suspended or discontinued as, as...
I think what's important is that you can only buy back a certain amount of the volume. So if the volume picks up, then we can pick up more. There's always sort of regulatory borders. In sports, they call them in hockey, blue line or red line. So you have to sort of manage within the boundaries. I've been asked, "Well, why don't you buy back more?" Because it's relative to this model, what the volume is. Next, please. This is another illustration to show that we have increased our stock buying back. You can see in the year of 2023, substantially from 2021 and from 2022. From 2021, just as COVID was ending, you can see that it's quite a big number. It's more like 12 times increase. Next, please.
So let's look at a fiscal year 2024. The strengths. The company remains profitable despite challenging macro market conditions. I'm gonna highlight, unless you were in the Magnificent Seven, a few stocks were champions of the overall market. The company continues to buy back stock on flat and down days and pays a monthly dividend. The company has a strong balance sheet, which includes both cash and other investments. Next, please. We're listed in Nasdaq. We have about $2 billion in assets, $2.8 million in quarterly operating revenue. Next, please. Earnings per share, nice bump from the summer, so quarter end of September.
From September, December, the markets rallied as rates were coming off, and the assets, and also certain write-downs in that past quarter, because we do have investments that go through a mark-to-market process of write-downs and write-ups. So you can see that the increase in investment income was $1.9 billion. Next, please. And by the way, on more granularity, Lisa can always answer any questions and go into greater detail. Operating income, as you can see, it went from $215,000 to $109,000. The decrease in operating revenue is due to a decrease in assets under management, partially offset by a decrease in operating expenses. Next, please. We know.
Well, this, this whole idea of smart beta came to the realization that I love math and quant, and we're quant-focused of how we look at stocks. And quantamental is a, is a new word that comes out, Investopedia covers it, but it's a, it's an investment strategy that combines both fundamental tools along with quant approach to picking stocks and building a diversified portfolio. So our quantamental investment strategy combines both cutting-edge technology and robust data analysis to help optimize returns and manage risk effectively for our shareholders. And we believe use of Smart Beta 2.0 factors in our thematic fund lineup sets us apart from the competition. It, it's important that there are some factors that are great for picking stocks, other factors are not, but they're good for screening stock.
Then there's a magic about what portion of the portfolio is gonna have mean reversion and what portion of the portfolio is gonna have momentum of growth in revenue or op income. And they're both laws of physics, so the portfolio construction is just as critical as the factors for picking the stocks. Next, please. The thematic lineup of Smart Beta 2.0 ETFs, JETS was the first. It's done its thing. It's done what the bogey that we went out to beat, the index, and that quant approach has done a phenomenal job. It is deeply undervalued on a relative basis to trains and trucks. The Dow Jones Transport includes a much bigger weighting in trains and trucks.
And if you just had trains and trucks, the PE ratios, the cash flow ratios, et cetera, are a much more attractive value proposition. But there's the concerns of a recession, the negative news that's out there has impacted. In particular, institutional investors out of, out of Europe, that we have been able to witness. For all, the, the retail and the, family offices and big RIAs in the U.S. are, are still actively involved in JETS. GOAU, it, it's done its. So proud of it because it's outperformed the GDXJ. It, it's done what, what the model suggested it would do, both pro- construction of 30% focused on gold royalties, and then stock factors for bottom-up stock picking and rebalancing each quarter. Our newest, addition to the lineup is SEA.
Cargo shipping, and heavily weighted towards shipping, with a small portion of the portfolio into airline cargo-only shipping. And I think what's interesting is that last year, due to all the drama that's taken place in Russia, it impacted our Eastern European fund, even though we sold all of our Russian stocks before the war and before they became basically insolvent holdings. We were very fortunate for our shareholders that we went liquid very early, but it didn't matter. People, the sentiment, people would rather speculate in technology stock than be in the growth of Eastern Europe. And further, same thing with the great concerns out of China and its bullying tactics. It's impacted the China fund.
and so we shut down those two funds, mutual funds in the summer, and I think it's been a wise decision for the shareholders and for us. But how do we play this emerging market thesis, which has been so important and relative to the world of gold and luxury goods, et cetera? So one of the things to this journey of building jets and what we witnessed is that cargo is one of the best arteries to understand the whole economy, the global economy, and it has a strong correlation to PMI, and they deep value. Relative, cargo ships trade, like jets do. They on PE ratios and cash flow, and the dividend yields on the cargos are much. It, I said, "Okay, how do we have a footprint for the global economy?
What's the best trade-off between any emerging country exporting products to a manufacturing hub and then selling them back?" It was cargo airline and cargo shipping, and that's why we created Sea. Next, please. So the shipping industry is a leading indicator to the health of the global economy and one way to play emerging markets. Next, please. It is highly correlated to a great leading indicator index. And what did we see this last year was getting strong, a great contraction in PMI that was a foreteller warning of a slowdown in the global economy. And I think that every time this happens, governments panic, and they start printing money. And this year, 40% of the world's population, over 70 countries, are gonna go through election.
In addition to America, which is the biggest GDP in the world, it's going through its fourth year of a presidential election cycle. It's important to recognize that over 70 other countries are going through an election cycle, and that usually is for the economy to get the votes and drop interest rates. So I think an uptick in the PMI, it appears at its bottom, a sustaining run would be explosive to this category, and pro-bullish for the emerging markets. So again, another thing to recognize that war or bottlenecks, whatever takes place in Panama Canal or the Red Sea, it gives tremendous pricing power to the cargo shipping companies. And they put on a great spot here, a run, probably about 14 weeks, a run.
Drama that's taking place in the Red Sea. So I think it's interesting to show you that choke points, by the world still continues, has to move blood through the arteries of the global economy. And these guys, all they do is have pricing power. Next, please. So this is an outline that JETS, the overall, as an ETF, we saw assets decline, redeem, and the bulk of those seem to be institutional that use JETS as a proxy. Next, please. Chinese stocks significantly underperform Asian peers, as you can see here, Taiwan, because the semiconductor business has done well, but not Hong Kong and China. It's had a very rough year, as China's very much more war-like rather than trade and economics.
Against the technology sector, now they're wrestling with excess debt as a percentage of GDP and real estate imploding around the leadership. So I think that shutting down the last early summer was a wise decision theme point of view. Next, please. Tech stocks distort performance of the S&P. The S&P, the other S&P index, and it's equally weighted. 500 names, equally weighted, and you can see it far underperformed, but the market cap weighted. Next, please. Magnificent Seven. They're up 5.4 times as much as the equal weighted Nasdaq index since January of 2020. I mean, it's quite, quite incredible to see what the, especially the growth of NVIDIA, what it's done, and everyone else jumping into AI. Next, please. So Grow's investment in HIVE Digital. HIVE also has infrastructure build-out in the AI business.
It's been a very attractive investment, paying monthly principal down payments every quarter. The yield on has been much higher than you would earn on a five-year or a 10-year government bond. So we've been very happy with that. Next, please. I'm going to turn it over to Lisa Callicotte, our CFO, to give you more granularity in the numbers.
Thank you, Frank. Good morning. First, I'll start with our financial highlights on the next slide. Average assets under management were $2 billion for the quarter ending December 31st, 2023. Operating revenues were $2.8 million, and our quarterly net income was $1.2 million, which was an increase of 45% over the prior year same quarter, and our earnings were $0.09 per share. The next slides will provide more detail of the results of operation for December 31, 2023. So on slide 37, we see our total $2.8 million for the quarter, which was a decrease of $910,000 or 24% from the $3.7 million from the same quarter last year. The decrease is primarily due to decreases in assets under management, especially in our JETS ETF, as Frank discussed.
Operating expenses for the current quarter were $2.6 million, a decrease of $194,000 or 7%, primarily due to decreases in employee compensation and benefits of $168,000 or 15%, mainly due to decreases in bonuses. On the next slide, we see our operating income for the quarter ending December 31st, 2023 is a $192,000 increase of $716,000 compared to the same quarter for fiscal year 2023. You can also see that our other income increased $1.3 million compared to the prior year. Unrealized gains on equity securities in the current quarter for $279,000, compared to unrealized losses in the prior year of $937,000.
Net income after taxes for the quarter was $1.2 million, 12 cents per share, which was an increase of $382,000, compared to the net income of $847,000 or 6 cents per share. On the next slide, we see that we still have a strong balance sheet. It includes high levels of cash and securities. On the following page, we see that we have a net working capital of $38.3 million, which is an increase of $840,000 over [March] 30th, 2023, and our current ratio is 18.8 to 1. With that, I'll turn to discuss marketing and distribution initiatives.
Thank you, Lisa. All right, on the next slide, I want to briefly point out some of the upcoming events that U.S. Global will be attending or speaking at. ETF Exchange, where our head trader will be headed to next week in Miami, and then following that, the week after, Frank Holmes will be attending and speaking at the Oxford Club's Investment. There, he will be sharing his thought leadership on the various industries and how to gain exposure to these industries via our funds. In March, Frank will head over to Zurich for the Swiss Mining Institute, where he will be speaking alongside other industry leaders in the gold and precious metal space. On the next slide, I want to point out a quick stat about our website traffic during the quarter ended December 31st.
We've had over half a million visitors from around the world visit usfunds.com. Our repeat visitors, but even more new visitors, many of whom came to read the award-winning Frank Talk blog or sign up for the Investor Alert newsletter. Seeing tremendous growth in subscribers for the last several months. Then moving on to the next slide, don't forget that our educational content does not only come in the form of the Frank Talk blog or the Investor Alert newsletter. We love educating our shareholders through video content as well. So make sure you're subscribed to our YouTube page to get video updates on everything from gold to airlines.
As we wrap up today's presentation, I just want to remind everyone that we do share a majority of our new content, as well as announcements about upcoming events across all of our social media platforms, which continue to grow across the board. Then on the next slide, I just encourage you to follow us on all of these platforms, so you stay up to date with what's going on with Grow, our funds, and our broader market insights. And then, just as a friendly reminder to our audience as we wrap up today, if you do have any questions, please email those to info@usfunds.com, and we will gladly follow up with you to get anything clarified that you may need more information.