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 ‘21 just as COVID was ending you can see that it’s quite a big number. It’s more like 12x increase. Next, please. Let’s look at a fiscal year 2024. The strengths, the company remains profitable despite challenging macro market conditions. I’m going to highlight, unless you were in the magnificent seven. A few stocks were champions of the overall market. The company continues to buyback stock on flattened 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 NASDAQ, we have about $2 billion in assets, $2.8 million quarterly operating revenue.
Next, please. Earnings per share. We saw a nice bump from the summer year end of sort of quarter end of September from December, September to 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 or write-ups, and so you can see that the increase in investment income was $1.9 billion. Next please. And by the way, on onward granularity, at least it can always answer any questions and go into greater detail. Operating income, as you can see it went from $215,000 to $192,000. The decrease in operating revenue is due to a decrease in assets under management, partially offset by decrease in operating expenses.
Next, please. Smart Beta 2.0. Well, 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 quantum mentals is a new word that comes out and Investopedia covers it, but it’s a investment strategy that combines both fundamental tools along with quant approach to picking stocks and building a diversified portfolio. So our quantum mental 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’s really important that there are some factors that are great for picking stocks.
Other factors are not, but they’re good for screening stocks. And then there’s a magic about what portion of the portfolio is going to have mean reversion and what portion of the portfolio is going to have momentum of growth and revenue or operating income. And then they’re both laws of physics. So the portfolio construction is — this is 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 what that we went out to beat, the index and that quantum approach has done a phenomenal job. It is deeply undervalued on a relative basis to trains and trucks. The Dow Jones, Transport Index, includes a much bigger waiting and trains and trucks.
And if you just had a pure trains and trucks, the P/E ratios, the cash flow ratios, et cetera, for the airlines are much more attractive value proposition. But there’s concerns of a recession, the negative news that’s out there has impacted the sentiment in particular institutional investors out of that of Europe, that we have been able to witness as insurance companies. But overall, the retail and the family offices and big RIAs in the US are still actively involved in JETS. GOAU, it’s done — I’m so proud of it because it’s over-performed, the GDXJ, it’s done what with the model suggested it would do. Both portfolio construction of 30% focused on gold royalties, and then the stock factors for bottom up stock picking and rebalancing each quarter.
Our newest addition to the lineup is SEA, S-E-A. It has to do with cargo shipping in particular, 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 stocks in America than be in the growth of Eastern Europe. And further, same thing with the great concerns out of China, and its bullying tactics, its 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 in relative to the world of gold and luxury goods, et cetera? So one of the things in this journey of building JETS and what we witnessed is that cargo is one of the best arteries that understand the whole economy, the global economy. And it has a strong correlation to PMI and they trade a deep value relative cargo, ships trade, like JETS do they to trains and trucks on P/E ratios and cash flow. And the dividend yields on the cargoes are much higher. So, 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 settling them back?
It was cargo airlock, cargo shipping, and that’s what 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. And it’s highly correlated to a great leading indicator, which is called PMI, Purchasing Manufacturers Index. And what did we see this last year was rates were rising, the dollar is getting strong, a great contraction in PMI. That was a four tell 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. I think an uptick in the PMI, it appears that its bottom, a sustaining run would be explosive to this category and voters for the emerging markets. Again, another thing that you recognize at war, or bottlenecks, whatever it takes place in Panama Canal or the Red Sea, it gives tremendous pricing power to the cargo shipping companies. They put on a great spot here, are run in the past seven, no, probably about 14 weeks, run, with all the drama has taken place in the Red Sea. I think it’s interesting to show you that choke points on supply, the world continues has to move blood through the arteries of the global economy.
These guys, all they do is have pricing power. Next, please. This is a outline that JETS, the overall as of ETF, we saw assets, decline, redeem and the bulk of those seem to be institutions from out of the country, that use JETS as a proxy. Next, please. Chinese stocks significantly underperformed Asian peers. As you can see here, Taiwan because the semiconductor business has done well. Japan, South Korea, but not Hong Kong and China has had a very rough year, as China’s policies have been very much more war like rather than trade and economics, the policies against the technology sector. Now they’re wrestling with excessive JETS, debt as a percentage of GDP and real estate imploding around the leadership. I think that, shutting down the — that China Fund, last early summer was a wise decision, from a macro theme point of view.
Next, please. Tech stocks distort performance of the S&P. The S&P is market cap weighted, but there’s another S&P Index, and it’s equally weighted. 500 names equally weighted and you can see it far underperformed for the market cap weighted. Next, please. And then this is the magnificent seven. They’re up 5.4x 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. GROW’s investment in HIVE Digital. HIVE also has infrastructure build-out in the AI business. There’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.
We’ve been very happy, with that. Next, please. I’m going to turn over to Lisa Callicotte, CFO, to give you more granularity in the numbers.
Lisa Callicotte: 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 31, 2023. Operating revenues were $2.8 million, and our quarterly net income was $1.2 million, which was an increase 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. On Slide 37, we see our total operating revenues of $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.
