A sound investment process and strong management team underpin iShares Environmental Infras & IndstrETF's Morningstar Medalist Rating of Gold. The portfolio maintains a sizable cost advantage over competitors, priced within the lowest fee quintile among peers.  

 The strategy's investment process inspires confidence and earns a High Process Pillar rating. Independent of the rating, analysis of the strategy's portfolio shows it has maintained a significant overweight position in quality exposure and volatility exposure compared with category peers. High quality exposure is attributed to stocks with low financial leverage and strong returns on equity. And high volatility exposure is rooted in stocks that have a higher standard deviation of returns. The strategy’s management team earns an Above Average People Pillar rating. The strategy's parent organization earns the firm an Above 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

Westinghouse Air Brake Technologies

Xylem

American Water Works

Pentair

Advanced Drainage Systems

Clean Harbors

Tetra Tech

Stantec

Essential Utilities

Watts Water Technologies

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. iShares Environmental Infras & IndstrETF earns a High Process Pillar rating. The predominant contributor to the rating is that this fund tracks an index. Historical data, such as 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 92% also strengthens the process. The parent firm's five-year risk-adjusted success ratio of 55% strengthens the process. The measure indicates the percentage of a firm's funds that survived and outperformed their respective category's median Morningstar Risk-Adjusted Return for the period. Their relatively high success ratio suggests that this firm does well for investors and that this fund may benefit from that.

The investment strategy as stated in the fund's prospectus is:  The investment seeks to track the investment results of the FTSE Green Revenues Select Infrastructure and Industrials Index composed of U.S. and non-U.S. companies that provide infrastructure and industrials solutions aiming to support energy efficiency and emissions mitigation, pollution reduction or land and resource optimization.  The fund seeks to track the investment results of the index, and which has been developed by FTSE International Limited (the “index provider” or “FTSE”). It is non-diversified. 

 The portfolio is overweight in industrials and technology relative to the category average by 30.1 and 4.2 percentage points, respectively. The sectors with low exposure compared to category peers are utilities and energy, underweight the average by 21.9 and 7.4 percentage points of assets, respectively. The strategy owns 68 securities and is relatively concentrated. In particular, 50.9% of the fund’s assets are housed within the top 10 holdings, as opposed to the category’s 28.7% average. And finally, in terms of portfolio turnover, looking at year-over-year movements, 13% of the fund's holdings have turned over, whether through increasing, decreasing, or changing a position.

High

Process

iShares Environmental Infras & IndstrETF's strong team drives the strategy's Above Average People Pillar rating. There are three managers listed on the fund: Paul Whitehead, Jennifer Hsui, Greg Savage. The team is well equipped, with an average of 18 years of portfolio management experience. Together, they manage a total of 257 strategies, with a Silver asset-weighted average Morningstar Medalist Rating, demonstrating their potential 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.

Above Average

People

BlackRock offers compelling options across asset classes and vehicles. It earns an Above Average rating for Parent. 
The firm’s approximately USD 8 trillion in assets under management, as of Sept. 30, 2022, gives it unparalleled scale and influence. It is a market-leading index fund provider globally, and its iShares exchange-traded fund franchise offers a low-cost lineup of core funds that investors can use to build a well-diversified portfolio for dirt cheap. The firm can be more adventurous in its ETF launches than some peers, so not everything it launches is appropriate for the masses. As a result, it is likely to have more ETF closures than peers that stick to the basic building blocks.  
The firm’s active fixed-income and multi-asset efforts also stand out as some of the best in the industry. Those benefit from BlackRock’s commitment to building a first-class risk management system via its Aladdin analytics software. The software is also available for sale to other firms and has proved to be a popular option for competitors, a testament to its usefulness. 
More recently, the firm has shifted its focus to ESG offerings and incorporating ESG across its investment lineup, leading to a political backlash in the United States.
BlackRock isn’t the best at everything it tries to do, but retail investors, financial advisors, and large institutions could all build robust portfolios using BlackRock’s products.

Parent

iShares Environmental Infrastructure And Industrials ETF

EFRA tracks an index of developed market companies that provide infrastructure and industrials solutions to support energy efficiency and emissions mitigation, pollution reduction, or land and resource optimization. Stock selection is based on the amount of revenue earned from these relevant themes, and weighting is based on free float market-cap.

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AGF Global Infrastructure ETF

iShares US Infrastructure ETF

iShares Global Infrastructure ETF

FlexShares STOXX Global Broad Infrastructure Index Fund

KraneShares MSCI One Belt One Road Index ETF

Global X U.S. Infrastructure Development ETF

SPDR S&P Kensho Intelligent Structures ETF

ProShares DJ Brookfield Global Infrastructure ETF

Global X Data Center REITs & Digital Infrastructure ETF

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EFRA invests in companies providing solutions for energy efficiency and emissions mitigation, pollution reduction, or land and resource optimization. The fund is brand new as of November 2022, with 45 holdings, and invests across the world but with a U.S. bias.

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News for iShares Environmental Infrastructure And Industrials ETF ETF (EFRA)