An upgrade in its Process Pillar rating is the primary driver of iShares Emerging Markets Infras ETF's upgrade to a Morningstar Medalist Rating of Neutral from Negative. The portfolio maintains a cost advantage over competitors, priced within the lowest fee quintile among peers.  

 The strategy earns an Average Process Pillar rating. Independent of the rating, analysis of the strategy's portfolio shows it has maintained a significant underweight position in quality exposure and liquidity exposure compared with category peers. Low quality exposure is attributed to stocks with higher financial leverage and lower profitability. And a low liquidity exposure is rooted in stocks with lower trading volumes, limiting managers' flexibility. 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

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 Emerging Markets Infras ETF earns an Average Process Pillar rating. The process is limited by the fund's unimpressive long-term risk-adjusted performance. This can be seen in its five-year alpha calculated relative to the category index, which suggests that the process has struggled over that period.

The investment strategy as stated in the fund's prospectus is:  The investment seeks to track the investment results of the S&P Emerging Markets Infrastructure IndexTM, which is designed to track the performance of 30 of the largest publicly listed companies in the infrastructure industry in emerging markets.  The fund generally will invest at least 80% of its assets in the component securities of the index and in investments that have economic characteristics that are substantially identical to the component securities of the index and may invest up to 20% of its assets in certain futures, options and swap contracts, cash and cash equivalents, and as well as in securities not included in the index. It is non-diversified. 

 The portfolio is overweight in industrials and utilities relative to the category average by 36.0 and 35.7 percentage points, respectively. The sectors with low exposure compared to category peers are technology and financial services, underweight the average by 24.9 and 21.8 percentage points of assets, respectively. The strategy owns 55 securities and is quite concentrated. In particular, 59.2% of the fund’s assets are housed within the top 10 holdings, as opposed to the typical peer's 25.4%.

Average

Process

iShares Emerging Markets Infras ETF's strong equity team drives the strategy's Above Average People Pillar rating. There are three managers listed on the fund: Greg Savage, Jennifer Hsui, Paul Whitehead. Experience on the team is abundant, with 18 years of average portfolio management experience. Together, they manage a total of 258 strategies, with a Silver asset-weighted average Morningstar Medalist Rating, indicating the 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 Emerging Markets Infrastructure ETF

EMIF tracks a market-cap-weighted index of infrastructure companies operating in emerging markets.

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