U S GLOBAL INVESTORS INC (GROW) Stock Analysis
U S GLOBAL INVESTORS INC
▾ What's in the 51/100 risk score? (higher = riskier)
Contributions (weight × component score) sum to the total. This near-term score now includes fundamental health (leverage, FCF trend). It excludes the Altman Z score, whose retained-earnings input this filer does not report separately. See the Financial Health section for the full balance-sheet read.
How to read GROW (speculative micro-cap)
No model can pin a precise fair value on a company this small — but that does not mean there is nothing to learn. The useful questions are what the price is betting on, and whether the company can survive long enough to deliver it.
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1
Reverse-DCF — what growth the price assumes ↓
The single most useful number here: it backs out the growth the market is paying for. If that figure is "historically unprecedented," the price is running on hype, not fundamentals.
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2
Cash runway ↓
A pre-profit micro-cap lives or dies on whether it can fund itself to profitability before running out of money and diluting you.
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3
The raw financial statements + the 10-K ↓
At this scale, the actual numbers, insider ownership, and share-count trend tell you more than any ratio.
The share count we read for GROW looks wrong — common for multi-class / founder-controlled filers that report shares per share-class. That makes per-share figures (including intrinsic value) misleading, so we suppressed them. The company's total financials below are sound.
What to use instead: Lean on the totals — revenue, net income, cash flow — and the balance sheet. Multi-class share counts are being corrected; once fixed, the per-share valuation returns automatically.
This note is only about the single DCF fair-value number — GROW's full financial statements, health scores, and written analysis are all below.
⚠ Genuine comparables are scarce at this size, so peer multiples are unreliable here. Treat as rough context only — see 📍 What to focus on above.
How does GROW stack up against its closest peers?
We take the 6 same-industry companies most similar to GROW (similar size) and check what investors are paying for each dollar of their revenue (or profits). If GROW is much more expensive on the same yardstick, that's a red flag — unless you have a specific reason it deserves a premium. For a leveraged business, EV/EBIT and FCF yield (both in the table) are usually more reliable than EV/Sales, because revenue multiples ignore differences in margins and debt.
▾ What's "EV / Sales" in plain English?
EV (Enterprise Value) = market cap + total debt − cash. It's "what you'd pay to buy the entire company outright" — you pay the market cap to shareholders and take over their debt, but you keep their cash. EV is fairer than market cap alone because it includes the debt the new owner inherits.
EV / Sales = EV ÷ annual revenue. So "2.5×" means investors pay $2.50 of enterprise value per $1 of yearly sales. Higher = market is paying more per dollar of sales (usually because they expect future growth or fat margins).
p25 / median / p75 are the 25th, 50th (middle), and 75th percentile of the peers' multiples. Half the peers fall between p25 and p75. The median (p50) is the typical peer — that's the benchmark we compare to.
| EV / SalesEV / Sales — For every $1 of yearly revenue, this is how many dollars investors pay to own the whole business (including debt). Why it matters: Works for pre-profit growth companies where P/E and FCF don't apply. The most apples-to-apples cross-company multiple because it ignores accounting choices. Reference: 1–3x for mature companies · 4–10x for software/SaaS · 10–20x for hypergrowth · >20x is rare and demanding Full explanation → |
1.5x / 1.9x / 2.3x |
| EV / EBITEV / EBITDA — Enterprise value divided by earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization. Why it matters: A classic "what would a private buyer pay" multiple — used in M&A. Strips out tax and capital-structure noise. Reference: 8–12x for mature businesses · 15–25x for growth · Below 5x often signals distress Full explanation → |
6.1x / 10.7x / 29.5x |
Bold middle number = median peer. Half the peers trade above it, half below. Computed over 6 same-industry peers; implausible multiples excluded.
⚠️ Important caveat: peer multiples only work if the peers are genuinely comparable. Always check the peer list below — if the auto-picker grabbed micro-caps or unrelated businesses, the comparison is noise. A medical-device giant priced against tiny biotech startups won't produce a useful signal.
▾ View peer list (7)
| Ticker | Company | Industry | Mcap | EV/Sales | EV/GP | EV/EBIT | FCF Yield |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ILLR | Triller Group Inc. | Asset Management | $47M | 2.2x | — | — | 1.3% |
| HNNA | HENNESSY ADVISORS INC | Asset Management | $81M | 2.3x | — | 6.1x | 15.3% |
| SAMG | Silvercrest Asset Management Group | Asset Management | $100M | 0.8x | — | 10.7x | 15.6% |
| WHG | WESTWOOD HOLDINGS GROUP INC | Asset Management | $147M | 1.5x | — | 29.5x | 9.4% |
| ILLRW | Triller Group Inc. | Asset Management | $10M | 3.3x | — | — | 5.3% |
| MAAS | Maase Inc. | Asset Management | $189M | 1.7x | — | — | 53.6% |
| MLCI | Mount Logan Capital Inc. | Investment Advice ·fallback | $36M | 0.7x | — | — | 17.0% |
Quality & solvency checks
Cheap stocks can be cheap for a reason. These screens warn when a low valuation comes paired with structural fragility.
Why it matters: Cheap-looking stocks (low P/E or P/B) often have low Z-scores because the market knows the company is dying. Z-score warns you before you fall into a value trap.
Reference: > 3.0 = safe zone · 1.81–3.0 = grey zone · < 1.81 = distress zone
Full explanation →
We can't produce a trustworthy Altman Z here: retained earnings weren't separately reported in our data, so a core input would have to be fabricated. Rather than show a categorical "distress" verdict from an invented number, we mark it unavailable. Judge financial health from the leverage, cash position, and the measurable Piotroski checks instead.
▾ The checks — what passed, what didn't (and what we couldn't measure)
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✗ Positive net incomeNet income -$0.3M in FY2025.Why this matters: Does the company actually earn a profit? Sustained losses eventually force it to raise money — diluting you — or take on debt.
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✗ Positive operating cash flowOperating cash flow -$0.8M (was $1.0M the prior year).Why this matters: Profit can be an accounting figure; cash from running the business is harder to fake. Negative operating cash flow means the core business consumes cash and must be funded externally.
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✗ Cash flow backs up reported profitOperating cash flow -$0.8M vs net income -$0.3M.Why this matters: When cash generated exceeds reported earnings, profits are high-quality (not propped up by accruals or one-time items).
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✗ Return on assets improvingReturn on assets -0.7% vs 2.6% a year ago.Why this matters: Is the company squeezing more profit out of each dollar of assets than last year? Rising = getting more efficient; falling = the opposite.
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✓ Debt load (vs assets)The filing reports no interest-bearing debt in either year (total assets $48.1M).
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✓ Short-term liquidity (current ratio)Current ratio 20.87x vs 18.63x a year ago.
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✓ Share count (dilution)Share count declined 5.9% (14.2M → 13.3M year-over-year), so the no-dilution check passed. (One-year change; the multi-year buyback pace can differ.)
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· Pricing power (gross margin) (n/a — data not reported; not scored)
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✗ Sales per asset (asset turnover)Asset turnover 0.18x vs 0.21x a year ago.Why this matters: Asset turnover measures how much revenue each dollar of assets generates. Rising = more productive use of the asset base.
Missing data is never counted as a pass or a fail — it's shown as n/a and excluded from the denominator. Each check compares the company against its own prior year.
Plain English: the company holds about $25M in cash and is burning roughly $1M/year in operations. At that pace, the cash lasts 29.9 yrs before it must raise capital (diluting shareholders), take on debt, or cut spending.
Assumes constant burn and ignores financing/asset sales. For pre-profit biotech and growth companies, this matters more than a DCF — a great drug pipeline is worthless if they run out of money before approval.
What if you assume different inputs?
Here's where we land — and what happens if you change the assumptions. Drag the sliders to set your own Discount RateDiscount Rate — The annual return you demand for taking single-stock risk instead of buying a safe Treasury or index fund.
Why it matters: Higher discount rate = stricter valuation (a stock has to produce more cash to be worth holding). Lower = more generous.
Reference: 8–12% is standard · 9–10% matches S&P 500 historical return · Below 7% is illogical for single-stock risk
Full explanation → (the annual return you demand for single-stock risk) and terminal growth; the value updates live so you can see whether the stock looks cheaper or richer. The discount rate starts at 10.0%, the figure our model used for GROW. Open Advanced to also change beta, growth and the rate path.
Note: no headline intrinsic value is published for this stock (the valuation is held for a data-quality reason — see the notes above). The calculator below is a what-if tool: the values it produces are your assumptions played out, not our estimate.
A full intrinsic value isn't shown for GROW because the valuation is currently held for a data-quality reason (see the guardrail notes above). The reverse-DCF reading still works — it needs only the price and cash flow — but we won't publish a forward value until the underlying data passes our checks.
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⚙ Advanced — tinker with every input (beta, growth, rate path, margin → full intrinsic value)
A standard DCFDCF — Discounted Cash Flow — sums up all future cash a business will produce, adjusted for the fact that future dollars are worth less than dollars today.
Why it matters: It is the most fundamentally honest valuation method when applicable — but only works for companies with predictable, positive cash flow.
Reference: Best for: mature, profitable businesses. Fails for: pre-profit growth, banks, REITs.
Full explanation → valuation is not meaningful for U.S. Global Investors Inc. because the company has experienced declining revenue and negative operating cash flow, making future cash flows difficult to project reliably. Investors are likely betting on a turnaround in asset management performance and potential growth in specialized investment products. The primary quantifiable risk is the continued revenue decline of -21% per year.
As of 3 months ago
Anatomy of a share
What you're buying per share. Bars are at the same scale so you can see the relative size of revenue, costs, cash flow, and debt — not just read them in a table.
What's free cash flow / what do these mean?
Revenue per share — how much the business earns from customers, divided by the number of shares outstanding. Top of the income statement.
Earnings per share — profit left after operating costs, interest, and taxes, per share. Two versions appear on this page and are not interchangeable: GAAP diluted EPS uses the company's weighted-average diluted share count during the reporting period (this is the "earnings" in "price-to-earnings"); net income per current share divides annual net income by today's share count. They differ whenever the share count has changed.
Owner-earnings free cash flow per share — the cash the business produces for shareholders. Savng's owner-earnings FCF subtracts capital expenditures and stock-based compensation from operating cash flow (SBC is a real dilution cost even though it's non-cash). This is deliberately more conservative than "standard" FCF, which subtracts only capital expenditures — so our figure is lower than the headline FCF you'll see elsewhere. FCF funds dividends, buybacks, debt repayment, and acquisitions; a company can report positive earnings yet negative FCF.
Debt per share — total interest-bearing borrowings divided by shares. High debt-per-share next to thin FCF-per-share is a fragility signal.
What you actually need to decide
Every stock price is a disagreement. Here's the single thing that must go right for the bulls, the single thing that breaks the thesis, and the concrete signposts to watch so you can update your view as real results arrive.
- Quarterly net asset inflows/outflows
- Launch of new successful investment products
- Improvement in operating cash flow
The trend, in plain numbers (FY2024 → FY2025, latest reported)
Straight from the financial statements — no model, no opinion. For a small or unprofitable company, the direction of these numbers usually tells you more than any single valuation.
- Revenue fell -23% to $8.5M.
- Free cash flow is negative at -$953K — the cash burn widened vs last year.
- Swung to a loss of -$334K (from a profit the prior year).
Nothing was clearly improving year-over-year.
Management & Leadership
Frank Holmes has served as the CEO and Chief Investment Officer of U.S. Global Investors Inc. for several decades, also holding the position of Chairman. He is a recognized figure in the asset management industry, particularly for his focus on natural resources and emerging markets.
Names marked "per latest SEC filing" come from Form 4 / Item 408 filings and take precedence over our AI-compiled roster when they differ.
What They Make
U.S. Global Investors Inc. is an investment management firm that provides a variety of investment products, including mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), primarily to individual and institutional investors.
End Markets
Revenue Drivers
Why Is It Priced Like This?
Why Customers Pay
What we use instead: earnings (P/E, EV/EBIT), book value (P/B) — computed from the figures this company does report, shown in the sections below. Those numbers are unaffected by the missing cash-flow data.
The market is pricing U.S. Global Investors based on expectations for a reversal of its recent negative operating cash flow and declining revenue. The market may be assigning value to the potential for new specialized fund launches or a significant increase in assets under management, which is not in the model. Current pricing reflects the uncertainty around these future growth prospects rather than current profitability.
Business Model & Valuation
How They Make Money
The company has funded operations despite negative operating cash flow, likely through existing cash reserves or potential equity raises, and does not currently pay a dividend.
Growth / Revenue DCF
Negative free cash flow: revenue/margin growth model used - standard FCF DCF is unreliable for companies still scaling.
Show advanced inputs
| Revenue Growth | 2.0% |
What this model does NOT do: this is a consolidated owner-earnings FCF model. Standalone segment assumptions: none. It does not project net interest income and fee-income lines independently; their combined effect is embedded in the historical revenue and cash-flow trend the model extrapolates. The calculator above can only approximate a segment's impact through the single consolidated growth rate — it cannot model any one line separately. For a true segment-level view, build a separate model from the company's segment disclosures.
Maturity & Competitive Position
Moat Signals
Revenue has been declining at -21% per year over the last four years, from $22M to $8M.
Geography & Markets
U.S. Global Investors Inc. is headquartered in the United States and primarily serves clients within the U.S., though its investment strategies may involve global markets. Specific geographic revenue mix is not available from current data sources.
Geographic Risks
Market Signals
These are timing signals, not value signals — they describe the stock's recent price behavior, not what the business is worth. Use them for the "the thesis looks good, but is now the moment?" question. Each tile below explains what it's saying.
Why it matters: Short-term contrarian indicator. Extreme readings often precede mean reversion, though not always.
Reference: 30–70 normal · >70 overbought · <30 oversold
Full explanation → (14)49.9NeutralMomentum is balanced — neither overbought nor oversold.
Why it matters: When the fast line crosses above the slow line, short-term momentum is turning up; below, turning down. A timing cue, not a value signal.
Reference: Line above signal = bullish momentum · below = bearish
Full explanation →BullishLine above signalThe fast trend is above the slow trend — short-term momentum is currently upward.
Technicals describe price, not the business. A great company can have a "bearish" tape (a buying chance) and a weak one a "bullish" tape (a trap). Pair these with the valuation and health sections above.
QUALITY
Data Quality & Risk Flags (6 notes — click to expand/collapse)
Guardrail Notes (5)
- FCF negative: revenue/margin growth model projects future cash flows from revenue trajectory.
- Terminal growth (3%) capped to 1.6% (80% of near-term growth 2%).
- Illiquidity discount 25% applied (small/micro-cap — harder to exit, demand a margin).
- Extreme valuation (P/IV withheld — see the note above); output dominated by data/units issue (often a multi-class share-count mismatch). Suppressed.
- DATA UNAVAILABLE: per-share values suppressed due to missing/unreliable shares data.
FINANCIALS
Financial Statements (5-year tables — click to expand)
From U S GLOBAL INVESTORS INC's SEC filings (EDGAR).
Income (5yr)
| Year | Revenue | Net Income | EPS |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 8.5M | -334,000 | $-0.03 |
| 2024 | 11.0M | 1.3M | $0.09 |
| 2023 | 15.1M | 3.1M | $0.22 |
| 2022 | 24.7M | 3.4M | $0.23 |
| 2021 | 21.7M | 32.0M | $2.12 |
Cash Flow (5yr)
| Year | Operating CF | CapEx | − SBC & adj. | Free Cash Flow |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | -822,000 | 7,000 | 124,000 | -953,000 |
| 2024 | 990,000 | 213,000 | — | 777,000 |
| 2023 | 2.9M | 14,000 | — | 2.9M |
| 2022 | 10.5M | 220,000 | 733,000 | 9.6M |
| 2021 | 4.8M | 73,000 | 43,000 | 4.7M |
How we define FCF: operating cash flow − capital expenditure − stock-based compensation (owner-earnings basis — SBC is a real cost to shareholders even though it's non-cash). Latest year: -822,000 − 7,000 − 124,000 (SBC & adj.) = -953,000. This is the same owner-earnings FCF definition the valuation model uses, though the DCF's starting value is a projected from revenue × terminal margin, not this single year.
Balance Sheet
| Total Assets | 48.1M |
| Total Liabilities | 2.9M |
| Equity | 45.2M |
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