Franklin US Small Cap Mltfctr Idx ETF’s management team is rated Average, but a solid investment process still helps this strategy retain its Morningstar Medalist Rating of Silver. The portfolio maintains a sizable cost advantage over competitors, priced within the lowest 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 an overweight in yield exposure and volatility exposure compared with category peers. High yield exposure is attributed to holding more stocks with high dividend or buyback yields. And high volatility exposure is rooted in stocks that have a higher standard deviation of returns. 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

Comfort Systems USA

e.l.f. Beauty

MicroStrategy Incorporated

Applied Industrial Technologies

Sprouts Farmers Markets

Chord Energy Corp

BellRing Brands Inc

Simpson Manufacturing

Universal Forest Products

Atkore International Group

Morningstar's evaluation of this security's process aims to determine the likelihood that it will outperform its Morningstar Category benchmark on a risk-adjusted basis over the long term. Franklin US Small Cap Mltfctr Idx ETF earns an Above Average Process Pillar rating. 

The main driver of 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. Impressive risk-adjusted performance also bolsters the process. This can be seen in the fund's five-year alpha calculated relative to the category index, which suggests that the managers have shown skill in their allocation of risk. Lastly, the process is limited by the parent firm's five-year risk-adjusted success ratio of 37%. The measure indicates the percentage of a firm's funds that survived and beat their respective category's median Morningstar Risk-Adjusted Return for the period. The parent's relatively low success ratio suggests that the firm could do better across its fund lineup.

 This strategy, over time, has opted for smaller market-cap companies, compared with others in the Small Blend Morningstar Category.  But in terms of investment style, it is on par with peers. Looking at additional factor exposure, the managers have consistently overweighted yield-paying companies compared with Morningstar Category peers in recent years, shown by the portfolio's high exposure to stocks paying dividends or buying back shares. Stocks with high yields can be more stable, mature companies, but at times extreme market pressure or fundamental deterioration may prompt them to cut their dividends, which tends to hurt stock performance. In recent months, the strategy was more exposed to the Yield factor compared with its Morningstar Category peers as well. This strategy also has had an overweight bias to the volatility factor over these years, meaning it has owned companies that have a higher historical standard deviation of returns. This contributes to a higher-risk, higher-reward approach. In the most recent month, however, the fund's Volatility exposure was in line with the Morningstar Category average. Moreover, this strategy has been underweighting momentum stocks during these years. Momentum tends to be a powerful force in asset markets, as stocks that have done well recently usually continue to do so in the short term. As top performers change, this can sometimes be hard to capture without higher trading costs. In this month, however, the strategy had more exposure to the Momentum factor than its peers. More information on a fund and its respective category's factor exposure can be found in the Factor Profile module within the Portfolio section. 

 The portfolio is overweight in consumer defensive and consumer cyclical relative to the category average by 5.3 and 4.1 percentage points, respectively. The sectors with low exposure compared to category peers are financial services and healthcare, underweight the average by 7.3 and 5.4 percentage points of assets, respectively. The strategy owns 490 securities and its assets are more dispersed than peers in the category. In particular, 10.6% of the portfolio's assets are concentrated in the top 10 fund holdings, as opposed to the category’s 23.9% average. And in closing, in terms of portfolio turnover, on a year-over-year basis, 29% of the fund's holdings have changed, whether through increasing, decreasing, or changing a position.

Above Average

Process

Franklin Templeton’s  team is comparable to peers, resulting in an Average People Pillar rating. There are four managers listed on the fund: Hailey Harris, Basit Amin, Dina Ting, Joe Diederich. Together, they manage a total of 32 strategies, with a Bronze 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.

Average

People

Franklin Templeton Investments, the asset-management arm of publicly traded but family managed Franklin Resources BEN, has been busy with acquisitions. The struggle in streamlining these disparate capabilities underpins its Average Parent rating. 
Franklin’s July 2020 acquisition of multiboutique manager Legg Mason remains its largest as of March 2023, but the firm has continued to grow through acquisitions. Its April 2022 and November 2022 purchases of Lexington Partners and Alcentra, respectively, make it one of world’s largest managers of alternative investments (with alts comprising USD 231 billion of its USD 1.4 trillion assets under management as of December 2022), while its July 2022 acquisition of O’Shaughnessy Asset Management adds a novel direct-indexing capability to its managed account offerings. These purchases, however, do little to alleviate the operational complexity of a firm with dozens of investment teams split by asset class, region, and investment platform.   
Although there are several standout strategies at the firm, many teams have struggled with personnel turnover, succession challenges, and unappealing performance patterns. Shepherding these geographically disparate capabilities, which have varying levels of centralization of distribution and risk management, shall be quite the challenge for the firm to manage.

Parent

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