A strong management team and sound investment process underpin Calamos Convertible Equity Alt ETF's Morningstar Medalist Rating of Gold. The portfolio maintains a cost advantage over competitors, priced within the least expensive fee quintile among peers.  

 The management team's considerable industry experience drives a High People Pillar rating for the strategy. The strategy's effective approach earns an Above Average Process Pillar rating. The strategy's parent organization earns the firm an Average Parent Pillar rating, and this rating is inherited from vehicles belonging to the same branding entity and is indirectly assigned by an analyst.

Analyst Rating

Morningstar's evaluation of this fund's process aims to determine whether it has been applied consistently over time, as demonstrated by the portfolio's composition, its suitability for different types of investors, and expectations for performance in various market conditions, assuming the process is adhered to. Calamos Convertible Equity Alt ETF earns an Above Average Process Pillar rating. The leading factor in the rating is the firm's five-year retention rate of 94% over the period. Management team experience, which averages 31 years at this fund, also supports the process. Lastly, the process is limited by high costs across its parent firm's funds, whose fees rank in their category's second-costliest quintile on average. While this fund's costs are most relevant to investors, the pattern at the broader firm suggests it could do more to keep expenses low.

The investment strategy as stated in the fund's prospectus is as follows: 

The investment seeks total return through capital appreciation and current income.  The fund is an actively managed exchange-traded fund ("ETF") that invests in the segment of the U.S. convertibles marketplace that has a higher level of equity sensitivity. The fund seeks to achieve its objective by investing at least 80% of its net assets (plus borrowings for investment purposes and if any) in a portfolio of convertible securities (including synthetic convertible instruments). The fund is non-diversified.  

 Calamos Convertible Equity Alt ETF is currently in the Convertibles Morningstar Category.

Above Average

Process

Calamos Convertible Equity Alt ETF earns a High People Pillar rating. The primary contributor to the rating is the firm's five-year retention rate of 94%. The parent firm's five-year success ratio of 56% also supports the rating. The measure indicates the percentage of a firm's funds that survived and beat their respective category's median return for the period. Their relatively high success ratio suggests that the firm does well for investors and that this fund may benefit from that. The combined average five-year excess return of each manager supports the People rating as well. It suggests that the funds they manage have exceeded their respective category's average return.


Joe Wysocki, the longest-tenured manager on the strategy, provides strong guidance, offering over 25 years of listed portfolio management experience. The average Morningstar Rating of the strategies they currently manage is 3.5 stars, demonstrating encouraging risk-adjusted performance. Although the team is small, it is a solid supporting cast. Together, the three listed managers boast more than an average of over 30 years of listed portfolio management experience. None of the portfolio managers here invest in this fund. This hurts the rating because manager investment would align their interests with the strategy's investors.

High

People

Calamos continues to expand its executive leadership and offerings. Still, it has not outgrown its Average Parent rating as these new additions require time to settle and as success remains concentrated in certain mandates.
John Calamos Sr. founded his namesake firm in 1977, and it quickly gained a reputation for convertible bond expertise. The firm was temporarily publicly traded, but after about 12 years, it pivoted back to private ownership in January 2017, within a year of John Koudounis taking over as CEO. Since then, Calamos gained a new CFO and head of fixed income (both in 2016), COO and head of product (both in 2021), chief marketing officer (2022), and head of ETFs (2023). While leadership and succession planning have solidified since Koudounis took over (and so have the senior investment personnel as the firm’s long-term incentive program evolved), broader stability requires time to crystallize.
As of mid-2023, the firm’s long-established liquid alternatives offerings still drove the greatest proportion of flows and held the bulk of assets—Market Neutral Income (a core substrategy of which is convertible arbitrage) accounts for nearly 40% of the firm’s USD 35.6 billion in assets. New ventures—such as the launch of sustainable equities strategies and a partnership with Aksia on a closed-end private credit interval fund—are reasonable pursuits, but still very fresh.

Average

Parent

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