American Century Investments, one of the most respected names in the traditional open-end mutual fund industry, has recently stepped out with its own ETFs to capitalize on the rising popularity of the relatively new investment vehicle.
“We’re trying to do things a little bit differently,” Ed Rosenberg, Senior V.P. and Head of ETFs at American Century, said at the Inside ETFs 2018 conference.
American Century recently launched the American Century STOXX U.S. Quality Value ETF (NYSEArca: VALQ) and American Century Diversified Corporate Bond ETF (NYSEArca: KORP).
“What we’re trying to do is really launch products that fit within the core holdings of a portfolio,” Rosenberg said. “Those two products are designed to fit in a core holding and have an outcome oriented solution.”
The STOXX U.S. Quality Value ETF is made up of 900 largest publicly traded U.S. equity securities screened and weighted by fundamental measures of quality, value and income.
The quality factor screens out the bottom companies based on profitability, earnings quality, management quality and earnings estimate revisions. The valuation score is calculated by the attractiveness of each stock relative to peers in the same industry group based on value, earnings yield and cash flow yield metrics. Lastly, income sustainability is based on dividend growth and dividend coverage applied to eliminate the bottom of the universe of dividend-paying stocks, along with an income score based on dividend-yield computed for the remaining stocks.
The Diversified Corporate Bond ETF is actively managed. KORP will seek to provide current income by investing in corporate debt securities and corporate debt investments by investing in U.S. dollar-denominated corporate debt securities issued by U.S. and foreign entities, but may also hold securities issued by supranational entities. Additionally, up to 35% of the fund’s net assets may be invested in high-yield securities or junk bonds. The fund may also invest in derivative instruments such as futures contracts and swap agreements.
“We’re not going to follow one pattern for this. We really want to build a product that gives the best outcome for a client in whatever format that makes the most sense,” Rosenberg added, referring to the passive index-based VALQ and actively managed KORP.
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