VanEck Office and Commercial REIT ETF’s management team is rated Average, but a solid investment process still helps this strategy retain its Morningstar Medalist Rating of Bronze. The portfolio maintains a sizable cost advantage over competitors, priced within the cheapest fee quintile among peers.  

 The strategy's sensible investment philosophy merits an Above Average Process Pillar rating. Independent of the rating, analysis of the strategy's portfolio shows it has maintained a significant overweight position in liquidity exposure and an underweight in momentum exposure compared with category peers. High liquidity exposure is attributed to stocks with a high trading volume, lending managers more flexibility. And low momentum exposure is rooted in holding stocks that are not currently on a winning streak and instead holding those that managers believe are undervalued. The strategy’s management team earns an Average People Pillar rating. The strategy's parent organization earns the firm an Average Parent Pillar rating. People Pillar and Parent Pillar ratings for this strategy are indirectly assigned by a Morningstar analyst rather than algorithmically derived. Please see the notes following each pillar section for more details. The details of assigning methods can be found in each pillar section.

Analyst Rating

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SL Green Realty

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Equity Commonwealth

Highwoods Properties

Douglas Emmett

Realty Income Corp

Morningstar's evaluation of this security's process aims to determine the likelihood that it will outperform its Morningstar Category index on a risk-adjusted basis over the long term. Vaneck Office And Commercial REIT ETF earns an Above Average Process Pillar rating. The largest contributor to the rating is that this fund tracks an index. Historical data, like Morningstar's Active/Passive Barometer, finds that passively managed funds have generally outperformed their active counterparts, especially over longer time horizons. The firm's five-year retention rate of 83% also contributes to the process. Lastly, the process is limited by its parent firm's inferior risk-adjusted performance, as shown by the firm's average 10-year Morningstar Rating of 2.6 stars. A lower star rating suggests that the firm has struggled to outperform on a risk-adjusted basis.

The investment strategy as stated in the fund's prospectus is:  The investment seeks to track as closely as possible, before fees and expenses, and the price and yield performance of MarketVector™ US Listed Office and Commercial REITs Index.  The fund normally invests at least 80% of its total assets in Office and Commercial Real Estate Companies. The index is comprised of equity securities of Office and Commercial Real Estate Companies and is intended to give investors a means of tracking the overall performance of U.S exchange-listed real estate investment trusts ("REITs") involved in the office and commercial real estate markets. The fund is non-diversified. 

 The portfolio is overweight in real estate by 3.5 percentage points in terms of assets compared with the category average, and its healthcare allocation is similar to the category. The sectors with low exposure compared to category peers are consumer cyclical and financial services; however, the allocations are similar to the category. The strategy owns 26 securities and is quite concentrated. In particular, 66.4% of the portfolio's assets are housed within the top 10 holdings, compared to the category’s 61.5% average. And finally, in terms of portfolio turnover, this portfolio turns over its holdings less quickly than peers, potentially leading to lower costs for investors and eliminating a drag on performance.

Above Average

Process

VanEck’s  team is comparable to peers, resulting in an Average People Pillar rating. There are two managers listed on the fund: Peter Liao, Ralph Lasta. Together, they manage a total of two strategies, with solid long-term prospects. The strategies average a Bronze asset-weighted Morningstar Medalist Rating, indicating a position to deliver positive alpha relative to the category median in aggregate.  

 Note: This People Pillar rating is indirectly assigned by an analyst. Morningstar analysts evaluate the People Pillar for passive products at the brand level and may also differentiate by asset class. There is at least one other passive strategy at the firm that is covered by a Morningstar analyst, so the People Pillar rating of the fund is inherited from the rating that the Morningstar analyst assigned to investment vehicles under the same brand name.

Average

People

VanEck’s ownership structure and specialization make it unique among industry peers. The firm’s founding family and namesake still have control, and its product lineup still reflects its legacy as a specialist in niche market segments. VanEck earns an Average Parent Pillar rating. 

Founded by John van Eck in 1955, the firm staked its claim in the industry by capitalizing on burgeoning markets. Starting with the opening of Western Europe to U.S.-based investors in the wake of the Marshall Plan, VanEck’s largest and most successful products provide exposure to areas of the market that are off the beaten path, such as hard assets, emerging-markets debt, and below-investment-grade-rated corporate debt.

Through its history, VanEck has taken an opportunistic approach to product development. For instance, since 2018, VanEck has launched strategies that provide exposures ranging from international REITs to companies involved in video game development. Regardless of where their reach takes them, however, VanEck builds a case that the strategy will be relevant over the long term and that its risks must be easy to understand. However, not all its products catch on, and the firm has shuttered several offerings in the last decade. 

VanEck remains a privately held firm, wholly owned by CEO Jan van Eck and his family. Although this enables the firm to focus on the long term and the firm offers some employees participation in profits, the firm hasn’t used equity as a recruiting and retention tool and introduces some key-person risk in the executive suite.

Parent

VanEck Office and Commercial REIT ETF

DESK tracks a tiered modified market-cap weighted index composed of US-listed Office and Commercial REITs. The fund targets the top 25 highest ranked Office and Commerical REITs based on market cap and liquidity.

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