iShares Gold Trust Micro (IAUM) is a New York grantor trust organized as a passive gold bullion vehicle. Under the liquidation lens, this entity presents an unusually clean recovery profile: essentially all assets are physical gold bullion held in allocated custody at JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A., London Branch, and the sole liability is an accrued sponsor's fee payable. There are no debt obligations, no operating leases, no pension liabilities, no goodwill, and no intangibles. The standard liquidation haircut framework is largely inapplicable in the conventional sense: gold bullion is a Level 1 fungible commodity valued at the LBMA Gold Price PM, and the trust structure enables in-kind redemption of physical metal at NAV through authorized participants. Recovery to equity in a wind-down scenario is effectively the spot price of gold at the time of liquidation, less the trivial sponsor fee payable. At March 31, 2026, total assets were $7.15B (1,552,392 troy ounces at $4,608.35/oz fair value), cost basis was $5.10B, and total liabilities were $459,384 (one month of accrued sponsor fee). Net assets were $7.15B across 155.75 million shares outstanding, equating to NAV of $45.93/share. Compared to December 31, 2025, total assets increased from $6.03B to $7.15B, driven by a 6.97% rise in the gold price and net share issuance of 15.35 million shares (19.6M created, 4.25M redeemed), with $955.8M of gold contributed in-kind versus $193.5M distributed for redemptions. The trust grew AUM by approximately 18.65% QoQ. The unrealized appreciation on the gold position stands at $2.055B (fair value $7.154B minus cost $5.099B), representing embedded gain that would be realized on liquidation but is already reflected in the NAV. The only structural risk to recovery is gold price exposure, which is 100% of NAV. No cash is held by the trust at any time; the trust funds its sole operating expense (sponsor's fee) by selling fractional ounces of gold. The voluntary fee waiver capping the effective rate at 0.07% annualized (versus contractual 0.09%) runs through June 30, 2027 and is revocable with 30 days' notice; this is disclosed in MD&A but is not separately tagged in XBRL beyond the rate disclosure in ManagementAndServiceFeesBaseRate and the iaum:SponsorsFeeAfterFeeWaiverPercentage context. The trust had no legal proceedings, no contingent liabilities that are quantified, and no changes to risk factors in this period.
▼ Community Notes