The combination of an Average People Pillar rating and a Low Process Pillar rating limit  OneAscent Core Plus Bond ETF to a Morningstar Medalist Rating of Negative.  Fees are a weakness here. The strategy's lofty fees are a high hurdle to clear, as it is priced within the second-highest quintile among peers.  

 The strategy earns a Low Process Pillar rating. The strategy’s management team earns an Average People Pillar rating. The People Pillar rating is indirectly assigned by an analyst rather than algorithmically derived. Please see the notes following pillar section for more details. The strategy's parent organization still has a way to go to reach the industry standard, evidenced by a lack of inside investments from portfolio managers and a relatively inexperienced portfolio management team. As a result, the firm obtains a Low Parent Pillar rating.

Analyst Rating

Morningstar's style-agnostic evaluation of this fund's process seeks to understand whether the strategy has a performance objective and sensible, repeatable execution. OneAscent Core Plus Bond ETF earns a Low Process Pillar rating.    The primary detractor from the rating is the parent firm's five-year retention rate of 67%, which suggests it could do more to hold onto its portfolio managers. Being an actively managed strategy also detracts from the process. Historical data, like Morningstar's Active/Passive Barometer, shows that actively managed funds have generally underperformed their passive counterparts, especially over longer time horizons. Management team experience, which averages nine years at this fund, limits the rating as well.

 Compared with other funds in the Intermediate Core-Plus Bond Morningstar Category, this fund, historically, hews closely to peers' credit and interest-rate sensitivity over the past few years. Moreover, it displays no significant biases in terms of credit quality, bond sectors, or maturity when compared to its category peers in recent years.   

 This strategy's 12-month yield is 4.0%, higher than its average peer's 3.9%. Plus, its 30-day SEC yield (a measure similar to yield-to-maturity) sits at 4.5%. Higher yields tend to indicate higher credit risk. The portfolio has a lower average credit rating of BB, compared with the category average's BBB. Strategies with more credit risk may have a higher return, but they are riskier.

Process

OneAscent Core Plus Bond ETF earns an Average People Pillar rating. Stephen M. Liberatore’s veteran status, with 20 years of listed portfolio management experience, brings a wealth of experience to the table. The average Morningstar Rating of the strategies they currently manage is 2.9 stars, reflecting average risk-adjusted performance in comparison to category peers. The team is small but adequately equipped, with two other supporting listed managers. Together, the three boast nine years of average 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. 

 Note: The People Pillar rating is indirectly assigned by an analyst. The longest-tenured manager of the fund also manages a different product rated by an analyst. Their analyst-assigned People Pillar rating is combined here with the People scores (algorithmic or analyst-assigned) for the fund’s other managers on a tenure-weighted basis.

Average

People

OneAscent lags peer asset managers in a number of stewardship qualities, resulting in a Low Parent Pillar rating. Portfolio managers at OneAscent tend not to invest alongside their shareholders, detracting from the overall stewardship assessment. None of the firm’s assets are covered by an invested manager. Only two years of average asset-weighted tenure among OneAscent's longest-tenured managers gives us pause. In isolation, seasoned teams tend to have more experience to draw upon should they need to navigate turbulent market conditions. Lofty fees for the firm's open-end and exchange-traded funds are a weakness, contributing negatively to OneAscent's rating and creating a larger performance hurdle. The firm's fund fees, on average, fall within the second most-expensive quintile of similarly distributed strategies.

Parent

OneAscent Core Plus Bond ETF

OACP is an actively managed fund that provides exposure to debt securities of any maturity while applying special consideration to values-based and proprietary impact criteria.

OneAscent Investment Solutions announced the launch of its second exchange traded fund, the OneAscent Core Plus Bond ETF (NYSE Arca: OACP). The fund, which began trading on the NYSE Arca on Thursday, seeks total return, with an emphasis on income as the source of that total return, while giving special consideration to certain values-based and [.

News for OneAscent Core Plus Bond ETF ETF (OACP)