A strong management team and sound investment process underpin iShares MSCI Agriculture Producers ETF's Morningstar Medalist Rating of Silver. The portfolio maintains a cost advantage over competitors, priced within the lowest fee quintile among peers.  

 The team managing the passive strategy drives the strategy's Above Average People Pillar rating. The strategy's effective investment approach earns an Above Average Process Pillar rating. Independent of the rating, analysis of the strategy's portfolio shows it has maintained an underweight position in liquidity exposure and has a substantial underweight in quality exposure compared with category peers. Low liquidity risk exposure is attributed to stocks with a low trading volume, limiting managers' flexibility. And a low quality exposure is rooted in stocks with higher financial leverage and lower profitability. The strategy has a solid parent that earns an Above Average Parent Pillar rating. This firm has had overall reasonable fees and a favorable lineup success ratio.

Analyst Rating

Deere & Company

Archer-Daniels-Midland Company

Corteva Inc

Nutrien

Bunge

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Lamb Weston Hlds

CNH Industrial NV

Mosaic

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. iShares MSCI Agriculture Producers 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. Excellent risk-adjusted performance also influences the rating. This can be seen in the fund's five-year alpha calculated relative to the category index, which suggests that the process was successful over that period. Lastly, the process is limited by its parent firm's risk-adjusted performance, as shown by the firm's average 10-year Morningstar Rating of 3.1 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 the investment results of the MSCI ACWI Select Agriculture Producers Investable Market Index (IMI).  The fund generally will invest at least 80% of its assets in the component securities of the underlying index and in investments that have economic characteristics that are substantially identical to the component securities of the underlying index. The index measures the combined performance of equity securities of companies in both developed and emerging markets that are primarily engaged in the business of agriculture. The fund is non-diversified. 

 The portfolio is overweight in consumer defensive and industrials relative to the category average by 30.6 and 23.3 percentage points, respectively. The sectors with low exposure compared to category peers are energy and basic materials, underweight the average by 23.4 and 15.5 percentage points of assets, respectively. The strategy owns 215 securities and is relatively concentrated. Specifically, 61.9% of the fund’s assets are housed within the top 10 holdings, compared with the category’s 24.8% 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

iShares MSCI Agriculture Producers ETF benefits considerably from its team, earning it an 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 17 years of portfolio management experience. Together, they manage a total of 258 strategies, with a Silver asset-weighted average Morningstar Medalist Rating, demonstrating their potential to deliver positive alpha relative to the category median in aggregate. The team has lacked continuity recently, with Amy Whitelaw leaving in the last five months, detracting from its rating. Even though it is a passive fund, high turnover can still hinder the effectiveness of the investment process. 

 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.

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 MSCI Global Agriculture Producers ETF

VEGI tracks a market-cap-weighted index of companies that are sensitive to agricultural commodity prices.

If you're interested in broad exposure to the Materials - Agribusiness segment of the equity market, look no further than the iShares MSCI Agriculture Producers ETF (VEGI), a passively managed exchange traded fund launched on 01/31/2012.

Should You Invest in the iShares MSCI Agriculture Producers ETF (VEGI)?

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